Farrell and Steinbeck

NO STAR IS LOST. By James T. Farrell. The Vanguard Press. $3.00
THE LONG VALLEY. By John Steinbeck. The Viking Press. $2.50

Two or three years ago, the grouping of James Farrell and John Steinbeck might have seemed natural. Steinbeck was of course an original, and already acclaimed as the one American writer who did not repeat himself; but like Farrell he was essentially a “social” novelist. He seemed to be hard-boiled, and In Dubious Battle had placed him in the Left-wing. Today, however, these labels are pretty smudgy. The social novelists now resemble a crowd more than a school, many of the hard-boiled have turned out to be thin-shelled, the Left-wing has split up into more wings—in general, these simplicities are breaking down and being replaced by new simplicities. The party-line critics, for example, had Farrell earmarked as a Trotzkyite the last I heard, and were attacking him more violently than were the watch-and-ward societies; of Steinbeck’s repute I do not know. Yet there remains a better reason for reviewing them together. They can be seen more clearly in contrast than when taken either separately or as brothers under the skin.