James T. Farrell was condemned by the church—and paved the way for American Catholic writers

Farrell wrote far too much and was a terrible editor of his own work. Farrell later told the critic Roger Ebert that “The FBI has left me alone, and the Air Force. The Studs Lonigan trilogy was voted No. For American Catholic fiction writers, Farrell created a template both to follow—the bildungsroman set in an urban religious enclave from which one is trying to escape—and to react against. What is Gordon’s Final Payments, after all, but the inversion of the tale of Studs Lonigan?