Farrell Centenary
Enough said here on this subject already, perhaps. But I did want to draw your attention to two wonderful pieces in today’s Trib and (via TEV) the San Francisco Chronicle. The Trib quotes Studs Terkel, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Wolfe, and Farrell biographer Robert K. Landers.
Many years later, the celebrated author Doris Lessing, raised in Africa and a London resident, visited Chicago. Roger Ebert helped show her around, as the Sun-Times’ film critic recalled in a column when Farrell died, a quarter of a century ago:”Well, what I’d really like to see in Chicago,” Lessing said, “is the park bench in Jackson Park where Studs Lonigan kissed Lucy Scanlon for the first time.”
The Sun-Times, on the other hand, doesn’t mark the day at all. As Yeats would say: You’ve disgraced yourselves again.
February 21st, 2007 14:42
park bench in Jackson Park? I thought it was a tree in Washington Park
February 22nd, 2007 08:47
I believe you are correct, sir. I wonder whether it was Ebert or Lessing who got it wrong?