Reflections at Fifty
Potpourri
by Vanguard, $3.75.
Some of the essays in Farrell ‘s volume deal with specific writers — Joyce and Ibsen, Mencken, Dreiser, Anderson. Some are personal — “How The Face of Time Was Written,” “My Beginnings As a Writer.” The rest are a mixed bag which includes general essays on literature; a fine account of John Dewey’s handling of the Trotsky inquiry in Mexico in 1937; and Farrell’s testimony in his successful proceedings to restrain the Philadelphia police from interfering with the sale of the Studs Lonigan novels. Mr. Farrells writing is as usual plodding and repetitious, and his thought is seldom subtle or particularly original. But his moral courage, his massive intellectual energy, his unbounded dedication to the craft ol letters, make this volume as a whole both forceful and appealing.