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James T. Farrell's "The Dance Marathons." - in this issue, p. 133 - Irish-American Literature
MELUS, Spring, 1993 by Ellen Skerrett
When I first read Studs Lonigan and the Danny O'Neill novels I had no way of judging the accuracy of Farrell's portrayal of Irish family life in Washington Park in the 1920s and 1930s. I knew only that my relatives talked a lot about neighborhoods "changing" and that their moves in the city had been a direct result of rapid racial change. My admiration for Farrell's work deepened as I researched the history of Chicago neighborhoods, especially those directly affected by the 1919 Race Riot. What became increasingly clear to me was that in addition to their undisputed value as literature, Studs Lonigan and the Danny O'Neill novels constitute first-rate social history. Every source I consulted, from newspaper clippings to oral histories, church jubilees, Sanborn Fire Insurance atlases, photographs, and first person accounts in the Burgess papers, corroborated Farrell's description of neighborhood life on the South Side. Indeed, the 1910 census, which only recently became available for public scrutiny, confirms the patterns of Irish-American economic and social mobility he described in his fiction. Farrell's accomplishment is all the more remarkable considering that he wrote from memory. He left Chicago for good in 1931 and returned only intermittently over the next 48 years.
Farrell wrote "The Dance Marathons" for sociology students at the University of Chicago in February 1931, shortly before he and Dorothy Butler eloped to Paris. On the surface this is a straightforward account of the history and organization of fatigue contests that gained notoriety in the Roaring Twenties and continued to flourish during the early years of the Depression. In the tradition of great sociological reporting, he takes the reader behind the scenes of a marathon to describe in detail the dance halls, the promoters, the participants, the conditions under which they compete, the ritual behavior of marathoners, and the audience. Drawing no doubt from his own experience on the South Side, Farrell notes that for many young men, the marathon at White City is simply a place to bring a date after more respectable places of entertainment have closed. In addition to capturing the speech patterns and dialects of contestants in radio broadcasts of the marathons, he depicts the middle-aged women who choose favorites among the contestants, and evokes poignant images of young mothers with babies in their arms for whom the marathon is "a romantic outlet." Unlike conventional sociology of the 1920s with its focus on case studies and types, however, this report is full of passion and outrage at the alienation of people in modem society-from each other and themselves. What distinguishes The Dance Marathons" from similar studies in the Burgess papers is Farrell's impassioned plea that his reader understand the aesthetics of the spectacle and discover what needs it fills for young men and women who hunger for romance, excitement, and release from the drudgery of meaningless, menial work. His observation that many spectators "come scornful ... and sit until they are fascinated by the strangeness, novelty, perversion, or sordidness of the show' is clearly the insight of an artist. Not only did Farrell return to the dance marathon in Studs Lonigan but he transformed raw sociological data into literature.1 As Ann Douglas notes, the marathon becomes a metaphor for Studs's existence as he and Catherine sit hour after hour watching the dazed contestants and wondering "when something is going to happen- (504).
