James Gordon Farrell (25 January 1935 – 11 August 1979) was an English-born novelist of Irish descent. He gained prominence for a series of novels known as "the Empire Trilogy" (Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip), which deal with the political and human consequences of British colonial rule.

Troubles received the 1971 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Siege of Krishnapur received the 1973 Booker Prize. In 2010, Troubles was retrospectively awarded the Lost Man Booker Prize, created to recognise works published in 1970. Troubles and its fellow shortlisted works had not been open for consideration that year due to a change in the eligibility rules.

Biography

Early life and education

Farrell, born in Liverpool, England, into a family of an Irish background, was the second of three brothers. His father, William Farrell, had worked as an accountant in Bengal and, in 1929, he married Prudence Josephine Russell, a former receptionist and secretary to a doctor. From the age of 12, he attended Rossall School in Lancashire. After World War II, the Farrells moved to Dublin, following which Farrell spent much time in Ireland. This, perhaps combined with the popularity of Troubles, leads many to regard him as an Irish writer. After leaving Rossall, he taught in Dublin and also worked for some time on Distant Early Warning Line in the Canadian Arctic. In 1956, he went to study at Brasenose College, Oxford; while there he contracted polio. This left him partially disabled and disease was prominent in his works. In 1960, he left Oxford with third-class honours in French and Spanish and went to live in France, where he taught at a lycée.

Early works

Farrell published his first novel, A Man From Elsewhere, in 1963. Set in France, it shows the clear influence of French Existentialism. The story follows Sayer, a journalist for a communist paper, as he tries to find skeletons in Regan's closet. Regan is a dying novelist who is about to be awarded an important Catholic literary prize. The book mimics the fight between the two leaders of French existentialism: Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, Sayer representing Sartre and Regan as Camus. The two argue about existentialism: the position that murder can be vindicated as an expedient in overthrowing tyranny (Sartre) versus the stance that there are no ends that justify unjust means (Camus). Bernard Bergonzi reviewed it in the New Statesmans 20 September 1963 issue, writing: "Many first novels are excessively autobiographical, but A Man from Elsewhere suffers from the opposite fault of being a cerebral construct, dreamed up out of literature and the contemporary French cinema." Simon Raven wrote in The Observer on 15 September 1963: "Mr. Farrell's style is spare, his plotting lucid and well timed; his expositions of moral or political problems are pungent if occasionally didactic." He won a Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for the novel, and with the prize money travelled to India to research his next novel.

Charles Sturridge scripted a film version of Troubles made for British television in 1988 and directed by Christopher Morahan.

Death

In 1979, Farrell decided to quit London to live on the Sheep's Head peninsula in County Cork, Ireland. A few months later he drowned on the coast of Bantry Bay after falling into the sea from rocks while angling. He was 44.

"Had he not sadly died so young", Salman Rushdie said in 2008, "there is no question that he would today be one of the really major novelists of the English language. The three novels that he did leave are all in their different way extraordinary."

Farrell is buried in the churchyard of the St James' Church, a Church of Ireland parish church in Durrus. The manuscript library at Trinity College, Dublin, holds his papers: Papers of James Gordon Farrell (1935–1979). TCD MSS 9128-60.

Legacy

Peter Morey wrote that "an interpretation of the novels of J. G. Farrell and Paul Scott as examples of post-colonial fiction [is possible], since both partake of oppositional and interrogative narrative practices which recognize and work to dismantle the staple elements of imperial narrative."

In the 1984 novel Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie, Vinnie Miner, the protagonist, reads a Farrell novel on her flight from New York to London. In the 1991 novel The Gates of Ivory by Margaret Drabble, the writer Stephen Cox is modelled on Farrell.

List of works

;Early works

  • A Man from Elsewhere (1963)
  • The Lung (1965)
  • A Girl in the Head (1967)

;Empire Trilogy

  • Troubles (1970)
  • The Siege of Krishnapur (1973)
  • The Singapore Grip (1978)

;Published posthumously

  • 1973–74: The Pussycat Who Fell in Love with a Suitcase. Atlantis. 6 (Winter 1973/4), pp. 6–10
  • 1981: The Hill Station; and An Indian Diary, unfinished, edited by John Spurling. London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Awards

  • 1971: Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (Troubles)
  • 1973: Booker Prize (The Siege of Krishnapur)
  • 2010: Lost Man Booker Prize (Troubles) awarded for the year 1970

Further reading

  • 1979 Bernard Bergonzi, The Contemporary English Novel
  • 1981 John Spurling, Margaret Drabble, Malcolm Dean. "The Hill Station"—Personal Memories of J. G. Farrell
  • 1997 Ralph Crane and Jennifer Livett. "Troubled Pleasures: The Fiction of J. G. Farrell". Dublin: Four Courts Press.
  • 1997 Michael C. Prusse. "Tomorrow is Another Day": The Fictions of James Gordon Farrell. Tübingen and Basel: Francke.
  • 1997 Derek Mahon. "The World of J. G. Farrell" (poem), October 1997
  • 1999 Ralph Crane, ed. "J. G. Farrell: The Critical Grip". Dublin: Four Courts Press.
  • 1999 Lavinia Greacen: "J. G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer" (full-length biography). London : Bloomsbury.
  • 2000 Elisabeth Delattre: "Histoire et fiction dans Troubles de J. G.Farrell", Études Irlandaises, printemps 2000, n° 25–1, pp. 65–80
  • 2002 Elisabeth Delattre: "Du Monde romanesque au poème: 'The World of J. G. Farrell' de Derek Mahon", Études Irlandaises, printemps 2002, n° 27–1, pp. 93–105
  • 2003 Elisabeth Delattre: "Intégrer, exclude ou la genèse d'une œuvre : Troubles de J. G. Farrell", in Irlande : Inclusion, exclusion, publié sous la direction de Françoise Canon-Roger, Presses Universitaires de Reims, 2003, pp. 65–80.
  • 2003 Michael C. Prusse "British and Irish Novelists Since 1960". Gale: Detroit.
  • 2007 John McLeod, "J. G. Farrel", Tavistock: Northcote House, 2007.
  • 2009 Lavinia Greacen: "J. G. Farrell in His Own Words Selected Letters and Diaries". Cork : Cork University Press.
  • 2024 Claire Seiler: “J. G. Farrell’s Lost Polio Novel.” PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 139.5 (2024): 821–836.

References

Kalpaklı, Fatma. "British Novelists and Indian Nationalism: Contrasting Approaches in the Works of Mary Margaret Kaye, James Gordon Farrell and Zadie Smith", Bethesda: Academica Press, 2010. .

  • Farrell, James Gordon Dictionary of Irish Biography
  • "J. G. Farrell", in "The Literary Encyclopedia"
  • Tribute in the Melbourne "Age"