urban alienation

From back cover: "...Studs Lonigan has established itself as a classic of the American social novel. Its setting is the South Side of Chicago during the moral chaos of the Prohibition era. Its protagonist, Studs Lonigan, is a young man seeking a destiny he cannot find, leaving behind him only lost ideals and unanswered questions to mark his swift passage from youth to early death. In his frustrated ambitions, his gradual brutalization, and his final failure, Studs emerges as a prototype of the lost and self-alienated American, both product and victim of urban society. The trilogy is, in the words of Philip Allan Friedman, 'a monumental work in the tradition of American literary naturalism...' Alfred Kazin has called Studs Lonigan 'one of the most honest and important works of our time.'"