The lessons of Studs Lonigan
I became a coach due to my own experiences. My life experiences and my Type-A personality desire to nag help others, plus, the lessons I learned from literature and history. (Once a history major, always a history major: 19 things only a history major will understand) Besides the history major thing, I grew up in a house which had a bookcase in the kitchen. When I visit people’s homes and there are no books, and/or only Ayn Rand, whoops, I think the cats are calling me, gotta go, it’s been real, kids. Yes, I take books seriously, and I honestly cannot get through the majority of crap business books. No matter how good the advice may be, if it’s poorly written, sorry, I tune out.
One book I’ll never tune out is Studs Lonigan by James T. Farrell. I discovered it, as a teenager in some used bookstore in NYC, and was pretty much immediately hooked. Farrell’s genius is to create, in Studs, the most frustrating, moronic, racist, sexist, just plain stupid anti-hero…all the while, causing you to, passionately, care about what happens to him. And what does happen to Studs? Well, because he’s terrified of thinking, not to mention himself, he quickly destroys his potential and his young life, drinking and whoring. He dies, a complete stranger to himself.
Farrell, intimately, shows you Studs’ constricted, frustrated life and death. We first encounter Studs as a small child, and are with him, till the moment he dies. Studs may not understand himself, but the reader, by the time the book is through, knows everything about Studs. We see Studs stealing, lying, cheating, getting into fights, drinking rotgut–the book is set from the very early 1900s through the beginning of the Great Depression–involved in race riots, raping women, lying to himself, making excuses…it’s truly a testament to Farrell’s genius as a writer that he can make you continue to care about a character who is so repulsive. But, in spite of yourself, you do indeed care…
For me, a book like Studs Lonigan is far more useful than 100 business books, because, in black and white, you see what happens to someone who refuses to learn from, or take any responsibility whatsoever for his many mistakes. If business books work for you, keep on keepin’ on. Me, I’m going to stay with literature and the many life lessons it shares with us, even as we’re not necessarily aware we’re being taught a lesson.