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Title: The 42nd Parallel: Volume One of the U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos ISBN: 0-618-05681-5 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 25 May, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.71 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Foreshadows our times with a great tale.
Comment: There is great vitality in this novel; mirroring the hungry droves of Americans crossing their lands, entering into others and landing in the midst of the embattled end of European monarchies. World War I. Great may not be the correct adjective, as so much of this leap involved the dark side of capitalism, imperialism and the hegemony of the corporate state over the common individual.
There is plenty of sex, scandal and people being less than ideal- there is also a fascinating running panorama of the names of history lessons, made real and woven into the plot which is nothing less than epochal. We find Debs, Edison, the Molly Maguires, the Czar, Wilson- they are vividly real and for that alone, dos Passos has produced a invaluable addition to the purely American literature that is evocative and chillingly foreshadowing of the state of affairs visited upon this nation and the rest of the world in 2003. I will wait a while before the next book in this trilogy, but not too long.
Rating: 4
Summary: An Exhausting, But Rewarding, Experience
Comment: I won't write a separate review for each of the three novels in this trilogy, since really they only work when read together as one massive tome anyway.
"U.S.A." is John Dos Passos' attempt to paint a verbal mural of life in America in roughly the first quarter of the 20th Century (the story ends somewhere around the beginning of the Great Depression). It's a massive undertaking, and is the kind of stuff I usually love: a large cast of characters swirling through a complex plot. Characters are introduced and drop out of one volume only to be picked up in someone else's story later in the trilogy; stories mix and mingle, with a main character in one plot line becoming a supporting player in someone else's. Interspersed among the conventional narrative chapters are brief biographies of real-life figures of import in American cultural and political history: Carnegie, Henry Ford, Isidora Duncan, Teddy Roosevelt. And if that were not enough, Dos Passos also throws in "newsreel" sections, which are abstract word montages comprised of newspaper headlines, song lyrics, political slogans, etc.
I don't know much about Dos Passos, but I imagine this was a fairly revolutionary work for its time. The biography and newsreel sections alone give the work the feeling of nonfiction, but even the narrative portions of the trilogy feel as if they are historical accounts rather than fiction. That makes the books both interesting and ultimately a bit tedious. After three good-sized novels, Dos Passos' clinical, objective tone begins to wear thin, and the reader begins craving some juicy, lyrical, imaginative prose to take its place. That is why I can't quite bring myself to give this work 5 stars.
Still, anyone interested in American literature and cultural development should at least give this trilogy a chance.
Rating: 5
Summary: Snap-shots
Comment: "42nd Parallel" is set in the USA in the early twentieth century, and leads up to America's involvement in World War One. The novel is written in a picaresque style, the author switching between a number of different characters, developing their stories at distinct paces, and gradually entwining their fates.
I felt that Dos Passos was trying to give snap-shots of the American society of the time, a society greatly uneasy with itself, in which labour unrest, racism and social divisions seemed to be very stark. For example, Dos Passos accords socialist ideas a greater prominence than I had anticipated, which I found very interesting.
Dos Passos's prose style is spare and uncomplicated, reminding me at times of Hemingway. But, whereas I'm not fond of Hemingway's writing, I was carried along by Dos Passos. It's difficult to say why, but perhaps his observational eye and command of dialogue felt more convincing, more authentic. Added to that of course is Dos Passos's frequent use of "The Camera Eye" and "Newsreel" sequences, which change the reader's perception, giving a kaleidoscopic effect, evoking the time at both a personal and "headline" level. I suppose that people perceive and experience their environments through a mixture of different senses and media: it seemed to me that Dos Passos was trying to recreate that feeling for the reader.
A stimulating and absorbing read.
G Rodgers
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Title: 1919: Volume Two of the U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos ISBN: 0618056823 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 25 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Big Money: Volume Three of the U.S.A. Trilogy by John Roderigo Dos Passos ISBN: 0618056831 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 25 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Manhattan Transfer : A Novel by John Dos Passos ISBN: 0618381864 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 02 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Three Soldiers (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by John Dos Passos, Townsend Ludington, John Roderigo Dos Passos ISBN: 0141180277 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: John DOS Passos: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey by Townsend Ludington ISBN: 0786705272 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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