BOOK REVIEW
USA Trilogy: The 42nd Parallel; 1919; The Big Money, John Dos Passos, Library of America, 1997
I believe that the USA trilogy presented here (thankfully, under one roof- when I first read it in my youth I had to scrounge around for the third book) was the first time that I had read a novel than used the literary devices that the author John Dos Passos employed here. Vignettes, bits of poetry, snap biographies, headline banners all are employed here to great effect to both set up the drama of the narrative (such as it is) and the interplay between the various characters. Today we are all very familiar with the device; as the modern reader has E.L. Doctorow to rely on to continue this tradition as he has done in such works as Ragtime and The Book of Daniel. But back then this was rather an unusual format and one that today’s academic literary scholars have taken apart piece by piece in their efforts discount this work as a worthy insight into a slice of Americana in the first third of the 20th century. However, back in his day he was rated right up there with old Hemingway. That was rarefied air indeed.
The stories here cross between the exploits of the rich (and their wannabes) and the exploitation of poor (and their gonnabes). As is natural in a novel, modern or otherwise, we also have the search for love, the trauma of lost love, the inevitable longings and the occasional betrayals of that condition. We have hustlers (in high and low places), drifters, grifters and midnight shifters. In short, a regular cross-section of the white native and immigrant populations of that period. We see these characters in America and the other noted spots of the period, such as Mexico, Europe and Russia. We see them as political, anti-political, non-political and clueless, wise or broken. In some 1300 pages we get a companion as much as a novel. For those of certain generations, including this writer’s generation of '68, these characters- designers, high powered executives, labor organizers, scabs, revolutionaries were types we were at least familiar with from stories in childhood. Well, friends they are back here in this edition. So take your time and get re-introduced to a slice of America that is long gone and ain’t coming back.
A short comment on the author's politics- at this period in his life (the 1920’s) he was an ardent leftist of some persuasion. (I have asked around but nobody believes that he was actually in the American Communist Party (any help here?). In Spain in the 1936-37 period he was, according to my sources, close to some of the Americans in the International Brigade (Abraham Lincoln Battalion) and wrote some good articles on their exploits and their trials and tribulations. All this is by way of saying that I think that Dos Passos' youthful leftist political slant helped fuel the book and gave it a vitality lacking in some of his latter work when he got old, cranky and right-wing about politics.
Comment on Dos Passos in the Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaign in 1927.
ReplyDeleteDespite John Dos Passos's later right-wing trajectory, hardly an usual if unhappy circumstance in left-wing politics he did more than yeoman's service in the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti in the mid-1920's, especially as the time for their execution came near. He wrote a number of pamphlets and other pieces of written material to help gain support for their cause in the liberal and general radical milieu.
For that work, not his later hack work on behalf of such organizations as the Young Americans for Freedom in the early 1960's, we hold him in some esteem. We do not, or should not, throw the baby out with the bath water in dealing with the generally youthful contributions made to the left-wing movement by those who later became our hardened enemies. Such is political life.