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With his U.S.A. trilogy, comprising THE 42nd PARALLEL, 1919, and THE BIG MONEY, John Dos Passos is said by many to have written the great American novel. While Fitzgerald and Hemingway were cultivating what Edmund Wilson once called their "own little corners," John Dos Passos was taking on the world. Counted as one of the best novels of the twentieth century by the Modern Library and by some of the finest writers working today, U.S.A. is a grand, kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation, buzzing with history and life on every page. The trilogy opens with THE 42nd PARALLEL, where we find a young country at the dawn of the twentieth century. Slowly, in stories artfully spliced together, the lives and fortunes of five characters unfold. Mac, Janey, Eleanor, Ward, and Charley are caught on the storm track of this parallel and blown New Yorkward. As their lives cross and double back again, the likes of Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie make cameo appearances.… (more)
User reviews
It's almost as if USA is specifically structured to get under my skin, making use of the modernist experimentalism I'm such a sucker for in other works, and using it to express a uniquely American perspective. Dos Passos's trilogy features many different types of narratives: third-person stories about regular American men and women, told in a succinct, newspaper-influenced voice; long, prose-like poems about the larger-than-life Americans of the time, from Rockefeller and Eugene Debs in the early years to Isadora Duncan and Henry Ford in the later; snippets of newspaper headlines and popular songs cobbled together into looser, "newsreel" poems; and the Camera Eye sections, told in a stream-of-consciousness style, from Dos Passos's own perspective. Together this variety of the large and small, journalistic objectivity and intensely subjective snapshots, regular people and giants of art and industry, lets me relate to America-as-vast-experiential-panorama, in a way I usually can't. And the way that the ridiculousness of newspaper headlines and semi-articulateness of a poignant song lyric interact with the complicated and compromised lives of real people rings true almost a century later.
USA also offers a leftist slice of history in a way that's very personal: witnessing a brutal anti-labor attack in rural Washington state in the 1910's, or the ins and outs of a strike in Goldfield, Nevada in 1905, really makes the history of those familiar places come alive for me, and become part of the larger patterns of pro- and anti-labor movements happening all over the country. (Unfortunately, the activists who undermine themselves through in-fighting and excessive drinking are eerily familiar as well.) There is a Kerouac-like love of the small towns and big cities of America, but Dos Passos writes about people who are actually invested in them one way or another, rather than people who are just passing through - an approach I find much more emotionally rewarding. For me personally, writing about the wide spectrum of American experience using a wide spectrum of (American) voices is very powerful, and I've never really seen it done as effectively as Dos Passos does it here. If there are any other lovers of experimental prose out there trying to connect with their American roots (or not), I highly recommend USA.
It's part of the USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos. It, and the rest of the trilogy, has four different parts braided throughout the narrative, involving fictional
This is one of those books that can't easily be explained, and as such, you should just read to "get."
I would most definitely recommend this book for fans of Faulkner, Pynchon, or Joyce. It is definitely a great 20th century American novel, and part of a greater series that gives one a sense of life in the U.S.A.
Keith went back up to New Orleans on the steamer 𝘑𝘰𝘩𝘯 𝘎. 𝘔𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘨𝘴 to hire workers to build the railroad. He offered a dollar a day and grub and
Of that bunch about twentyfive came out alive.
The rest left their whiskyscalded carcases to rot in the swamps.
On another load he shipped down fifteen hundred; they all died to prove that only Jamaica Negroes could live in Limon.
Minor Keith didn’t die.”
This quote from Wikipedia: “As many as four thousand people, including Keith's three brothers, died during the construction of the first 25 miles of track. Having subsequent trouble recruiting Costa Rican laborers, Keith eventually brought in blacks from the Caribbean islands (mainly Jamaica), Chinese, and even Italians, to complete the project.”
The 𝘜.𝘚.𝘈. trilogy was published in 1930. The events from the opening passage to this post occurred in the late 1800s. American imperialism then. American imperialism now? This book was recommended by a friend since it fit into the research I was doing for an upcoming short story. Anytime, however, I put spade to the unturned earth of American history I’m left agape and ashamed at the old bones of brutal conquest. And we’re no exception, even if American exceptionalism is an ideology applied to that equally flattering and unsightly image in a mirror of our own fashioning, held at selfie-snapping distance.
Oh, America. Out of 180 degrees of latitude, surely there’s more than enough room to share. I did enjoy this novel, for its depictions of the average and not-so-average American as well as for its experimentation in style. However, I can’t find myself going back over this again. Maybe I’ll read the other two installments. I’m sure they’re worth it. But, man, I really don’t like most of what I’m seeing. Maybe it’s in the writing, but this mirror has got an awful lot of blemishes, nicks from hasty shaving, and sun-damage caught in the reflection.
This is what I read during the power outage of Hurricane Florence. I probably should’ve selected something more humorous or uplifting. However, the outpouring of community, fellowship, charity, and selflessness after the storm was the perfect antithesis to the conceit of most of the characters in this book.
Maybe there’s hope for America, after all.
I particularly enjoyed the newsreels. They provide dates for the storyline, evoke a feeling for the time period, and often provide an implied criticism of what was just occurred in the narrative, taking to task some of the characters’ actions. This is more implied than stated but it is relatively easy to read between the lines. The author seems to be providing social commentary on “yellow journalism,” propaganda, and advertising in contributing to materialism.
It is a slice of the past, complete with viewpoints (by the characters, not the author) that will not sit well with a modern audience. For example, pretty much every ethnic slur is included in the dialogue. Most of the characters are rather unpleasant. This book is considered a classic so I’m glad I read it but also glad to be finished.