James T. Farrell, with [Studs Lonigan], and Sherwood Anderson, with [Winesburg, Ohio], executed this story better than does Dos Passos. The material follows a group of Americans in the early 20th century, discussing economics, race, politics, and social movements of the time. Farrell made the journey so much more compelling by unifying the narritive behind a central character. Anderson took the same approach as Dos Passos, following several characters and stories which loosely touched each other. But Anderson's work was a more cohesive and singular narrative.

Reading the first two pages of the first in the triology, The 42nd Parrallel, I was very hopeful about the book. Those pages represented a sort of a poetic prolouge to the book, describing the various pieces and parts of the USA. Sadly, the remainder of hte book did not live up to that expectation for me. The characters are introduced one at a time and followed through some portion of their lives, with little regard to the timing of when one character's life crosses another. The story is interrupted frequently with Dos Passos' regurgitation of historical reference material, written in sentence fragments and merged together in a confusing and frustrating heap. The pace of the Dos Passos' writing is also a little unusual, with an almost military or automoton stacatto, goosestepping along, spewing the details of a character's life as though speed talking without any emotional connection.

To be fair, I only lasted through about 60 pages of the second in the trilogy before deciding not to force myself through the remainder. I am sure this set appeals to some but I didn't enjoy it at all. It gets 2 1/2 bones; 2 because it is not poorly written just written in a way that doesn't appeal to me; another 1/2 bone for the first two pages, writing which I would like to have seen more of. ( )

Having only just finished 'The 42nd parallel' I'll comment on '1919' and 'The Big Money' when and as I get to them as I expect to move into the next as I really liked the first book of this trilogy a lot. 'The 42nd parallel would probably rate as a 4 to 4 and a half. There's a kind of looseness in Dos Passos's prose but he finds ways of tying things in to each other. The book covers a space in time in American life roughly from the beginning of the 20th century until American entry into World War 1. He develops several characters from various social strata and moves them around upwards and downwards through the fabric of society. We see them in small towns, in rural settings and large cities--their varying ambitions and the kinds of friendships they make and cast off. The social biases--the struggle of the laboring classes--the beginnings of new marketing and advertising ideas--their cynicism and sometimes relative innocence. Anyway Dos Passos's writing tends towards fluidity sometimes almost stream of consciousness. I found it engaging and liked how he separated his main chapters with newspaper clippings often in a cut and paste style--which I'm sure was most unusual for 1930 when the 42nd parallel was first published. I liked the short biographies as well of famous american public figures of those times. In a sense he is going after something much bigger than a novel--is almost trying to create a picture (or a consciousness) of those times in the minds of his readers.

6-30-2008--To go on--having finished the whole trilogy now--I find Dos Passos' trilogy a remarkable work--both in an artistic sense and on the whole as a work of deep social commitment. It's amazing to me how the Nobel committee could bypass creations of this kind and give their prize to another american writer such as Hemingway who was clearly not in the same league in terms of depth, skill or creative ability but that is a gripe heard often enough and practically every year when a new laureate is named. Dos Passos had remarkable range crossing over social barriers dffortlessly with a level of insight far beyond the works of any of his peers and with great creative elan reminiscent at times of James Joyce. Of his American peers in his time only Faulkner compares well in terms of creativity. Anyway this massive trilogy of works gets a 5 from me. ( )

Daniel Aaron and Townsend Ludington - the scholars responsible for this edition - are great big poopieheads.

They decided that Dos Passos' typographic design could be ignored - and therefore the old Signet paperbacks are still more reliable editions than their new 'definitive' Library of America version. Idiots.