John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

My what a splendid book this is. Vast in its scope and magnanimous in its treatment of the varied strata that made up a nation coming to terms with the 20th century. I defy you to enjoy this, despite it being well over 1,000 pages long, a trilogy that follows 12 characters some related and others not. Not only is it written in a style that is incredibly accessible for such a long novel, it’s written in four styles that are incredibly accessible. Even the stream of consciousness episodes show more are so well crafted and (ahem) so short, that they fly by.

While I enjoyed the characters and what they got up to, what I most enjoyed was how I saw the nation of the US through their eyes and experiences. It was a promising time for the US and various ideals are put to the test including the spectral opposites of capitalism and socialism. Neither of them come off well, but I kind of felt, a bit like in Sinclair’s masterpiece The Jungle, that it was the ones who espoused a more societal basis for life that were painted with more touches of heroism. Certainly, you sympathised a lot more with those who fell victims to mass industry and the drive to industrialise at the sake of the common man.

Certainly Dos Passos here composed a classic but not just for his storytelling skills. It’s a nation analysed and put to the test of history. Interestingly, it shows how weak the ideals are, ideals that, even today are either praised or vilified in equal measure depending on which facet of US citizenry you talk to. I’m not sure that the US has really grown much more mature in its pursuit of an identity than it is portrayed in this novel. I wonder what the USAnians among you would respond to that.

For outsiders who want to know more of why the US is as it is, this is a good novel to reflect on. There’s such a vast amount here to consider there’s no way to do it justice. Even just one of the 12 character threads would provide book clubs with hours of discussion. For those of you on the inside, I think this is a good one to have under your belt to say you know where US literature is coming from and to provide food for thought as you continue to build on what those 12 characters built before you. show less

Not many things make me feel patriotic about the United States. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am about as far from flag-waving as a person can be; not only do I deplore current policies and past atrocities in this country, but I usually don't feel very connected to the huge entity that is "The United States." I feel very connected to Portland, and even Oregon, since I have lived here my whole life and feel I am a product, for better or worse, of this culture. Even the whole West show more Coast can sometimes conjure up feelings of fondness or belonging in me. But the entirety of this huge, unwieldly nation? Not a chance. There are so many distinct subcultures here with which I have never even had any contact: I have never been to the Deep South, or Appalachia, or the Midwest, or Texas. Even if I had been to one or the other, I would be as much of a tourist there as if I were visiting a totally different country. And yet, John Dos Passos' USA trilogy somehow accesses a deeply - but DEEPLY - buried patriotism in me, and I think for a moment that it's kind of appealing to imagine myself part of a long national narrative, even if most of said narrative is something I wish I could rewrite from beginning to end.

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. show less

“Limon was one of the worst pestholes on the Caribbean, even the Indians died there of malaria, yellow jack, dysentery.
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 hired seven hundred men. Some of them had been down before in the filibustering days of William Walker.
Of that bunch about twentyfive came out alive.
The rest left their whiskyscalded carcases to rot show more 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. show less

Revisits the structure of the USA trilogy by mixing documentary snippets, biographical sketches, and narrative fiction. The strongest parts are the sketches on labor leaders such as John L. Lewis and Walter Reuther. These are canceled out by weaker and somewhat bizarre sketches like those on Douglas MacArthur and James Dean. The documentary snippets just seem tired compared to the Newsreels of USA. The writing in the narrative sections was uneven, I found a few of them really compelling but show more others had such poorly written characters it was hard to care. The overall impression of the writing was that of someone who'd had the world completely pass them by. show less