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John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

Author of Manhattan Transfer

135+ Works 10,110 Members 121 Reviews 1 Favorited
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About the Author

John Dos Passos, 1896 - 1970 John Passos was born January 14,1896 to John Randolph Dos Passos and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison. He attended Harvard University from 1912-1916. He was in the ambulance service units in France and Italy and in 1918, enlisted in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. From 1926-29, show more he directed New Playwrights' Theatre in New York City. In 1929, Passos married Katharine Smith and in 1947, they were in an automobile accident that killed his wife and left him blind in one eye. He married Elizabeth Holdridge in 1949 and a year later, Lucy Hamlin Dos Passos was born. Passos' many novels include "One Man's Initiation" (1917), "Three Soldiers" (1921), which has met with wide acclaim, "Streets of Night" (1923), "Facing the Chair" (1927), which defends the immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti, "Orient Express" (1927), "The Ground We Stand On" (1949), and "Prospects of a Golden Age" (1959). He received the Gold Medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1957, the Feltrinelli Prize for Fiction in 1967 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1947. On September 28, 1970, Passos died of heart failure in Baltimore, Maryland. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images, from Library of America website

Series

Works by John Dos Passos

Manhattan Transfer (1927) 2,105 copies
The 42nd Parallel (1930) 1,596 copies
U.S.A. (1938) 1,436 copies
1919 (1932) 990 copies
The Big Money (1936) 911 copies
Three Soldiers (1921) 674 copies
Años Inolvidables (1966) 120 copies
Midcentury (1961) 109 copies
One Man's Initiation: 1917 (1922) 108 copies
Number One (1940) 59 copies
Chosen Country (1951) 44 copies
The Grand Design (1949) 42 copies
Most Likely to Succeed (1954) 42 copies
Adventures of a Young Man (1938) 41 copies
The Men Who Made the Nation (1900) 41 copies
The Great Days (1958) 41 copies
Brazil on the Move (1964) 39 copies
Orient-Express (1927) 32 copies
Rosinante to the Road Again (2004) 23 copies
Streets of Night (1923) 22 copies
Facing the Chair (1927) 22 copies
State of the Nation (1944) 19 copies
U.S.A.: A Dramatic Revue (1960) 18 copies
Occasions and Protests (1964) 14 copies
Tour of Duty (1946) 13 copies
The Devil Is a Woman [1935 film] (1935) — Screenwriter — 11 copies
A Pushcart at the Curb (1922) 11 copies
First Encounter (1945) 10 copies
Tom Paine (1940) 7 copies
In All Countries. (1934) 5 copies
Novelas 5 copies
Journeys between wars (1980) 5 copies
District of Columbia (1970) 4 copies
42eme Parallele 4 copies
The theme is freedom (1956) 4 copies
Terre élue. (1963) 2 copies
DE BRILLANTE PORVENIR. (1973) 2 copies
Airways, inc., 2 copies
U.S.A./1919 1 copy
The Theme is Freedom (2021) 1 copy
El paralelo 42 (1977) 1 copy
2005 1 copy
SERVIZIO SPECIALE (1967) 1 copy
Veliki denar 1 copy
Novelas y viajes (1962) 1 copy
El gran proyecto (1951) 1 copy
The Prospect before Us (1973) 1 copy
ABD 2- 1919 (2012) 1 copy

Associated Works

The Crack-Up (1945) — Contributor — 901 copies
Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology (2004) — Contributor — 293 copies
Up from Liberalism (1959) — Foreword, some editions — 237 copies
This Is My Best (1942) — Contributor — 180 copies
An Anthology of Famous American Stories (1953) — Contributor — 131 copies
The American Cause (1975) — Foreword, some editions — 121 copies
7th Annual Edition: The Year's Best S-F (1962) — Contributor — 90 copies
Bedside Book of Famous American Stories (1936) — Contributor — 66 copies
Modern Age: The First Twenty-Five Years (1810) — Contributor — 51 copies
The Living Thoughts of Tom Paine (1946) — Editor — 40 copies
The Girls from Esquire (1952) — Contributor — 18 copies
Great Stories of American Businessmen (1972) — Contributor — 15 copies
Strange Barriers (1955) — Contributor — 2 copies

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Common Knowledge

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Discussions

April-June Theme Read: War and Regions in Conflict in Reading Globally (September 6)
AMERICAN AUTHORS CHALLENGE--JUNE 2022--JOHN DOS PASSOS in 75 Books Challenge for 2022 (July 2022)

Reviews

Dated now and with references to people and events that are close to forgotten.
I had read the trilogy "USA" in 1972 and thought it was revolutionary writing and loved its locomotive narrative.
Dos Passos' diaries and letters are worth reading. He comes across as a retiring thoughtful man with a genius for inventive expression and someone keen for experience.
We follow his development from student to volunteer ambulance service in Europe and Army service in World War I. He was a frequent traveller always interested in how the working citizen was being influenced by the mass movements of the first half of the Twentieth Century.
Over a lifetime Dos Passos gave away his socialist beliefs to such an extent that he ended up a Goldwater advocate in 1964. This change was influenced by his ever growing distrust of communism and political "isms".
There is wonderful correspondence with Hemingway, Edmund Wilson, Malcolm Cowley, Fitzgerald and E.E. Cummings to mention the most well-known.
His life at Harvard, travels in Spain, the Near East and Russia, the USA in the Thirties, the Spanish Civil War (where his disquiet with communism was fully realized) and post World War II are all covered.
He was often in straitened circumstances (the correspondence often shows him requesting a loan of a couple of hundred dollars to tide him over). He suffered ill-heath for decades and tragedy struck when his first wife was killed in a car crash. To the end of his days he remained an affectionate man with a healthy capacity for disbelief in the prevailing discourse.
Each period of his life is provided with an introductory piece by the editor in the form of a biographical narrative.
Good reading.
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ivanfranko | Nov 12, 2023 |
I alternated between being drawn in and bored by this glimpse into a part of New York in the twenties. Much of the writing is absolutely gorgeous--Dos Passos is a brilliant imagist and the book drips with shimmering sentences. The most interesting part for more was seeing an earlier version of his unique style that he put to such powerful use in the U.S.A. trilogy [b:U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money|261441|U.S.A. The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money|John Dos Passos|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309200622l/261441._SY75_.jpg|6503267]. I've recommended this work to so many people and would definitely start and maybe even end there.… (more)
 
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lschiff | 27 other reviews | Sep 24, 2023 |
Reason Read: Reading 1001 botm September 2023, TIOLI #9
This book was published in 1925 and covers the time period of the Gilded age to the Jazz age in New York City. It is a series of overlapping individual stories and narrative collage (These works tell visual stories of individuals, businesses, organizations and communities. They are bold, personalized forms of visual communication, identity and storytelling.) John Dos Passos was an American socialist novelist and in this work he is showing New York to be a city in motion; there are ships, trains, buses, taxicabs. On importance is the Manhattan transfer which stands for people who are just passing through. Architectures include the skyscrapers and the bridge, Broadway and Wall street.

Themes also include youth and wealth. A person needs to look good, to be young to survive in New York. Another is the wealthy capitalist and the trade unions. Interestingly, the press is a symbol of distrust. One character is a radical journalist and another one wants to be a reporter. He is unable to get his articles published because they don't fit the mainstream idea. Some things don't change. The implication that the media is blamed by a judge as emboldening burglars. Some things don't change I guess.

There are 4 main characters and several secondary characters; Ellen Thatcher a successful actress, several marriages/divorces. Bud Korpenning; farmer roots unable to make it in the city. George Baldwin; young lawyer makes a successful law suit thant benefits Gus the milkman. Jimmy Herf, his mother dies, he has money and can go to school and go into business but chooses instead to enlist and also be a reporter.
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Kristelh | 27 other reviews | Sep 12, 2023 |
Kitap güzel ama keşke çevirmenin "his" kelimesiyle problemi olmasaydı. Birazda çeviri tekniğini bilse......
 
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ismail2021 | Aug 28, 2023 |

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Statistics

Works
135
Also by
25
Members
10,110
Popularity
#2,349
Rating
3.8
Reviews
121
ISBNs
454
Languages
18
Favorited
1
About
1
Touchstones
275

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