The 42nd Parallel

“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 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 show more 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

This is a pessimistic book about people coming of age in a nation that is, in its own way, also coming of age.

Dos Passos uses a patchwork method of inserting news headlines (Newsreel) and small biographical pieces about prominent news makers (Camera Eye) into more conventional narratives to create an impressionistic view of the USA at the turn of the 20th century. As a whole, the stories show the prevailing concerns, moods, and desires of the nation as it was coming out of Reconstruction and moving into the 20th century. The majority of the book is presented through the lives of five main characters in separate but sometimes intersecting storylines. With only one exception (J. Ward Moorehouse) the characters are coming of age in a show more world that is systemically unequal, disinterested, and sometimes actually hostile.

The characters are looking for routes to self-fulfillment and finding the routes blocked because of wide gaps between haves and have nots. Class struggle, racial discrimination, gender inequality, and labor unrest all contribute to a grim overall outlook, but it is one that the characters either do not recognize, are fatalistically resigned to, or that they push against in ineffectual and disorganized ways that more often inspire pity than pride. Pathways that may open up for real becoming and change either fizzle out, trail off, get sidetracked, or are sometime violently squashed. The grim presence of WWI then opens up what appears to some characters to be the only viable avenue for purpose: patriotic self-sacrifice.

This grim spiral is not the arc for all characters, however. J. Ward Moorehouse is one who manages to break out of the gravitational pull of his socio-economic status to succeed as a public relations man, but this success highlights the haves/have-nots divide. A quote from Eugene Debs (a labor organizer of the time) that shows up multiple times in the book articulates a central point of this conflict. Debs is recorded as saying, in part, “I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.” Moorehouse, is one who has risen but from the ranks rather than with the ranks. Although his life does intersect with some of the other characters, he advances his position foremost. He helps these characters, but only in so far as he employs them and has vaguely Platonic (but not really) relationships with them.

Reading this book today, in this political and economic climate, definitely deepened the shadows that Dos Passos presented. It was not the tonic I needed to lighten my spirits, but I did enjoy it. show less

Published in 1930, this first book in the USA trilogy is set in various locations across the US during 1900-1917. It portrays “the American experience” during these years. It is quite creative for its time. The characters are fictional, but it also includes segments of non-fiction, such as headlines from the newsreels, biographies of notable people, song lyrics, and the author’s own memories. These merge into each other without separation or punctuation. There is a lot of discussion and involvement in the labor movement.

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 show more 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. 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 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 show more 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

Published in 1930, this first book in the USA trilogy is set in various locations across the US during 1900-1917. It portrays “the American experience” during these years. It is quite creative for its time. The characters are fictional, but it also includes segments of non-fiction, such as headlines from the newsreels, biographies of notable people, song lyrics, and the author’s own memories. These merge into each other without separation or punctuation. There is a lot of discussion and involvement in the labor movement.

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 show more 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. show less

It takes a while (and, in my case, a couple tries) to get into the rhythm of this book. It is not really about plot (in terms of a tightly-crafted story). It is not really about character (though we meet many characters, and see what they do and what happens to them and hear, a little, what they think, I never really feel like we get into their heads). Or maybe it is about character, but the character of the times and the place. It is more raggedy than I expected (which is just fine with me; the author is reaching for something big and is willing to take some risks to get there). It is not shot through with memorable passages (though there are a few jewels in the mini-biographies). Suffice to say: I'm in for the trilogy. 1919, here I come.

This was a major disappointment. The USA Trilogy has been in the back of my mind as one of those "I'll read that for sure one of these days" works for 15 years or so. 80 some odd years after its publication it is still mentioned as contender for the Great American Novel. Well, after reading this, the first volume, I don't join that chorus.

Dos Passos famously uses four different modes of writing in this work. The most conventional one, which is the main body of text, follows the youth and adulthood of various characters making their way through early 20th Century America. The characterization is decent, but fundamentally Dos Passos is not interested in these characters as people, but as types, as representatives of the USA. You can give show more him credit for scope, though if you're admiring of this aspect you should also give him demerits for a complete lack of interest in the experience of non-white Americans, which would seem to be a major flaw in a work aiming to embody the whole experience of USA. These chapters are okay, though nothing exceptional. Worthy of 3 stars.

Taking the book down to 2 stars for me are two experimental, modernist modes of writing, which I view as total failures. The greatest offenders are the "Camera Eye" sections, 27 of them in The 42nd Parallel, in which Dos Passos copies the style of James Joyce in attempting to create a portrait of the author. About a page or two each, bereft of any context or continuity, they are fairly tortuous, if blessedly brief.

The other mode is the Newsreel sections, which mash up and blend popular song lyrics with newspaper headlines and scraps of stories, as if someone with ADD was flipping through a paper while humming a song to himself. Experimental, precursor to TV, window into the mind of the time, blah blah blah.

MOON'S PATENT IS FIZZLE

insurgents win at Kansas polls Oak Park soulmates part 8000 to take autoride says girl begged for her husband

PIT SENTIMENT FAVORS UPTURN

Oh you be-eautiful doll
You great big beautiful doll

Sorry, I'm not gaining anything by this.

The fourth mode is the one I enjoyed the most, brief sketches of famous biographical figures of the time which tend to the witty, irreverent and clever. I quite liked them, though are they necessary or even sensical to include in the novel? Not really. show less