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The U.S.A. Trilogy #1

The 42nd Parallel

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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.

326 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

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About the author

John Dos Passos

190 books514 followers
John Roderigo Dos Passos, son of John Randolph Dos Passos, was an American novelist and artist.

He received a first-class education at The Choate School, in Connecticut, in 1907, under the name John Roderigo Madison. Later, he traveled with his tutor on a tour through France, England, Italy, Greece and the Middle East to study classical art, architecture and literature.

In 1912 he attended Harvard University and, after graduating in 1916, he traveled to Spain to continue his studies. In 1917 he volunteered for the Sanitary Squad Unit 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with Edward Estlin Cummings and Robert Hillyer.

By the late summer of 1918, he had completed a draft of his first novel and, at the same time, he had to report for duty in the United States Army Medical Corps, in Pennsylvania.
When the war was over, he stayed in Paris, where the United States Army Overseas Education Commission allowed him to study anthropology at the Sorbonne.

Considered one of the Lost Generation writers, Dos Passos published his first novel in 1920, titled One Man's Initiation: 1917, followed by an antiwar story, Three Soldiers, which brought him considerable recognition. His 1925 novel about life in New York City, titled Manhattan Transfer was a success.

In 1937 he returned to Spain with Hemingway, but the views he had on the Communist movement had already begun to change, which sentenced the end of his friendship with Hemingway and Herbert Matthews.

In 1930 he published the first book of the U.S.A. trilogy, considered one of the most important of his works.

Only thirty years later would John Dos Passos be recognized for his significant contribution in the literary field when, in 1967, he was invited to Rome to accept the prestigious Antonio Feltrinelli Prize.

Between 1942 and 1945, Dos Passos worked as a journalist covering World War II and, in 1947, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Tragedy struck when an automobile accident killed his wife, Katharine Smith, and cost him the sight in one eye. He remarried to Elizabeth Hamlyn Holdridge in 1949, with whom he had an only daughter, Lucy Dos Passos, born in 1950.

Over his long and successful carreer, Dos Passos wrote forty-two novels, as well as poems, essays and plays, and created more than four hundred pieces of art.

The John Dos Passos Prize is a literary award given annually by the Department of English and Modern Languages at Longwood University. The prize seeks to recognize "American creative writers who have produced a substantial body of significant publication that displays characteristics of John Dos Passos' writing: an intense and original exploration of specifically American themes, an experimental approach to form, and an interest in a wide range of human experiences."

As an artist, Dos Passos created his own cover art for his books, influenced by modernism in 1920s Paris. He died in Baltimore, Maryland. Spence's Point, his Virginia estate, was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1971.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 562 reviews
Profile Image for Vit Babenco.
1,540 reviews4,264 followers
April 29, 2022
The 42nd Parallel is a lavish slice of the American life at the beginning of the twentieth century…
John Dos Passos has a sharp mind and a sharp eye so he is capable to penetrate into the innermost depths of human psyche. And he knows the ways of life inside out.
The only man that gets anything out of capitalism is a crook, and he gets to be a millionaire in short order…

The world of contrasts: success and failure, the poor and the rich, the unlucky many against the lucky few, or is history a battle of the honest and the unscrupulous?
Andrew Carnegie gave millions for peace
and libraries and scientific institutes and endowments and thrift
whenever he made a billion dollars he endowed an institution to promote universal peace
always
except in time of war.

Men make money. Money makes a man.
Profile Image for Jeffrey Keeten.
Author 6 books250k followers
September 13, 2019
"Andrew Carnegie started out buying Adams Express and Pullman stock when they were in a slump;
he had confidence in railroads,
he had confidence in communications,
he had confidence in transportation,
he believed in iron.
Andrew Carnegie believed in iron, built bridges Bessemer plants blast furnaces rolling mills;
Andrew Carnegie believed in oil;
Andrew Carnegie believed in steel;
always saved his money
whenever he had a million dollars he invested it.
Andrew Carnegie became the richest man in the world
and died."


AndrewCarnegie_zps3e4f9027
Andrew Carnegie

John Dos Passos had issues with his father. His father also had issues with him given that he had the audacity to swell the belly of HIS mistress. The elder Dos Passos was a distinguished lawyer friendly with the industrial capitalists. He made out their trusts, advised them, and made a heap of cabbage doing so. When his wife died he married John’s mother, but did not acknowledge John until he was 16. Needless to say this put a burr under the young Dos Passos’s saddle.

The 42nd Parallel is the first of three novels that make up the U.S.A. Trilogy. Dos Passos used his first few novels to rail against capitalism and showed sympathy for communism which did not have the stigma associated with it that came into play in the 1940s. I’m sure people would classify this as an anti-capitalist novel, but to me I thought it was balanced in showing what good people can do in a capitalist system, and also showing why communism was of such interest to American workers.

This novel had twelve characters that each get a chance to tell their story. I’m going to cheat and copy the explanation of the devices utilized by Dos Passos to construct this novel from Wikipedia.

The four narrative modes


In the fictional narrative sections, the U.S.A. trilogy relates the lives of twelve characters as they struggle to find a place in American society during the early part of the twentieth century. Each character is presented to the reader from their childhood on and in free indirect speech. While their lives are separate, characters occasionally meet. Some minor characters whose point of view is never given crop up in the background, forming a kind of bridge between the characters.

"The Camera Eye" sections are written in 'stream of consciousness' and are an autobiographical Künstlerroman of Dos Passos, tracing the author's development from a child to a politically committed writer. Camera Eye 50 arguably contains the most famous line of the trilogy, when Dos Passos states upon the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti: "all right we are two nations."

The "Newsreels" consist of front page headlines and article fragments from the Chicago Tribune for The 42nd Parallel, the New York World for Nineteen Nineteen and The Big Money, as well as lyrics from popular songs. Newsreel 66, preceding Camera Eye 50, announcing the Sacco and Vanzetti verdict, contains the lyrics of "The Internationale."

The biographies are accounts of historical figures. The most often anthologized of these biographies is "The Body of an American", which tells the story of an unknown soldier who was killed in World War I which concludes Nineteen Nineteen.


The blending of these modes is where Dos Passos brilliance really shines. I did not feel irritated at the switches between narratives, but read each new section with equal fascination. It was really a precursor to TV with, in this case, informative commercial breaks between sections of storyline.

”SIX UNCLAD BATHING GIRLS BLACK EYES OF HORRID MAN.”

This book is really about twelve people trying to make it in America. Some of them are capitalist and some are self proclaimed communists, but at the end of the day all the characters are concerned, primarily, about keeping a roof over their head and food in their mouth. To me a blending of communist and capitalist ideas comes as close to a perfect society as we can get. When I first discovered in Star Trek, as a young pup, that they didn’t use money anymore it was an intriguing concept to think about; an evolutionary thought. Contrary to what I had been taught, in an anti-communist environment, the will of the individual would be tempered under such a concept, and yet; on Star Trek these people I admired were individualistic and motivated to be successful. I also liked a world that would allow me to succeed even though I didn’t have any money because...well...I didn’t have any.

”GIRL STEPS ON MATCH; DRESS IGNITED; DIES.”

”Thomas Edison only went to school for three months because the teacher thought he wasn’t RIGHT bright. His mother taught him what she knew at home and read eighteenth century writers with him, Gibbon and Hume and Newton, and let him rig up a laboratory in the cellar.

Whenever he read about anything he went down in the cellar and tried it out.”


Photobucket
Thomas Edison

During the time period of this novel the labor unions were gaining strength helped of course by the horrible working conditions and low pay that the industrial tycoons of the day imposed upon the people. The concept of a happy worker is a productive worker was not even a sparkle in the eye of Carnegie or Rockefeller. They were more concerned about who could pile up the most money and labor, though necessary for them to become rich, was only notated on the deficit side of the ledger. There is such an anti-union sentiment in the country today, forgetting what wonderful advancements unions gave us, and also completely ignoring that the tycoons of today are the same as the tycoons of the 19th century. If unions are destroyed and laws are struck from the books intended to modify what seems to be the natural tendency of corporations (we learned they are people TOO) to exploit workers for the unmitigated ability to shower more money on the top 1%, the middle class as we know it is frankly doomed. For the sake of huge profits NOW corporations forget that people have to have money to buy the products they are producing. Paying people a wage that insures that they have money beyond just what they need to pay rent, food, and utilities means they can buy clothes they don’t necessarily need, impulsively buy Twenty Shades of Grey at the checkout stand, go to the movies, and buy that latest thingamagig. The money goes down and then it comes back up. Everybody needs skin in the game. If workers are merely subsisting it doesn’t take long for them to become disgruntled workers. Viva la Revolucion!

”COLLEGE HEAD DENIES KISSES.”

”The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough. At night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself alone.”

I remember when I felt that way. I was naive enough to feel that I could do everything. I didn’t have to choose. The world was my oyster to paraphrase some hack writer from England. To be successful of course, something I was also eventually concerned about which also jettisoned me out of the halycyon days of the book business, it did become necessary to choose, make concessions, and pick of path that would allow me to achieve some semblance of security. I got married and had kids and suddenly any reckless thought was carefully weighed and generally rejected in favor of the decision with less risk.

IWWorWOBBLIES_zps1ff903b6
The Wobblies are coming!

One of the characters Mac finds himself caught on the treadmill trying to make more and more money to please his wife and kids. He enjoys his life despite the stress. His wife is pretty and the way she smells and feels when she is in his arms provides a comfort. His kids put a smile on his face. Money drives a wedge in his marriage and after one particularly bad fight he chooses to chuck it all and heed the call of the communist movement. He finds the cause exhilarating for a while, but ultimately discovers that trading his family for a larger cause is not as fulfilling as he hoped.

Dos Passos does play with the concept of “free love”, relationships between women, and the consuming passions of lust.

”After he’d given her a last rough kiss, feeling her tongue in his mouth and his nostrils full of her hair and the taste of her mouth in his mouth he’d walk home with his ears ringing, feeling sick and weak; when he got to bed he couldn’t sleep but would toss around all night thinking he was going MAD.”

”JURORS AT GATES OF BEEF BARONS.”

Watching these characters succeed and fail was actually inspiring to me. They are all hard working people trying to find their place in this world. The stream of conscious writing is not difficult to follow. The influence Dos Passos must have had on a whole host of writers before he was duck walked off stage in the growing anti-communist sentiment of the 1940s and 1950s, would make an interesting PHD paper for some earnest young person. I will continue with the rest of the trilogy in the early months of 2013 with great anticipation.

JohnDosPassos_zpsa018fe14
John Dos Passos

”While there is a lower class I am of it, while there is a criminal class I am of it, while there is a soul in prison I am not free.” Gene Debs

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
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Profile Image for Ahmad Sharabiani.
9,564 reviews47 followers
August 20, 2020
606. U.S.A. : The 42nd Parallel (The U.S.A. Trilogy #1), John Dos Passos

The U.S.A. Trilogy is a series of three novels by American writer John Dos Passos, comprising the novels The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932) and The Big Money (1936).

The books were first published together in a volume titled U.S.A. by Harcourt Brace in January 1938. The trilogy employs an experimental technique, incorporating four narrative modes, fictional narratives telling the life stories of twelve characters, collages of newspaper clippings and song lyrics labeled "Newsreel", individually labeled short biographies of public figures of the time such as Woodrow Wilson and Henry Ford and fragments of autobiographical stream of consciousness writing labeled "Camera Eye".

The trilogy covers the historical development of American society during the first three decades of the 20th century. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked U.S.A. 23rd on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز دوم ماه ژانویه سال 2007میلادی

ینگه دنیا - جان دس‌ پاسوس (هاشمی) ادبیات جلد یک از سه

عنوان: ینگه دنیا کتاب نخست - مدار 42؛ نویسنده: جان دس‌ پاسوس؛ مترجم: سعید باستانی؛ تهران، هاشمی، 1385؛ در 517ص؛ شابک 9647199104؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان امریکایی - سده 20م

مدار 42 نخستن جلد از سه گانه یو.اس.آ با اخباری آغاز میشود، که شامل ترانه‌ های عامیانه، سرعنوان روزنامه‌ ها و هيجان و تب و تاب کشور در آغاز سده بیستم است

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 29/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Profile Image for Fabian.
973 reviews1,913 followers
March 1, 2019
I've been a rotten literature delinquent. Oh yes, a true testament of the almighty Law of Murphy, moving to a new city was bound to place things in my path toward the completion of volume number one of Dos Passo's ever-revered U.S.A. For a long stretch of time I was like, why have I not finished this? Its accessible and striking with a less than imagined pretentiousness-level, the book has a buzzing heart beat; a complete immersion in its diverse pool of topics is achieved. It never bores or underwhelms. Also, the ingenious effort to transform the lexicon Americana with puttogetherwords (such as, downattheheels, thunderstormy, furniturevarnish...!) is a bittersweet nod to the confusion of the times, a possible fluidity in the birth of an American language, its newness & genuine novelty, & the awesome everexpanding spirit of revolution.

The novel tells you the following: why have men and women done what they have done? Because of their circumstances, the economy, their precise position, their inherent place and point in time. Because of family, because of institutions. Because of the availability/lack of resources and opportunities. Oh so true. It's fast paced, like historical fiction NEEDS to be. It is epic & exhibits fully, faithfully its thirst to document the early twentieth century American experience.
Profile Image for Luís.
2,057 reviews820 followers
January 20, 2023
Three masterful novels describe the history of industrial America, capitalism on the move, the progressive dispossession of ordinary people, workers, and homeless people, of what founded the American ideal and was called freedom. The characters intersect; some become powerful and rich, and others die, run out, and get damaged. The echo of voices that will remain vague and anonymous has added to these multiple stories. And epic and musical pages that paint the portraits of the greats of this century, researchers, politicians, and industrialists who have left their mark on history and the political and social life of the United States in the twentieth century. It had written all in an epic and energetic style, that of a modern and relentless tragedy, reflecting the impossibility of resisting the starting of the ruthless machine called modernity.
Profile Image for Paul Bryant.
2,280 reviews10.6k followers
March 15, 2024
Usually with 5 star books you want to run into the street telling people to read it immediately – “On your way to a funeral? Don’t go! Read this first!” – but not this one, it’s so exhausting and there are hardly any jokes at all.

For years it held the title of Longest Time Spent on my Real Life TBR Shelf – I bought my copy in 2015 – and why? Because I thought it was some kind of intimidating difficult slab of a modernist left wing novel, its reputation is offputting and I was offput.

But it’s not true, not really. This is easy reading. 90% of it is the life stories of five young Americans up to the year 1917. They are all told in a flat breathless rush of a voice, the prose is plain, even banal, but chockful of detail upon detail. Dos Passos writes the opposite of what we loftily think of as literature. If Edith Wharton, Henry James, Jimmy Joyce, Marcel the Proust and that gang are at one end, John Dos Passos is at the other. His stuff is all “and… and… and….”

She got up and went into the private office with her pencil and pad in one hand.

Ben went back in the diningroom

The party at Ben’s didn’t come off so well.

Mr Hillyard would have gone himself only he had a carbuncle on his neck. He gave Johnny the return ticket and ten dollars for the trip.


But occasionally he will come up with something less like Raymond Carver :

It was a sunny May afternoon and he could smell locustblossoms on the breeze along the Ohio, and there was the sharp whang of the golfballs and the flutter of bright dresses on the lawn round the clubhouse, and frazzles of laughter and baritone snatches of the safe talk of businessmen coming in on the sunny breeze that still had a little scorch of furnace smoke in it.

But what he stuffs his book with is the detail, the texture of these people’s lives, and this is where he is totally convincing and impressive. His characters run all over the States and into England, France and Mexico, and he knows everything about them, the way they talk, the way the dress, and eat, how they talked and what they smelled (I never read a book so full of smells) :

”Let’s go eat somewhere.. Jeez I’m sorry I’m not rigged up better. We lost all our duffle, see, when we was torpedoed….. I know where we’ll eat; we’ll eat at Luchow’s.”

“Isn’t Fourteenth Street a little…”

“Naw, they got a room for ladies…”

*

He talked all day in a thin wheezy voice until the nurse made him shut up, about the Non-Partisan League and the Farmer-Labor Party and the destiny of the great northwest and the need for workingmen and farmers to stick together to elect honest men like Bob La Follette.

*

The wine came in funny-looking bottles upside down in a stand in the middle of each table.

*

The river was higher than the city. It was funny standing on the stern of the steamboat and looking down on the roofs and streets and trolleycars of New Orleans.


And you get frequent beautiful snapshots of America

It wasn’t a tornado but a heavy thundershower and the wheatfields turned to zinc and great trampling hissing sheets of rain advanced slowly across them.

But yes, mostly it is a hectic rush of and…and…and…

The difficult reputation of this book seems to have come from a couple of unusual ideas he uses. After each chunk of biography of one of the five main characters he throws in two sections, one called The Camera Eye and one called Newsreel, and these are freeform unpunctuated bricolage or cubist collages, so to speak, made up of impressions of American life from scraps of songs, newspaper headlines and material that edges quite close to poetry at times, like Eliot’s The Waste Land. Plus, he also throws in three or four mini-biographies of actual people like Edison and Bob la Follette.

And plus, from the get-go you have the strong impression that this novel is written by a guy with firm socialist convictions – his first character Mac joins the Wobblies – but nowhere does it become a tract like The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists.

Will I be diving into Volume Two of this massive trilogy? Probably not this year! Haha! Do I recommend this to my lovely GR friends?

Kind of.

Profile Image for Michael.
655 reviews960 followers
May 19, 2020
A fast-paced montage of American life from the turn of the century until the outbreak of WWI, most interesting for its radical politics and experimental form, rapidly cycling between stream-of-consciousness autobiography, short biographies of famous figures, collages of news fragments and song lyrics, and a nearly plotless series of linked short stories charting the ups and downs of individual lives in flat, plain prose.
Profile Image for Theo Logos.
854 reviews143 followers
April 5, 2023
The 42nd Parallel is the opening salvo of John Dos Passos’s epic USA trilogy. This groundbreaking, experimental work is the novel as collage — cobbling together stories of several different “Everyman” protagonists, mini biographies of historically significant individuals, Newsreels of period headlines and snippets of popular song, and stream of consciousness, autobiographical interludes from the author’s life. The book has no more plot than your life or mine, but is endlessly fascinating.

This opening book of the trilogy starts in 1900. We are introduced to several separate protagonist whom we follow from childhood onward. Mac is a poor Irish kid from a radical, working class family. He ends up in the printing business and in the IWW (Wobblies). Janey is one of the new, young women who tries to make it on her own in the big city as a stenographer and secretary. J. Ward Morehouse is a poor boy made good, Horatio Alger style — clawing his way up through real estate, advertising, public relations, and advantageous marriages. Eleanor Stoddard is an arty young woman who powers her way to success in interior design. And Charlie Anderson is a rudderless young mechanic from Minnesota. We follow each in turn, in fits and starts, from 1900 to the opening of the Great War, each illustrating a different slice of the great American pie.

Interspersed with these protagonist are compressed, short biographies of those who made history during this period. William Jennings Bryant, Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and Fighting Bob La Follette are the great personages featured in The 42nd Parallel.

This is my second reading through this monumental work. I highly recommend experiencing it in audiobook form to get its full effect. The cutting in and out between all the various elements has an incredibly modern feel, not unlike channel surfing, and the audiobook allows you to get the maximum benefit from this experience. And don’t stop with The 42nd Parallel — all three books (including 1919 and The Big Money) are necessary to experience the full sweep of Dos Passos’s brilliant epic work.
Profile Image for Lark Benobi.
Author 1 book2,635 followers
January 24, 2020
This novel is such a distinct achievement that I haven't written a review before now, and even though this is my third time through the novel, this isn't really a review either. What I can say is that this novel in spite of its setting in the early 20th century is nevertheless written in such a contemporary and innovative way that it makes me realize there is no such thing as progress in the arts, or even evolution, but rather that we have extraordinary masterful artists that come along now and then who write in completely new and exhilarating ways...and we will always have that to look forward to in the future, as long as their are storytellers and people who want to hear their stories.
Profile Image for A.J. Howard.
98 reviews135 followers
February 17, 2011

I need to qualify my upcoming bold statement with two disclaimers. First off, I'm already on record as being underwhelmed by the hallowed novel I'm about to mention in my forthcoming bold statement. Second, The 42nd Parallel is only the first part of a three volume trilogy that should probably be considered as a whole, and I have only read this volume. But what's the point of writing these reviews if your not going to bring strong opinions. So despite the aforesaid reservations, here it goes: whatever Jack Keroauc was trying to do with On the Road was done twenty years earlier in a more elegant, interesting, engaging and just over-all better fashion by John Dos Passos with his U.S.A. Trilogy.


The U.S.A. Trilogy is a work of historical fiction that takes place from the beginning of the 20th century to around 1930. I know what your thinking, how can I compare Keroauc's "great American road novel" with a piece of historical fiction. Well, Dos Passos didn't write a typical example of historical fiction. He isn't interested in fictionalizing historical figures and/or events. You might feel tempted to draw comparisons with Doctorow's Ragtime. Dos Passos must have been a large influence on Doctorow, the two books share a similar time frame and themes. However, U.S.A., written over fifty years before Ragtime, is more unique and, strangely enough, more modern.


Like Doctorow, Dos Passos isn't concerned with telling the stories of specific individuals, but in using individual examples to give a sense of an overall whole. Doctorow does this by refusing to personalize his characters, they remain "Mother," "The Boy," "Mother's Brother," etc. While Dos Passos gives his characters Christian names, The 42nd Parallel is even less significantly "about" its characters than Ragtime.None of Dos Passos characters meet Emma Goldman or Archduke Franz Ferdinand. There are no moments where a character exclaims something like, "We've booked passage back on the White Star Line. They say their new vessel is unsinkable." While the stuff of history plays a prominent part in The 42nd Parallel it is encountered in a way most of us encounter the historic events of our own time, as something that has already happened to others. The characters don't really affect the course of events, and the course of event's don't really have a great effect on the characters. Dos Passos isn't trying to give the reader an idea of how the times were experienced on an individual level, he is more interested in the collective experience. As cheesy as this may sound, U.S.A. is mainly concerned about its title character.


To fully convey this argument, I need to talk a little about the trilogy's overall structure. Dos Passos uses four different "devices" to tell his story. The most conventional of these, are chapters telling the story of one of four characters. Overall, we follow twelve characters, six men and six women, through the trilogy. These characters provide a compelling and reasonably diverse sampling of early 20th century Americans.*I should note, while these chapters take up the great majority of the novel they are really no more than character sketches. It's compelling, but not necessarily ground breaking or momentous material considered by itself. However, the strength of the novel lies in how Dos Passos supplements these narratives using other techniques. The conventional chapters are followed by what Dos Passos calls "Newsreels." Here, actual news headlines and portions of articles, as well as popular songs contemporary to the narrative are kind of spliced together to create avant-garde(ish) prose passages. Let me just give a randomly picked example:

lights go out as Home Sweet Home is played to patrons low wages cause unrest, woman says

There's a girl in the heart of Maryland
With a heart that belongs to me


WANT BIG WAR OR NONE

the mannequin who is such a feature of the Paris racecourse surpasses herself in the launching of novelties. She will put on the most amazing costume and carry it with perfect sangfroid. Inconsistency is her watchword
Three German staff officers who passed nearby were nearly mobbed by enthusiastic people who insisted on shaking their hands

Girl Steps on Match; Dress Ignited; Dies

And Mary-land
Was fairy-land
When she said that mine she'd be

This might not be the best example, but it provides you with a good idea of what these passages are. Some other reviewers have complained about this, saying that when they were interested in a headline Dos Passos would jump away and it wouldn't be mentioned again. I can sympathize with this feeling, but it's asking for something fundamentally different from what the authors trying to do. You don't have recognize any of the news items to appreciate the novel. They are there, as Dos Passos himself said, "to give an inkling of the common mind of the epoch.

Dos Passos inserts himself in the novel through "The Camera Eye," 27 short, autobiographical, stream of conscience, passages. This device, heavily influenced by Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man can also be a little disorienting because no context is provided.** Again though, complete comprehension of how it all fits isn't necessary or even what the author is expecting. Finally, interlaced in the text are several somewhat poetic, somewhat gonzo, biographical sketches of prominent figures in the era. Dos Passos includes these because "their lives seem to embody so well the quality of the soil in which Americans of these generations grew."


So remember how way back in the first paragraph I mentioned Keroauc. Well here's where the comparison comes in. I believe Dos Passos and Keroauc shared a identical idea, and U.S.A. and On the Road are both fundamentally expressions of this common idea. In the revised prologue to The 42nd Parallel written after the publication of the final volume of the trilogy, Dos Passos describes a nameless man who is completely solitary but not alone. Allow me to quote a long passage, because it's pretty fucking amazing:

Only the ears busy to catch the speech are not alone; the ears are caught tight, linked tight by the tendrils of phrased words, the turn of a joke, the singsong fade of a story, the gruff fall of a sentence; liking tendrils of speech twine through the city blocks, spread over pavements, grow out along parked avenues, speed with the trucks leaving on their long night runs over roaring highways, whisper down sandy byroads past wornout farms, joining up cities and fillingstations, roundhouses, steamboats, planes groping along airways; words call out on mountain pastures, drift slow down rivers widening to the sa and the hushed beaches.
It was not in the long walks through jostling crowds at night that he was less alone, or in the training camp at Allentown, or in the day on the docks at Seattle, or in the empty reek of Washington City hot boyhood summer nights, or in the meal on Market Street, or in the swim off the red rocks at San Diego, or in the bed full of fleas in New Orleans, or in the cold razor wind off the lake, or in the gray faces trembling in the grind of the gears in the street under Michigan Avenue, or in the smokers of limited expresstrains, or walking across country, or riding up the dry mountain canyons, or the night without a sleeping bag among frozen beartracks in the Yellowstone, or canoeing Sundays int the Quinnipiac;
but in his mother words about longago, in his father's telling about when I was a boy, in the kidding stories of uncles, in the lies the kids told at school, the hired man's yarns, the tall tales of the doughboys told after taps;
it was speech that clung to the ears, the link that tingled in the blood; U.S.A.
U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving pictures theatres, a column of stockquotations rubbed out written in by a Western Union Union boy on a blackboard, a public library full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U.S.A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills, U.S.A. is a set of bigmmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniform in Arlington Cemetery. U.S.A. is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home. But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people.

Whew, sorry about the extended block quote, but isn't that friggin' amazing? Am I wrong or do we learn the same thing from Sal Paradise?I think Keroauc and Dos Passos had similar ideas and goals. Let me be clear that I'm not completely dismissing On the Road If you were to make a Venn Diagram of the two novels there would be similarities but each would have its own well-defined circle. However, one of the reasons On the Road is considered by some to be the great American novel is because it so ably distills one particular pie slice of U.S.A. Personally, I think Dos Passos, in addition to being a better writer, gives you a bigger more satisfying piece. Dos Passos' U.S.A. is a better illustration of "the link that tingled in the the blood."

*The glaring exception to my diversity claim is that all of the characters are white. At least in the first volume of the trilogy, Dos Passos does not seem particularly concerned with race issues. Class relations is the great contentious issue in this volume.

**Just wanted to note here that the chronology of Dos Passos' life provided in my Library of America Edition helped here. Moreover, it was worth reading on its own. JDP lived a hell of an interesting life. I'm not sure what his wikipedia page is like but it might be worth checking out.
Profile Image for amin akbari.
307 reviews136 followers
July 19, 2019
به نام او

«منظور از وارد شدن در این‌گونه «معقولات» روشن کردن این نکته است که اگر پاره‌ای از ذهنی‌ترین و تاریک‌ترین جریان‌های ادبی قرن بیستم نسب خود را به جویس می‌رسانند، در عین حال پاره ای از زنده‌ترین و روشن‌ترین جریان‌ها نیز –به ویژه در امریکا- باز از جویس سرچشمه می‌گیرند. فاکنر و همینگوی و دوس‌پاسوس و تورنتون وایلدر همه شاگرد جویس محسوب می‌شوند؛ و پیروان انها نیز به سنت جویس تعلق دارند. اما از این میان دوس‌پاسوس از لحاظ گرفتن و منتقل کردن شیوه‌های جویس، و به ویژه از لحاظ دنبال کردن روحیه‌یِ آزمایشگری او، بیش از دیگران شایان توجه است.
دوس‌پاسوس در دوران مترقی خود، یعنی پیش از جنگ داخلی اسپانیا (زیرا پس از این جنگ مرتجع شد)، آزمایشگرترین نویسنده امریکا بود. در رمان‌های بزرگ او، «یو اس ای» و «منطقه کلمبیا» و «منهتن ترانسفر»، قهرمان داستان فرد معینی نیست، بلکه خود جامعه امریکاست. نویسنده در توصیف و زنده ساختن صحنه‌های اجتماعی همان قدر تلاش می‌کند که رمان نویسان دیگر به پروراندن سیرت قهرمانی خود می‌پردازند. آدمها، در برابر جامعه، در مرتبه دوم قرار می‌گیرند. نویسنده می‌خواهد تاثیر محیط اجتماعی، و به ویژه محیط اقتصادی، را بر افراد نشان دهد. بنابراین باید محیط را زنده و در حال حرکت ترسیم کند. تکه ای از ترانه‌های روز، نطق‌های سیاسی، تیترهای روزنامه‌ها، بیوگرافی اشخاص واقعی و «تاریخی» - که زندگی‌شان با زندگی ادمهای داستان در آمیخته است – لای داستان بُر می‌خورد. دید «دوربینی» و «امپرسیونیستی»، و حتی «فیلم خبری»، همه مواد کار دوس‌پاسوس را تشکیل می‌دهند. این وارستگی از قید و بندهای متداول رمان‌نویسی، این خطر کردن، این آمادگی – یا دست کم این داوطلب شدن- برای طبع آزمایی در انواع شیوه‌ها، در یک کلام این «مدرنیسم»، درسی است که دوس‌پاسوس از جویس آموخته است. و جوهر این درس عبارت است از پاسخ دادن به مقتضیات موضوع کار.
چنان که خواهیم دید نویسنده‌ی «رگتایم» همه صناعت‌های دوس‌پاسوس را گیرم به شکلی بسیار فشرده‌تر و پالوده‌تر، در رمان خود به کار برده است. بنابراین باید گفت که دکتروف به واسطه دوس‌پاسوس از جویس متاثر است.»

description

اول بار که با نام جان دوسپاسوس مواجه شدم در مقدمه کتاب «رگتایم» ای. ال. دکتروف به قلم نجف دریابندری بزرگ بود. بعد از اینکه جلد اول «ینگه دنیا» یا همان یو اس ای را خواندم خواستم چیزکی در مورد کتاب بنویسم، دوباره مقدمه رگتایم را خواندم و دیدم که بخشی از مقدمه کاملا برای معرفی سبک دوس پاسوس کفایت میکند، ضمن اینکه باید بگویم متاسفانه به دلایل عدیده ای که بخشیش به انزوای دوس پاسوس در ادبیات انگلیسی زبان بر میگردد و بخش دیگرش به ترجمه و نشر نامنظم آثارش در ایران باز میگردد دوس پاسوس چندان برای مخاطب فارسی زبان شناخته شده نیست. البته خوشبختانه پس از سالها جلد سوم این کتاب با عنوان پول کلان با ترجمه سعید باستانی در حال انتشار است و متاسفانه چاپ جلد اول آن با عنوان مدار 42 به اتمام رسیده است. حال اگر در کتابفروشیهای حاشیه ای مدار 42 درجه را پیدا کردید مفت چنگتان! از رمان بی نظیر این امریکایی لذت ببرید
در آخر اینکه من ترجمه های سعید باستانی را بسیار دوست میدارم و به نظرم مترجم مهمی است که سهم زیادی در معرفی ادبیات آمریکا داشته است که متاسفانه او هم به دلایلی چندان دیده نشده است معروفترین کارش «پرواز بر فراز آشیانه فاخته» کِن کِیسی است که ـآن هم توسط انتشارات هاشمی به زیورطبع آراسته شده

:)
Profile Image for Mahdi Lotfi.
447 reviews112 followers
June 19, 2017
مدار 42، رمان نخست از مجموعه‌ی بزرگ ینگه دنیا در میان بیم‌ها و امیدهای سپیده‌دم قرن بیستم آغاز می‌گردد. موضوع رمان، کشور امریکاست که در قالب شخصیت‌های برجسته‌ی زمان، فرهنگ کوچه و بازار، برداشت‌های ذهنی نویسنده‌ای ناپیدا و کشش و کوشش جانانه‌ی شخصیت‌های داستان، سیر تحول منحصربه‌فردی را طی می‌کند. صناعت شگرفی که دوس پاسوس در نوشتن این رمان به‌خرج داده است، سبب شد که ژان پل سارتر، فیلسوف شهیر فرانسوی، در خصوص او بگوید: «من دوس پاسوس را بزرگ‌ترین نویسنده‌ی عصر حاضر می‌دانم.»
Profile Image for Makis Dionis.
506 reviews142 followers
October 17, 2020
Στις αρχές του 20ου αιώνα ο κόσμος ήταν έτοιμος για την επανάσταση είτε μέσω πολέμου, είτε μέσω διαφορετικών πολιτικών προσεγγίσεων, είτε μέσω σπασίματος κοινωνικών κ οικονομικών αγκυλώσεων, κ η πρόζα του Ντος Πάσος, χωρίς συναισθηματισμούς, το αποδίδει γλαφυρά κ απίστευτα ζωντανά
3 reviews2 followers
March 15, 2013
Dos Passos' legacy, if there is one, is largely understated or forgotten, and, in my view, not necessarily through any major fault of his. In the 20th century, as cultural and aesthetic values shifted to favor more linear, romantic, cinematic storytelling, Dos Passos' vignettes, broad character range, and historical relevance faded into the background to be appreciated primarily by literary aficionados. I think that Hemingway's and Fitzgerald's books would be more easily adaptable to the silver screen; to me, they read like old movies. There is a bygone romance. Their books are digestible. Conversely, it seems to me that Dos Passos, who was also a painter, was more in touch with the avant-garde. His stylistic ambition and the breadth of his writing are what prompt me to call him an artist, rather than simply a novelist--a fine distinction on its own, but the appellation "artist" implies that he melded principles and techniques from different artforms to produce a new kind of novel. The page was his canvas, rather than a mere receptacle for words.

At times it seems that The 42nd Parallel is a nonlinear narrative. The linear character development is regularly interrupted with sections called Newsreel and Camera Eye, among others. These are often abstract, stream-of-consciousness bits of writing. These do not directly support the plot. The ordinary novel reader's expectation that a story must be told clearly and concisely from A to B to C will likely limit his or her appreciation of The 42nd Parallel. Reading is, at its best, a creative act, which requires the reader to interpret and infer. Hemingway, who was Dos Passos' friend and fellow member of the Lost Generation, had some of that same mystery in his books, though Hemingway's works stand more stably on their own as straight narratives; the subtleties enrich his stories, but it is not imperative to recognize them in order to appreciate the story. In The 42nd Parallel, Dos Passos is forthright with his abstractions; rather than condemn this work on that basis, it is probably best to read for yourself, consider the challenges to your aesthetic sensibilities and ask, "What is a novel really?" After all, many of us read with the intent to grow.

I have always favored novels whose characters appear aimless, books whose characters appear to be in search of something, but they do not exactly know what that thing is. Naturally, the execution of that aimlessness will leave many readers frustrated, asking, "Is this going anywhere?" But life is generally not a series of meaningful, cinematic events. There is a lot of fluff. A lot of time spent waiting for the phone to ring. A lot of time spent driving from Here to There, where more time is spent waiting for Him or Her or It. In The 42nd Parallel, whether these interruptions are disruptions is a matter of personal taste. I gather that the poets and painters among us may possess a larger appetite for abstraction; for them, the seemingly unrelated abstract bits offer interpretive hints and serve to paint a general feeling which is to accompany the character development. These sections span beyond the characters' lives and present a broad portrait of their rapidly changing, industrial society.

In other words, the linear, character-driven chapters give a street view, while the Camera Eye and Newsreel chapters provide an overhead view. Together, these perspectives amount to an understanding of the early 20th century that is both personalized and generalized--and at times, unromantic. These characters are not simply struggling with their hearts, as are some of Hemingway's quintessential characters. They are not conspicuously concerned with upward social mobility and an envy of high society elites. These characters were struggling to eat, to establish careers. They were struggling with their sense of identity in an increasingly industrialized, materialistic, cosmopolitan society.

Some have complained about the number of Dos Passos' characters and how shallowly he paints them. Would the book have been better if he had limited the number of characters, focused in on a select few, and really developed them? Would the book have been better if its loose plotline had not been interrupted with abstract fragments? Actually, it is for these reasons that I love the book. It is, in these ways, a product of the society in which it was created--few establish deep understandings of one another, and the plot of our lives is constantly interrupted with commercial breaks and ridiculous newsbits and other "information." We, too, are a lost generation. The 42nd Parallel is probably more relevant now than it ever has been--that is, if you are paying attention.
Profile Image for Michael Finocchiaro.
Author 3 books5,807 followers
March 31, 2021
The first installment of Dos Passos' classic USA Trilogy takes us through a polyphonic journey through the early 20th century across many of the areas of the US. It was rather cutting edge with various Joycean innovations such as the stream of consciousness (and apparently autobiographical) interjections called The Camera's Eye and the news snippets called Newsreels as well as some short biographical sketches. The characters are both male and female (although mostly white with some degree of expressed racism) and one of the pervading themes revolve around the IWW, or Wobblies, movements during these turbulent times. We see Manhattan (so recently drawn by Dos Passos in Manhattan Transfer), Chicago, and various other places before the first world war. I enjoyed the text and found it moved relatively quickly. The characters were rather well-drawn, even if all do not have a happy ending.
42nd Parallel is an interesting addition to the US literary canon and I can't wait to read 1919 now.
Profile Image for George.
2,511 reviews
April 17, 2022
4.5 stars. An interesting, engaging, original historical fiction novel set in the USA during the 1910s. The book has four threads, three being non fiction. The fourth thread includes the narratives of five men and women. Joe Williams, a seaman; Mac, a typesetter, socialist and wayfarer; J. Ward Moorehouse, a public relations businessman; Eleanor Stoddard, an independent woman working as a designer of stage sets, offices and houses; Janey Williams, private secretary to J. Ward Morehouse and Joe Williams sister; and Charley Anderson, a mechanic and wayfarer.

The other three non fiction modes of address are ‘The Camera Eye’ where the author writes about his own life experiences in a not easily understood writing style. ‘Newsreels’ which are actual headlines from newspapers of the time, fragments of news stories, advertising slogans and popular song lyrics. The third mode of address is brief lives of some of the important characters of the times including Gene Debs, Luther Burbank, William D. Haywood, Minor C. Keith, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Steinmetz and Bob La Follette.

A very interesting portrayal of the USA in the 1910s. Whilst there is no plot, there is good reading momentum. Each character’s life is eventful.

A satisfying, interesting reading experience.

This book was first published in 1930 and is the first book in a trilogy titled ‘USA’.
Profile Image for Stratos.
927 reviews103 followers
August 30, 2020
Μια τοιχογραφία των ΗΠΑ πριν την είσοδο της χώρας στον Α΄ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο. Γλαφυρό και συναρπαστικό κείμενο που βρίθει σημαντικών πληροφοριών και γνώσεων για την εποχή αυτή.
Profile Image for Clif Hostetler.
1,139 reviews854 followers
June 13, 2021
This first installment of the USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos bounces between descriptions of the lives of several different fictional characters while abruptly inserting between these depictions nonfictional mini biographies of prominent Americans and short vignettes labeled as “Newsreel” (newspaper headlines, fragments of news stories, and song lyrics) and “The Camera Eye” (stream of consciousness thinking presumably by the author). The overall effect of reading through this hodgepodge of narrative styles is a reasonably thorough rendering of life in the United States during the beginning years of the 20th century prior to WWI.

The fictional characters seem to include an abundance of revolutionaries, communists, anti-war rants, Wobblies, and women who need to marry due to inconvenient pregnancies. Historians have depicted these sorts of characters as inconsequential discontents, so some readers today may be surprised that the author chose them to represent that era. I think people today do not realize how prevalent political and social discontent was at the time. It was a time that led to the progressive movement of the early twentieth century.

Another characteristic of these fictional characters which is probably less surprising—they all seem to have a hard time making ends meet and they all want to get more money. Another characteristic comes to mind—none of the marriages seem to be very happy. Also, single women are propositioned left and right (this is 100 years prior to #MeToo).

Over this coming summer I plan to read the next two installments of this trilogy—1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936). This first book was published in 1930. In case you’re wanting to know why this book is titled “42nd Parallel” you will want to read this
Profile Image for Mike.
519 reviews121 followers
August 25, 2011
A better title for this chore would be “NOW! That’s What I Call America.” I'll get to that later.

The 42nd Parallel is unique and groundbreaking in that, for its time, it found new and interesting ways to bore its reader to tears. First, it relentlessly bludgeons its reader with its annoyingly liberal usage of free indirect speech. Rather than giving its characters voice and motion, The 42nd Parallel prides itself on summary, exposition, and trading off engagement for its crappy style. Second, it kneecaps the little momentum it gains by liberally fragmenting and disjointing its narratives with unnecessary tripe. The first bag of tripe is “The Camera Eye,” a hokey cornucopia of stream-of-consciousness hogwash that can and should be readily discarded; the second bag of tripe is a collection of highly subjective, propagandistic biographies/obituaries that decide it is best to honor its subject by giving its language an E.E. Cummings-Stupid-Indents-For-Crappy-Slam-Poets treatment; the third is “Newsreel,” a similarly fragmented collection of actual headlines that, regardless of the reader’s knowledge of historical context, functions as the equivalent of the “spinning newspaper” gimmick, only takes itself way more seriously, is less subtle, and somehow feels dumber. All these sections crowd out the many stagnant narrative threads that make up the remainder of the book, but even the stories of its five main protagonists have the life sucked out of them by Dos Passos’ insufferable stylistic decisions. Dos Passos seems afraid of letting his characters speak, either because he just loves this ‘free indirect speech’ thing that he must’ve picked up in his college Austen seminar, or his dialogue sucks. Hint: both are true. Examples can be furnished upon request.

Narratively these stories interweave in a Short Cuts way (tenuously, thematically, contrived), and the narratives are more or less interchangeable. People migrate to different cities so that Dos Passos can name-drop and capture the American experience by pinpointing various locales across the country. They all think similarly and use the word “and” so much that the reader never wants to see it again (examples can be furnished upon request, but it is easier to flip to any page and read it). Besides overuse of conjunctions, these radicals spend the rest of their time sitting on trains and getting divorced.

Dos Passos robs his story of anything engaging by employing the stylistic techniques he uses. The extra sections leave the book fragmented, disjointed, dated, and a little embarrassing; the free indirect speech and casual splicing of margins and dialogue give a much-unneeded degree of separation between reader and events; and, well, the parts of the story that aren’t just accounted, delineated, or summarized (which is, sadly and tediously, most of the book) are still boring. It is one of the most tedious books I’ve read all year, and one that would wrench my stomach to pick it up.

Again, a better title for The 42nd Parallel is “NOW! That’s What I Call America.” It’s meant to chronicle a specific time in American history and give a snapshot of the scenery through words, but in retrospect, its pieces seem disjointed, unrelated, and quite dated. Dos Passos was also popular in his time but (supposedly) faded into obscurity; I suppose the same is true for NOW!’s contenders. The analogy works also in this manner: I hated listening to NOW! 1, and by no means will I call the Time-Life number to order NOW! 2 and NOW! 3. And I never want to see the word “and” again.

To any reader out there seeking an American chronicle that captures multiple perspectives, understands diversity of experience, and gives voice to its people, read Studs Terkel. Any Studs Terkel. Anything, anything but this.
Profile Image for Matt.
1,061 reviews702 followers
February 13, 2008

Manic, vibrant, socially conscious, epic, crowded, busy, sweaty, angry, clear-eyed idealism, rowdy, tragic, subjective, objective, infinitely small, buzzing, slashing, eponymous, snide, pathos, scattershot, fecund, inspirational, landmark, surging, colorful, explosive, magnificent.

I'm almost holding back on the next two installments since I don't want to be dissapointed. This one's a corker.

The first two pages is some of the greatest prose I've ever laid eyes on. What I hope will be my life's philosophy and burns alive in my eyes every time I read it.

I read it to most of my friends and there was little reaction. They are all very literate and extremely intelligent. Disheartening.

But I am truly glad some have seen fit to mention it as being in the running for "Great American Novel".

It won't make it, I think, compared to some of the other contenders. But, it guarentees literary importance and a niche that will never dissapear.
Profile Image for Alireza Reisi.
24 reviews3 followers
June 28, 2020
برای شناختن آمریکا تاریخ نخوانید، دوس پاسوس بخوانید. دوس پاسوس با قلمش چنان در این کتاب به زیر پوست آمریکای پیش از جنگ اول رخنه کرده است که حیرت زده می شوید. او قلم را مانند
یک دوربین عکاسی در گوشه کنار آن مقطع از تاریخ آمریکا می چرخاند تا از پس شخصیت ها و کنش های اجتماعی آن دوره، کلاژهایی جالب و جذاب از جامعه ی زیر پوستی آمریکا ثبت کند. روایتی که از این کلاژها به خواننده عرضه می شود در پس ظاهر فریبنده اش با انباشتی از فساد و تباهی توام است. و قابل پیش بینی است بنایی که بر چنین شالوده ای ساخته شده است همچنان همانی می تواند باشد که بوده است.
پ.ن: حیف که کمی زبان مترجم در ترجمه این شاهکار فخیمانه است.
Profile Image for SoulSurvivor.
814 reviews
September 3, 2019
Did I just give this book 1 1/2 ? It looked like it and if so , that's what I want . with the exception of Hemingway and some Fitzgerald , I'm not found of writers of this period ( WW I and the Roaring 20s .

The characters were neither memorable or likable , which is a poor way to begin a trilogy . So given that I am no longer tied to a required reading list , I'll accept #1 as emblematic of the whole .
Profile Image for J TC.
175 reviews15 followers
February 9, 2024
John dos Passos - Paralelo 42
Um agradável surpresa. Não conhecia a obra de John do Passos e estava curioso quanto ao estilo e profundidade. Não desiludiu. Dos Passos usa uma linguagem simples, acessível, adaptada às características dos personagens, com múltiplos pontos de vista o que resulta numa complexidade estrutural, que apesar de entrelaçada o leitor não se perde ao longo do texto.
Em paralelo 42 Dos Passos transporta-nos para o universo americano da segunda década do século XX. Era a américa do presidente Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1913 a 1921) cujo mandato ficou marcado pela entrada dos EUA na 1ª GM e pela lei seca.
Sendo um escritor de esquerda, Dos Passos fez refletir na sua obra as dificuldades económicas e sociais das classes mais desfavorecidas. Dividindo este seu romance por cinco personagens com percursos com múltiplos pontos de interseção que o autor usou para dar resistência ao seu fio condutor. Era, na prespectivas das classes menos favorecidas uma américa pobre, com poucas oportunidades para o homem comum, uma américa que abraçou a entrada na 1ª GM como forma de responder a essa falta de oportunidades de sucesso que é transversal aos nossos cinco protagonistas.
Era uma américa deprimente da primeira metade do século XX seja nas vertentes econômicas, sociais, sindicais e de luta de classes, políticas e familiares. É uma critica contundente a esta américa, uma critica transversal a todo o território (daí o termo paralelo 42) que o autor enfatiza utilizando uma técnica de colagem de notas biográficas biografias (Thomas Edison, Proteus Steinmetz), fragmentos de notícias, canções populares, a revolução mexicana de Madero, e a preparação da sociedade para a intervenção na guerra do outro lado do atlântico.
A leitura de Dos Passos e este seu romance “Paralelo 42” fez recordar os “Almanaques” desses tempos que continham uma variedade grande de informação, conselhos práticos, critica literária e social. Achei esta técnica de escrita muito influenciada por esse tipo de publicações, que à época era muito popular.

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"John Dos Passos - Parallel 42
A pleasant surprise. I wasn't familiar with the work of John Dos Passos and was curious about his style and depth. It did not disappoint. Dos Passos employs a simple, accessible language adapted to the characters' characteristics, with multiple points of view resulting in a structural complexity. Despite its complexity, the reader doesn't get lost in the text.
In Parallel 42, Dos Passos takes us to the American universe of the second decade of the 20th century. It was the America of President Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1913 to 1921), whose term was marked by the U.S. entry into World War I and Prohibition.
As a leftist writer, Dos Passos reflected in his work the economic and social difficulties of the less privileged classes. He divides this novel into five characters with intersecting paths that the author used to give strength to his narrative. In the perspective of the less privileged classes, it was a poor America with few opportunities for the common man, an America that embraced entry into World War I as a response to the lack of success opportunities that is common to our five protagonists.
It was a depressing America in the first half of the 20th century, economically, socially, in labor unions and class struggles, politics, and families. It is a sharp critique of this America, a critique that spans the entire territory (hence the term Parallel 42) that the author emphasizes using a collage technique of biographical notes (Thomas Edison, Proteus Steinmetz), fragments of news, popular songs, the Mexican Revolution of Madero, and society's preparation for intervention in the war on the other side of the Atlantic.
Dos Passos' reading and his novel "Parallel 42" brought to mind the "Almanacs" of those times that contained a wide variety of information, practical advice, literary and social criticism. I found this writing technique to be heavily influenced by such publications, which were very popular at the time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for carl  theaker.
918 reviews44 followers
March 21, 2010
Must admit, don't think I ever heard of Dos Passos until I started reading this trilogy for the Modern Library top 100, but glad I did. Easy reading format, historical context, and I do like history, about the interesting early part of the century in of course, the USA.

Each chapter is titled with a character's name and each evolves, through their own eyes, and when paths cross, through others. Most characters are carried onto the other books. Supposedly the books can be read on their own, but I think you would always wonder what you missed. For me the stories were compelling and I couldn't stop reading about them.

Between chapters DP sometimes has a couple pages about a famous person of the era. Some stood the test of history & we know them today, Edison but some are more obscure and those to me were the more interesting ones.

Another item between chapters are bits of text from newsreels of the day. They give the setting of the times
and to me show how the news is totally unrelated to every day life.

Yet another item is the Camera Eye, which shows some activity that is going on with a person, but to me is out of context so doesn't add much to the story.
Profile Image for Gamze İspir.
44 reviews19 followers
December 26, 2018
Bu kitapta yazar alışık olduğumuz tarzın tamamen dışında bir tarzla yazmış. Haber-film adında dönemin gazete haberlerini paylaştığı ve Sine-göz adında birilerinin iç sesi olduğunu varsaydığım bölümlere yer vermiş. Ben bu iki bölümü de açıkçası sevemedim, konudan bağımsız çağrışımları dağınık yazılar gibi geldi bana. Onun dışında romanda 7-8 karakterin hayat öyküsü anlatılıyor ve bunlardan bazıları kitabın sonuna doğru karşılaşıyorlar da ama bu karakterlerin anlatımını da sevemedim çünkü cümleler hep şu şekilde; yedi, içti, oturdu, kalktı, uyudu, uyandı vb. Ne yazık ki romanda herhangi bir derinlik bulamadım. Kitabın tanıtımında bahsedilen ağır savaş ve kapitalizm eleştirisini de göremedim ne yazık ki, bu konulardan hep yumuşak bir şekilde bahsedilmiş.
İkinci yıldızı vermemin sebebi 1900lerin başındaki Amerika’yı gözlemleme fırsatı vermiş olması, yoksa gerçekten 1 yıldızlık bence bu kitap. Elimde bu triolojinin ikinci kitabı olan 1919 da var ve bu yüzden onu da okuyacağım ama serinin üçüncü kitabını alıp okumayı düşünmüyorum.
Profile Image for Mike.
219 reviews7 followers
November 27, 2016
Stop searching, THIS is the great American novel... but "novel" doesn't really do it justice. It's a panoramic portrait of America in the first decades of the 20th century. Dos Passos' characters chase, in myriad ways, their American Dreams, as the nation rapidly matures in its new identity as an urban, commercial, world power. There is no plot here- the book, like so much other art of the time, is, in form as well as substance, something entirely new- a novel novel. The characters surge forward in their lives, crossing paths with each other and with various American luminaries of the day, but not toward any clear destination. The book is imbued with a sense of history: Dos Passos and his characters know they are caught up in the fierce urgency of their times- America is going SOMEWHERE, and FAST... but where? I think USA is even better when the reader knows of certain historical outcomes that Dos Passos could only speculate about...

I'm gonna go out on a limb: in considering the lives of Americans in the earliest decades of the 20th century, Hemingway and Fitzgerald were dilettantes. Dos Passos was the guru, the wizard, the sage, the virtuoso.
Profile Image for Joy D.
2,277 reviews259 followers
June 10, 2022
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 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.
Profile Image for Schuyler.
208 reviews70 followers
August 22, 2008
If I had to use one word to describe my feelings overall towards this book it would be disappointing. I had high hopes for this 'classic' but they were quickly dashed. I was duped by all of the praise it has recieved from critics and writers. Sometimes it's hard to go back in experimental fiction, toward its infancy and simply not have the patience that it requires. One of the narrative devices Passos uses is Headlines from the time period and brief newspaper clippings, and about half way through the book I just started skipping them. I felt they added little to the narrative.

Brief synopsis: Passos uses a fragmented narrative to tell the story of several characters trying to make their way in early 1900's America. That's pretty much the entire plot. There isn't a plot really. Each narrative thread wanders aimlessly.

I did enjoy his device he called "Camera Eye" which were supposed to be autobiographical. They were basically paragraph long stream-of-consciousness-like descriptions about various events in the authors life. I also enjoyed the first introduction of a character named Janey, detailing her crush on an older boy and the time they spent one afternoon canoeing and relaxing by a riverside campfire. It was told in a simple tone, with a sincerity that reminded me of Raymond Carver.

One line in the middle of book caught my attention which I feel adequately describes the overall mood of the book. "..reading Success Magazine, full of sick longing for the future...". Everyone in this book is bent towards the future, almost obessively so. Some zig zag like a drunk towards their future, others sprint, still others waltz. And this is part of the reason that I gave it three stars. Underneath the often stiff, Romantic tone, the narrative tricks, the empty plot, there is a picture of a hopeful America, a time in our country when seemingly anything was possible for everyone. The characters are plain, and their lives even more so, but the country in which they live out those lives was unique, and I think Passos was trying to reflect that, to the best of his abilities. I might read the rest of the trilogy. Unclear, ask later.
Profile Image for Răzvan Molea.
42 reviews41 followers
August 4, 2015
As Hemingway said to Dos Passos in a letter, after reading his USA trilogy:"Don’t let yourself slip and get any perfect characters in—no Stephen Daedeluses—remember it was Bloom and Mrs. Bloom saved Joyce . . . If you get a noble communist remember the bastard probably masturbates and is jallous as a cat. Keep them people, people, people, and don’t let them get to be symbols."(1932)
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