I have had Dos Passos on my "to read" list since high school. I am not sure why it took so long to finally read it, though I am guessing that it had to do more with wanting to find it used rather than buy a new one.

I wanted to like this book, it seemed like it would be loved when it was added of my list of authors to read. I am still not sure what I think. There are style factors in the book that I think are genius, but it is so clouded in the male-hood of his generation that I have a bitter taste. I suppose I should just chalk it up to something done by a writer willing to take a few chances and doing it, but that it was still mired with a certain North American machismo that is inescapable. I just keep coming back to the genius in the story telling - I am torn... I guess that makes it a good book, it got a reaction out of me.

Of all the “artsy” (or modernist, post-modernist, etc.) novels of the early 20th century, this one may be the most comprehensible probably because Dos Passos is doing so much more than art for art’s sake, or even more than personal character studies found in other novels.

He’s working at the macro level; he’s boldly and openly political. That’s a tricky thing to try. It’s easy for such works to become shallow and preachy. Bu 42nd Parallel, the first of Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy, avoids that trap possibly thanks to Dos Passos’ earlier efforts in painting and drawing. 42nd Parallel actually comes off largely as a verbal mural of the pre WWI U.S., almost pointillist in nature, as colors form in the eyes of the viewer of such paintings, so, too does the story here emerge in the mind of the reader rather than in the pages of the novel. This approach sacrifices the depth of characterization we often want in novels, but makes up for it in the way characters are placed in the larger context of the society in which they live.

What’s especially interesting is that while do Passos is know for his strong leftist orientation, the objectivity of the presentation leaves readers to draw opposite conclusions. Dos Passos likely would want us to be rooting for Mac and cringing over J. Ward Moorehouse, but viewed through the prism of today’s culture, it’s equally plausible to see Mac and Charley Anderson as the architects of their own depredations and see merit in Moorehouse. Meanwhile, Eleanor Stoddard and Janey Williams showed touches of Sister Carrie, but don’t impact others quite the same way, with Eleanor being particularly ahead of her time.

The one thing I don’t think works is the Camera Eye sections, stream of consciousness segments tracing the author’s life. But if Dos Passos was for real in having said that putting himself there spares the rest of the novel from that sort of thing, then I’d say it was worthwhile.

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.»

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 trilogy is mentioned in Amor Towles’ “The Ballad of Timothy Touchett

A well-written historical novel should at least have one character to root for but I found all of the people in this book so self-centered and unlikeable that it was hard to choose. Not only that, but Dos Passos used the technique of not entering into the characters' thought processes so it was left to your intuition as to why they did what they did, except for ideology or personal greed. I can understand why Doctorow, who wrote the foreword here, would like the book so much since it's an epoch in which he concentrated so much in his books, the early days of the American 20th century with its super-rich ruling class and the turmoil of the labor movement in the underclass, but it came out a little flat for me. I think it's a classic for its historical perspective but the writing didn't move me.

He leído algo de autores como Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner y otros de la llamada 'Lost Generation' cuya obra se sitúa básicamente entre las dos guerras mundiales. Me faltaba John Dos Passos y en vez de empezar por su clásico Manhattan Transfer, me he decidido por la primera parte de la Trilogía USA.

Me inspiraba cierto respeto su fama de autor experimental pero me ha sorprendido porque la mayoría del texto es muy legible y presenta historias convencionales, narradas de un modo bastante clásico. Es como un gran fresco de la vida en Norteamérica en los años de la Primera Guerra Mundial, que sigue a 12 personas a lo largo y ancho del país en sus respectivos empeños de ganarse la vida y lograr sus aspiraciones. El inconveniente es el número excesivo de situaciones y personajes, que a veces se convierte en una yuxtaposición, una narración acelerada que te satura.

Pero Dos Passos sabe escribir y cuando el ritmo no es tan frenético te regala fragmentos impagables que te transportan a un momento en el tiempo y te transmiten los sentimientos de los personajes:

Estaban solos, de modo que pudieron elegir una mesa cerca de la chimenea, al fondo de un comedor rosa y amarillo donde, bajo una luz mortecina, se alineaban los fantasmas de las mesas vacías y las ventanas cubiertas de nieve.

Era una tarde radiante de mayo. Ward estaba embriagado por el perfume de algarrobos que acarreaba la brisa desde las tierras feraces de Ohio, el ruido muelle de las pelotas de golf y el revoloteo de los trajes de colores alrededor del edificio del club, las risas intermitentes y el fraseo de barítono de las voces confiadas de los ejecutivos, todo envuelto en un viento bailoteante que rezumaba una fragancia de humo tostado. Era difícil ocultar lo feliz que se sentía a los ojos de los hombres que le presentaban.

Estas secciones narrativas alternan con otras de carácter más experimental: Noticiario, Ojo de Cámara y Biografías de figuras históricas. Supongo que ayudan a establecer el contexto de la época, escritas como un flujo de conciencia o como retazos superpuestos de noticias. La verdad es que las he leído en diagonal ya que la mayor parte de las referencias no las captaba.

¿Es una lectura recomendable? Pues tengo dudas; no tiene un nivel de dificultad alto, pero es cierto que algunos trozos no se entienden y que es difícil seguir las historias por el elevado número de personajes. Me ha gustado sobre todo la sensación de conjunto, de querer pintar un cuadro completo de un país en un momento histórico concreto, con personajes y situaciones muy reales y variadas. Y la escritura, en algunos momentos destacable.

When I was in high school, my family took a camping vacation in the New England states. In Vermont we went to Monroe Street Books (I think this is the store), a used bookstore in Middlebury. There I bought the USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos. It has been many years since I read those Modernist novels, so I decided to begin rereading them almost fifty years later.

The USA Trilogy includes three experimental novels: The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932) and The Big Money (1936). The entire trilogy covers the first thirty years of the twentieth century. The 42nd Parallel, the first in the trilogy, covers the time through World War I.

John Dos Passos, who is now largely forgotten, was born in 1896. Like his friend, Ernest Hemingway whom he met while both were both living in Paris, Dos Passos joined the ambulance service and later was in Spain during its civil war. Unlike Hemingway, Dos Passos was not hyper masculine but was “bookish,” and quiet. Their friendship started to suffer strain when Dos Passos was on the cover of Time Magazine in 1936 and many critics thought of him as his friend’s equal.

In the late 1930s, Dos Passos began to drift from his far left politics after Hemingway broke to him the news that his Leftist friend, José Robles, had been shot as a Fascist spy in Spain. Dos Passos, a champion of the Communist Revolution, became disenchanted as left-wing factions fought among themselves and led to the execution of his friend and as communism moved away from its roots. Later, in an article about the incident, Hemingway described Dos Passos’s disillusionment as “the good-hearted naiveté of a typical American liberal attitude.” This also ended the friendship of the two men.

Deeply distrustful of unrestrained power, Dos Passos began to think the Left was becoming as cold and power-hungry as the Right and saying that progressive politics without human decency was a sham. From that time forward, angry at what communism had become, he moved toward the Right and, by the 1960s, even became a contributor to Bill Buckley’s National Review.

To portray the soul and expanse of the United States at the start of the twentieth century in his trilogy, Dos Passos employed four narrative modes.

One of these tells the stories of several fictional characters as they struggle to find their place in American society. Each chapter focuses on a separate character and occasionally brings that person into contact with one or more of the other characters. These chapters, written in free indirect speech, combines elements of the third and first-person speech and let readers better understand a cross section of America. Here is an example of free indirect speech that lets us look at Kate from the outside yet be inside her mind: Kate looked at her bank statement. Why had she spent her money so recklessly?

These chapters of The 42nd Parallel focus on characters including:
tMac: a working-class young man deeply attracted to the IWW, Industrial Workers of the World, an international leftist labor union founded in Chicago in 1905.
tJaney: a young working-class secretary who quits her job as her pro-German boss strikes her as being anti-American. She eventually becomes secretary to another character…
tJ. Ward Morehouse: an educated middle-class man who becomes a wealthy public relations person hoping to shape the emerging country and its economics.
tEleanor Stoddard: born to upper middle-class parents, she eventually becomes a decorator who does work for Morehouse and becomes his friend.
tJoe Williams: Janey’s brother who went AWOL from the Navy shortly before World War I broke out. He lives on the outskirts of society.

By the end of the trilogy, Dos Passos writes about six women and six men, some of whom appear in all three books.

Another mode, the Newsreel, includes snippets of actual newspaper headlines, articles, and song lyrics from the time period. These sections of the novel relate to the life events of the major characters so do not move through the novel in linear order but jump back and forth in time.

A third mode provides short biographies of historical figures. I knew enough about the early 1900s to usually find these short chapters engaging. These chapters were also easier to read since Dos Passos wrote them in a more conventional narrative style.

Finally, using a stream of consciousness technique, Dos Passos remembers his own life story and impressions in short chapters he calls the Camera Eye. These chapters show how the author eventually becomes a politically motivated writer.

To give you some idea of the author’s writing style, here are a few lines:

From one of the character chapters:
The young man walks fast by himself through the crowd that thins into the night streets; feet are tired from hours of walking; eyes greedy for warm curve of faces, answering flicker of eyes, the set of a head, the lift of a shoulder, the way hands spread and clench; blood tingles with wants; mind is a beehive of hopes buzzing and stinging; muscles ache for the knowledge of jobs, for the roadmender’s pick and shovel work, the fisherman’s knack with a hook when he hauls on the slithery net from the rail of the lurching trawler, the swing of the bridgeman’s arm as he slings down the whitehot rivet, the engineer’s slow grip wise on the throttle, the dirtfarmer’s use of his whole body when, whoaing the mules, he yanks the plow from the furrow. The young man walks by himself searching through the crowd with greedy eyes, greedy ears taut to hear, by himself, alone.

From a Newsreel chapter:
OFFICIALS KNOW NOTHING OF VICE Sanitary trustees turn water of Chicago River into drainage canal LAKE MICHIGAN SHAKES HANDS WITH THE FATHER OF THE WATERS German zuchterverein singing contest for canarybirds opens the fight for bimetallism at the ratio of 16 to 1 has not been lost says Bryan BRITISH BEATEN AT MAFEKING For there’s many a man been murdered in Luzon CLAIMS ISLANDS FOR ALL TIME

From one of the biographical chapters:
Edison worked out the first systems of electric light using the direct current and small unit lamps and the multiple arc that were installed in London Paris New York and Sunbury Pa., the threewire system, the magnetic ore separator, an electric railway. He kept them busy at the Patent Office filing patents and caveats.

From one of the Camera Eye chapters:
there were priests and nuns on the Espagne the Atlantic was glassgreen and stormy covers were clamped on the portholes and all the decklights were screened and you couldn’t light a match on deck

Though Dos Passos often uses characters or events to tie these distinct modes into a unified story, he is not always successful. For me, then, rather than trying to read the 42nd Parallel as I might a conventional plot-driven novel, I read it as though the painter, Pablo Picasso, was the author and wanted to show the many angles and facets of America. Rather than focus on details in a straight-forward manner, I let all the pieces wash over me to create an image of the United States. Incidentally, Dos Passos was acquainted with the painter.

Many critics think about the USA Trilogy through the lens of Marxist literary theory since Leftist politics informed Dos Passos at this time of his life and led him to put emphasis on the social and economic forces that affect and motivate his characters.

It is Marxist criticism that specifically examines a literary work within the contexts of money, power, and class and considers questions such as:

tWho benefits from work and who does not?
tAre characters able to move to another class? If so, how does that happen and what conditions make that move possible?
tHow are different social classes treated?
tHow do characters from differing social classes interact?
tHow does capitalism affect the humanity of people?
tHow does a character’s social class determine his/her fate and role in society?
tHow is each character’s socioeconomic status background relevant?
tTo what degree is the fate of the individual linked to societal forces?
tWhat role do money and class have in power status?

When thinking about the novel through this lens, readers will notice that Dos Passos thinks that capitalism benefits the few economically while it destroys their humanity and grinds underfoot the working class. In the end, capitalism robs everyone of freedom and destroys and makes victims of everyone. Dos Passos also understands that capitalism puts at risk the democratic vision of America and concentrates power in the hands of a few through the exploitation and oppression of workers.

Of the many books Dos Passos wrote, the USA Trilogy is his best known and is his masterpiece. The novels cross the continent, and even the ocean, move up and down the socio-economic ladder, and back and forth in time.

The title, The 42nd Parallel, even suggests the novel’s first major theme of movement, mobility, and change. The author’s Leftist politics then leads to the second great theme of the novel in which we see the exploitation, emptiness, soullessness, and destruction that come with the struggle between labor and capital. These themes, of course, define the USA at the start of the 20th century.

Though The 42nd Parallel is not always successful in its experimentation, it does remind us that the United States is also a Great Experiment that may not succeed. The novel is not always easy to read and sometimes seems dated, but still has much to tell us about how the United States has come to a time of stress ripping the fabric of the country. The 42nd Parallel may not be the Great American Novel, but it certainly tries its best.

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’.

It's obvious, from Dos Passos's updated foreword to the modernistic range of literary methods employed, that the author wrote this and (I assume) its sequels in a blatant stab at crafting The Great American Novel, something that would ordinarily raise my hackles. But this book is so funny and engaging, almost breezy despite its large, intersecting cast and its abrupt segues into stream-of-consciousness autobiography, news clippings and ironic encyclopedia entries on notable Americans that it never feels weighed down by its ambition. Characters are clearly divided between the rabble-rousing laborers with socialist dreams and naked social climbers who disdain anyone who does not offer a rung up the ladder, but both types are bridged by a fundamental itinerancy, of being completely unmoored and willing to drop anything, or anyone, in search of one's ideal self. As such, for all the clear sympathy for workers and disdain for petit-bourgeois, Dos Passos does not shy away from noting how many women his idealistic workers ignore and leave behind, nor how many of his white-collar characters had to claw their way up from nothing to get to their level of comfort. Though published in 1930 and set in first decades of the 20th century, the book reminded me of Mad Men in its depiction of the desperation and callousness underneath quintessential American imagery of self-reliance and the Horatio Alger myths of self-made men. It also suggests that contemporary globalism in the workplace and its constant displacement is nothing new, and that perhaps it was always an American trait to give up one's life for work.

8/10
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En su sentido más literario Dos Passos dispone de ocurrentes recursos con los que interpelar al lector de forma indirecta e invitarle al juego del hilo, el narrativo con sus cuatro voces, y aquel del que tirar, a deseo del lector, para bucear en la realidad histórico-social con intención de completar el fresco colosal que pretende. Si uno entra en el juego, la novela le vuela los sesos.

What to tell, a masterpiece.

The book perhaps didn't give all facts of the USA history, but definitely their deeper meaning and understanding of that time and people.

I read from time to time the newspapers from the beginning of the XX century (just out of curiosity), so I know how important it is to remember that people living then had a different perspective of what they saw happening. So the quotes that John Dos Passos put in the books were priceless.

I admit I got confused a few times about which character's story I was currently listening to because I sometimes had big breaks in listening to the audiobook. But it didn't matter because characters and plot aren't the most important in John Dos Passos' series but the message, the generalized image that was made.