U.S.A.

This is a sprawling massive novel, not for its complexity of characters who weaved in and out of each other lives, but the 'lost' history of the USA. The brutality of the Corporatons as they seek to secure their position within the industrialisation of the country. Book 1 deals with the situation in Mexica, Book 2 called 1919 is the Great War and how the USA is drawn into the conflict.

Not only does it have this dense narrative, Pasos uses differing narrative techniques of switching each story and lining the threads together. It is daring with its the portrayl of sex for the time.

My copy is a Penguin from the 60s. This book (or trilogy) is really a 'lost'great Amrican novel and should really be rediscovered. Having wade through the dense and often turgid prose of Ayn Rand; this was a delight to read. It must due for a revival. One could see it has a great mini-series for TV.

I don't generally write reviews for the classics, since I figure that many other people have already done a better job than I could do, and this isn't any exception. However, there has been some discussion of these books' connections with some Rush songs, and I do feel qualified to discuss that shortly.

Most Rush fans will make the connection with the song "The Big Money", but there two other songs whose titles also bear similarities with these books: "The Camera Eye" and "Middletown Dreams". The former is the name of many subsections in all three books, and Middletown is the name of the hometown of Mac, the first character we follow in the trilogy.

However, none of the songs' lyrics really have anything to do with anything in the books, and since all three can easily be common phrases without any relation to the books at all, I would hesitate to call them direct references at all. Neil Peart has said that he's a fan of Dos Passos' writing (this is unsurprising since Peart is a genius and surely recognizes it when he reads it), he has also said that there is no relationship intended.

So, that's pretty boring, but that's how it goes sometimes.

USA is a trilogy, but should really be viewed as a grand novel in three parts. The first section, “The 42nd parallel,” takes place in the decade prior to WWI, in the United States. It is an optimistic, coming of age story – the characters are primarily young, idealistic. Many of the characters are working class people and become involved in radical politics. Throughout “42nd parallel,” you get the feeling of rising class consciousness and working class power – strikes are being won, the workers are revolting in Mexico. In “1919” America enters WWI, and a surge of nationalism wipes out all of the gains made previously by the working class. The government and industry become much more heavy-handed in their repression of activism. Other characters, previously radical, become swept up in the nationalist fervor, or are corrupted by a dionessyian lifestyle as officers with ambulance corps and the red cross in France during and immediately after the war. Suddenly, people care less about their fellow man, and more about themselves. The final scene of 1919 is exceptionally powerful: a returning veteran joins a protest against lumber barons in Oregon, and is brutally murdered. The final book, “The Big Money,” takes place in the 1920s, and follows a number of people as they try to ascend into wealth and success, primarily in NYC. Some succeed, some are crushed – all end up lonely and bitter. The final part of “The Big Money” returns to a number of the radicals introduced in the previous books, whom are fighting hopelessly against the government (Sacco and Vanzetti) and industry, while becoming increasingly radicalized. Overall, USA has a very interesting style – it jumps from sections about particular characters, to excerpts from newsreels, to short stream of consciousness sections, to brief narratives detailing the entire lives of important figures (Henry Ford, President Wilson, Thomas Edison etc). As historical fiction, I liked it, because it felt very real – it was chaotic and unpredictable, with characters subject to fits of irrationality, depression, and bad luck – nothing felt inevitable. This book is a great commentary on what changed in America over the period of 1900-1930, as we became the economic superpower of the world. It is also a commentary on the shift towards conservatism and selfishness that comes with age. USA’s scope and overall end – painting a picture of a whole country during a tumultuous period of time – remind me very much of War and Peace. However, USA is told through the prism of the working class, where War and Peace is told through the prism of the Russian nobility.

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.»



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. او 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 در عین حال 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

:)

I want to appreciate stream of consciousness writing, but I cannot find any artistic merit in it. Thankfully, John Dos Passos restricts that style to certain short sections of The 42nd Parallel, 27 mini-chapters intended to give a broader perspective than those of the expository characters. Perhaps for other readers it serves that purpose. The narrative is also interspersed with 19 “newsreels”, in which he cuts short phrases from the headlines of various contemporary news stories. Unfortunately, for a reader far removed from the time in which these events took place there is rarely enough detail to have more than guess at what is actually happening. I do enjoy the stories of Mac, Janey, J.Ward, Eleanor, and Charley, but even here Dos Passos manages to annoy by being cute with language, inventing his own compound words with no discernible rhyme or reason for their selection. Each of the narratives are interesting in their own right, but while a few of the main characters do have chance encounters there is no overarching plot holding them together. This is almost more like a collection of short stories written to together paint a picture of American life at the beginning of the 20th century than a traditional novel. I cannot say that this is among my favorite reads, but it has shown enough to convince me to give 1919 a try.

...

It was with some trepidation that I followed The 42nd Parallel with the remaining two books in the series. To make the task a bit less onerous, I stopped reading the “Camera Eye” sections entirely and only skimmed through the “Newsreel” chapters. Dos Passos took up a new frustrating habit of inserting paragraph breaks seemingly arbitrarily in the middle of sentences. I am sure there was some poetic purpose behind this, but its effect was to remove any interest I may have had in reading something else “artistic” in the near future. The cast of disparate characters fractured enough over the rest of the series that by the time I reached a chapter about some particular character I had forgotten entirely which of the stories thus far applied to them. As I expected, there was nothing to eventually tie the stories together. Both books end around momentous events — the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, but these cannot be seen as real resolution since most of the characters are involved peripherally or not at all.

I can say a few good things about the books. They have indeed painted a broad picture of life in the United States in the first 30 years of the 20th Century. I learned more about the socialist movements during those times than in any study of history, and have seen more clearly how the transfer from government by/for/of the people to government by/for/of the corporations was already well underway before even my grandparents were born. In the one Camera Eye that I did read carefully after the fact, Dos Passos wonderfully turns around the anti-immigrant sentiment that fueled the Red Scare to note that it was the men who sailed from distant shores to find a land where all men were created equal who were Americans in spirit:

America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul
their hired men sit on the judge’s bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the powerplants
they have built the electricchair and hired the executioner to throw the switch
all right we are two nations
America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people and when they want to they hire the executioner to throw the switch
…
we stand defeated America

(Lack of punctuation, capitalization, and sensible structure preserved in case you somehow find it meaningful.) Now, time to pick up a book from someone who knows how to tell a story.

Historically interesting, but otherwise I didn't think it was particularly worth reading these three large volumes.

Seems like Dos Passos wanted to write The Great American Novel (TGAN)(TM), without the talent to pull it off. Pedestrian (and sometimes worse) prose, modernist interludes because why not, that was the trend, loooooooooong arc to tie together 12 primary characters. Good for a view of contemporary life in America leading up to and following WW1, but there must be better books that cover a similar arc. Middle novel 1919 was the best, he seemed to have something to say about war.

Together, the three novels represent a compelling character sketch of the United States during the first three decades of the 20th century, when America was awakening to its growing power and reveling in its seemingly endless prosperity. Dos Passos advances his episodic narrative through several meticulously drawn characters that span the gamut of Jazz Age archetypes: the flapper, the revolutionary, the industrialist, the speculator, etc. Dos Passos uses his characters’ intertwined lives to explore America’s dark side—its racial and economic inequalities; its sexual hypocrisies and double-standards; and its imperialistic ambitions. The books are rounded out with pointed biographical sketches of real-life figures from the era, and Dos Passos uses the “Newsreel” and often confusing “Camera Eye” sections to enhance the books’ historic perspective.