Ok, I got back in the Dos Passos groove with this one (after losing steam in 1919, the second in the USA Trilogy). The mini-biographies continue to impress me, and the Camera Eye sections even grabbed me in this one. They either became more sharply focused (so to speak) or I just was able to read them more attentively. The Sartre essay (Literary and Philosophical Essays) on Dos Passos--believe it or not--helped me appreciate the plot-less "reporter" method. E.L. Doctorow says in the Foreword: "U.S.A. is a useful book to us because it is far-seeing. It seems angrier and at the same time more hopeful than it might have seemed in 1938." Well, not sure I saw that, but we could use some hope...

Dos Passos concludes his portrait of modernity with its breathless activity and discordant cacophony.

The country of the common working man with the ideal of a state where labor has political clout against the capitalists has been pushed to the fringes by seemingly endless, ultimately destructive, postwar prosperity and luxury. The social decay that began in Europe during the war has infected the U.S. Only a few dedicated, marginalized, and criminalized stalwarts continue the fight for dignity and recognition for the working class.
Dos Pasos Is probably the least read of what are touted as America's greatest writers, which without a doubt he is. Is it the massiveness of the USA trilogy in an era of short attention span, the decidedly leftest perspective, or the almost documentary like depiction of the era that makes this so?
Of all the post World War I American author's, Did Pasos is probably the most groundbreaking in style and subject matter. Whether read or not, his work made possible much of the inovation to follow.
Remember though, Dos Pasos, like Mark Twain, is a product of his times and shares the perspectives and language of the times. It is a white America he writes about.

I was barely 13 and reading the headiest book I’d ever encountered: John Dos Passos’ trilogy, USA. Over 1200 pages long, I discovered an America I never knew existed, an America hidden from the children of the Cold War, not in our history books or bedtime stories, and I fell in love with the spirit of Socialism. I longed for a copy, a real paper copy of the Worker. I read Marx and understood little. I believed firmly in the power of the labor unions though I’d never met a union worker. I moaned about living in the wrong time period and wanting to be alive in the 30’s when people talked about real things and real issues. I was insufferable, with just enough information to drive everyone around me insane.

One night at supper, my father silently handed me a book of poetry. I began reading it at the supper table and tears streamed down my face. It was the beginning of another intellectual journey, one taken too soon to realize the mark it’d leave on my soul. The author’s words that moved me were these:

I am past thirty. I fear the nights.

I hunch the sheet with my knees.

I bury my face in the pillow, shamelessly weeping,

That I have squandered my life on little nothings

And in the morning will squander it again.

I Journeyed through Russia

By Yevgeny Yevtushenko

I have the battered paperback of Bratsk Station and other new poems still, and found it tonight tucked on a shelf with my other classics. I picked it up and read the first entry again. Its words as familiar as a psalm to me, I wondered at the wisdom of my father. Did he know what he had given me? Did he understand the balance it would give my heart, or did he simply find a book of poetry in a box of books he’d bought and think I’d enjoy reading it? I’m sure he doesn’t remember giving me the book with a profile of a mysterious Russian author on the front.

Coming doom hangs over The Big Money, where postwar prosperity lines the pockets of many characters but their underlying misery persists and hints at the impending crash. Taken as a whole, the trilogy charts the failure of working-class awareness to take root as a unified mass movement in America thanks to the nation's breadth and the inculcation in selfishness that tugs at even the most collectivist person through to a reactionary surge of wartime patriotism and its resultant capitalist excess. That Dos Passos traces all of this through the self-centered, destructive behavior of wannabe social climbers and increasingly dejected activists (and can make it so funny) is perhaps the most impressive achievement of this macro view of America's blind embrace of its own mythos in the face of cold reality.

The Big Cake. The title eloquently qualifies the rat race closing the Dos Passos, U.S.A trilogy. Apart from a few irreducible utopians, doomed to failure, believing in the values ​​of solidarity and social justice that the Great War put under a bushel, American society has become the theatre of the most fierce individualism. The materialistic translation vision of freedom and the pursuit of happiness is at the very heart of the Constitution of this country. By the means and with the most diverse fortunes, the characters, except a young woman involved in the social struggle, have only one idea: to feel significant, touch the jackpot, and make their place in the sun. Relationships boil down to business relationships, admitted or not; they are acquaintances; we keep them as long as we can use them; they are stepping stones to prosperity. This busy little world represents the America of the roaring twenties, triumphant and prosperous, tiny human gears in constant Overspeed and, despite prohibition, imbibing alcohol and stuffing themselves with sleeping pills as substitutes for lubricant as if to forget that they all have datedness programmed by their physical Constitution and way of life.
Read with much more enthusiasm than the second part; the Big Cake is the completion of the great work of Dos Passos; it is also "the main course" by its dimensions superior to the first two opuses. The narrative technique, which has to be discussed and divided into four different registers, maintains the reader's interest through its diversity. The U.S.A. is a large, hair-raising fresco, which requires long-term reading to be fully appreciated, not to lose the thread of the characters' destinies, the three parts not constituting truly autonomous novels of the reappearance of characters involved in the various volumes. What makes it attractive can also include an obstacle; its titanic dimensions lend themselves to the availability of the modern reader.

A chef d’oeuvre, Last but not least in the U.S.A. Trilogy, the third part, The Big Money by John Dos Passos, at 23 on The 100 Best Novels list of The Modern Library https://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100...

10 out of 10


There are Two Americas today, considering that about one hundred million Americans live in a parallel universe -with Italian satellites stealing their elections, Jewish space lasers burning Californian forests, democrats eating babies and other such absurd, idiotic conspiracy theories – ostensibly an oxymoron, given that conspiracy theories, at least these days, presuppose a large stupid component – the Republican America is much closer to North Korea than to Germany…after all, the cult leader of (again) about one hundred million fanatics was an admirer of tyrannies and dictators – see Kim, Putin, MBS, Egyptian and other leaders – and we will see this once ‘greatest democracy’ fall, if things follow this pattern

Arguably, there are two very different societies in the U.S.A. presented by John Dos Passos in his Magnum opus, not just at odds with each other, but in open conflict, workers hoping for better conditions – in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair we find how horrible, terrifying the environment could be in the meat packing factories of Chicago, some one hundred years ago…but as the pandemic has just shown and some documentaries that describe, show the catastrophic medium there, it is still a tragedy http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/03/t... - and they come in conflict with the rich classes and the authorities that take orders from oligarchs and arrest, torture and kill leaders of the unions.
Having lived in a communist tyranny – we may have another oxymoron here, for no matter what leftists claim, a communist regime is by definition a dictatorship and this is what the Republicans want for America, where elections will not matter and they must be won by their Very stable Genius, which is so close to what we had, a Dear Beloved Son of the Nation aka Ceausescu aka Trump – we have no love lost for the commies – except for idiotic, nostalgic old cronies, who have forgotten the horrible and miss the few good things, or they have just benefited from the ‘some animals are more equal than others rule’- and thus I am not very supportive of those who promote extreme left ideas, though at times it is cruel to see characters that would not offer money for milk for the babies, saying the commies will take credit for giving milk…which is true, look at China and its economic progress of the past decades…

I was reading in the latest copy of The Economist about the Chinese economical rise and how the party takes credit for it, when in fact, it is an economist from St. Lucia – if I do not have this wrong – who had spoken before about the profit to be obtained from moving people from the countryside, into more lucrative jobs in industry, in the cities and this was a boom experienced by Japan and Korea (the South, evidently) before the Chinese economy rose so impressively over the past four decades…in other words, it is not communist control, or the party’s steering of a phenomenon that had worked so well in capitalist societies and it has to do with moving from the country to the cities and to the aforementioned, different jobs…

Charlie Anderson is probably the most important character in The Big Money – if we use statistics, as they have them now at the European Football tournament, Charlie Anderson will have the most impressive ‘ball possession’ figures, with maybe 23% and the next in this type of ranking would be Margo Dowling, with about 20% say…this is just an attempt to put something ‘original’ here, if flawed – and we follow with fervent interest his moves, the relationships he gets involved in, the divorce, attachment to Margo, the rupture with his brother, especially after their mother’s death and their clash over business…Charlie wants to pursue a project involving airplanes – after all, he had been a pilot in World War I – while his brother is attached to the Ford dealership idea – incidentally, we get a chapter on the real Henry Ford, entrepreneur, inventor, but also somewhat cuckoo and anti-Semite…
Margo Dowling is equally fascinating – indeed, the multitude of captivating, different, complex, American personages that recall what we see there today, a combination of brilliant, wondrous people, opposed by pithecanthropus erectus, members of the cult of trump (he does not even deserve a majuscule and on the other hand, it will be a ‘common term’ defining idiocy, mental issues) – and we see her abused by the consort of her step mother, Frank, she then takes a plunge and married Cuban Tony, getting on a quite disastrous tangent, which looked liberating to begin with, but ends up in a desperate bling alley.

Margo and Tony travel to Cuba, where the atmosphere is repressive, though it was not yet the Fidel Castro paradise of ‘socialismo o muerte’, and Margo has to live in the stifling, terrorizing, medieval structure, where women are not allowed outside and she is the prisoner of the women in the family of her husband…Tony meanwhile is out and involved in an homosexual affair with a trader – this will be in fact the mantra of the gay man or maybe we should say bisexual, or one of the myriad new denominations available out there…demi or pan sexual –and Margo tries fervently to escape her gaol, appealing to the American consulate, where she finds a young employee, willing to help her sail out of Cuba…
Agnes, her step mother, sends fifty dollars and this is a lifeline, for the consulate would not offer her money, especially given a situation where a married woman will have given up her American citizenship, and she sneaks out during her siesta, only once out of the island, her troubles will not be over…she has soon yet another ill-advised connection, with the son of a rich man, who claims to be infatuated with Margo, takes her and Agnes on a trip, where alas Tony shows up, down on his luck and compromising…

The eternal gay love troubles of Tony will be a leitmotif, the man appearing in various parts of America, Florida, California, just as his wife is lifting up from the debt and threat of bankruptcy, to try and extort, blackmail her with the knowledge of their marriage, asking for money when she becomes a promising, rising star for the moving pictures, where her career might be compromised if the scandal of her secret marital vows is exposed – besides, at this point, Tony is involved with a man that is clearly cruel, ruthless and violent, ultimately posing a death threat to the Cuban man, who may end up killed…

I read the first 2 in the series years before this one, and I’m glad I finally finished the series. Very strong finish, I had trouble putting this one down. I’m motivated to seek out other Dos Passos works. Honestly had trouble sympathizing with Mary French and the communists, I found them to be supremely irritating characters, but the whole novel was well written, the pace was fantastic and I loved the cut up news reels. Art can be uncomfortable sometimes. The biographies were fun to boot. Just terrific, way better than Augie March which I just finished recently.

I'm not sure that the essences of each individual novel are worth anything, but rather, the "novel" as a whole, by that I mean, as a trilogy. My review of the trilogy is here.

”In America, in Europe, the old men won. The bankers in their offices took a deep breath, the bediamonded old ladies of the leisure class went back to clipping their coupons in the refined quiet of their safe deposit vaults, the last puff of the ozone of revolt went stale in the whisper of speakeasy arguments.”

The Big Money is the final installment of Dos Passos’s sprawling, experimental novel, USA. It captures the endgame of the ambition and striving of the era. Utopian plans for progressive worker’s paradise were violently suppressed by government and industry and internally stymied by party dogma. Striving for financial success in business proved elusive to most, and hollow to the few who found it. Success in entertainment and pictures proved a vapor. The rich got richer, and everyone else could go to hell.

As in the first two installments, we get to follow several separate, imperfect protagonist who give us glimpses into the worlds of business, labor, and entertainment. These sections are broken up with Newsreel segments that provide topical headlines and snippets of popular song, the author’s personal, stream of consciousness perspective in The Cameras Eye segments, and mini biographies of the era’s history makers. (Those covered in The Big Money are Henry Ford, Thorstein Veblen, Isadora Duncan, Rudolph Valentino, the Wright Brothers, Frank Lloyd Wright, William Randolph Hearst, and Samuel Insull.) The channel surfing, experimental nature of the novel lends itself to audiobook as the ideal way to experience it.

John Dos Pasos epic work of historical fiction and fact is at once fascinating and depressing. He was heralded as inventing the modern American novel and indeed this is not like any other book I’ve read. The chapters are introduced with scraps of popular songs, bits of newsreel dialogue and newspaper stories. It gives a sense of the frenetic atmosphere of post World War I energy, how society was becoming more technologically advanced and how it stressed the people dealing with the challenges of change.

Following the lives of several Americans, men and women of different backgrounds and circumstances through the decades from the turn of the last century to the middle 20”s, Dos Pasos shows how nothing has really changed in all the years that have followed.

Heroes return from war and drink themselves to death. People pass through life without reflection or introspection. Young idealists work until they are no longer young trying to change the world. Poor people change their names, do whatever is necessary and become stars or arc and burn out like guttering flames.

Interspersed with these tales are profiles of actual people. The Wright Brothers, Frank Lloyd Wright and Henry Ford are stand outs. The profiles are neither starry eyed or damning, just facts.

Of course I now want to read the two other books in this trilogy, but I needed a break to process the intense writings and come to some conclusions about what I’d read. To me that’s good literature.

This was my favorite out of the 3. 1st one I liked fairly well, 2nd one was too redundant and WAY too many characters.. I couldn't really follow who these people were. 3rd one cut down on characters to follow, some storylines were better than others. I liked Margo's story and how it linked into another character's story.. that by far was the best one. The other people I lost interest with as time went and after Margo was done being written about and I knew it was all these other people I really struggled. As the whole the trilogy was alright. maybe it tried to be too much.

I actually found reading the chronology of his life pretty interesting. How he definitely put elements of his own life into his characters and plot. He hung out a lot with Hemingway, some with Dreiser which I thought I was interesting. I mean his life sounds more interesting than a lot of what he wrote about. He traveled so much!

Anyway, overall the book was decent.