Very good book and more cohesive than the first volume in the trilogy. Ends with a sense of bitterness about America and American mythology that reminded me of Godfather II.

The pretense of U.S.A. as a social novel pretty much dies in this volume. Much of the book is devoted to the romantic, drinking, and career exploits of three American women living in Europe during WWI — i.e., it's individualistic naval-gazing to an almost absurd degree. The time period is rife with social upheavals and horrors: WWI, the Bolshevik revolution, the 1919 revolution in Germany, the rise of cynical mass propaganda, seeds of WWII etc. 1919 deals with none of that in a substantial way. It's just hundreds of pages about the personal affairs of a few women and heavy drinkers touring Europe while the war rages. Dos Passos even introduces his own alter ego! Did Diego Rivera paint himself as a central figure in The History of Mexico? I think not.

I still like Dos Passos' narrative flow, but this book is a run-of-the-mill personal novel, and a bad one at that. I was hoping to see further embroidery of a tapestry of offbeat American characters, as in the best parts of The 42nd Parallel. But "U.S.A." (the protagonist of the trilogy) imploded into a clique of a few bourgeois Americans. Also, the Newsreel segments got increasingly grating because media was (and is) so important in driving society to war through propaganda, and even to constituting people's very souls, but Dos Passos treats it flippantly, like wallpaper. I appreciate he tried to do something new, but the Newsreels have no function in the novels. I'll finish the third volume for completeness, but Dos Passos clearly wasn't up to the task of creating a true social novel.

The only problem with 1919, the second installment in John Dos Passos's USA Trilogy is that I had already read The 42nd Parallel, so the literary structure and devices that had blown me away on first having encountered the singular literary style of Dos Passos no longer had the same effect. Stylistically 1919 is a continuation of its predecessor, with interweaving fictional narratives, stream of conscious autobiographical snippets, biographical snapshots of key figures of the day and newsreel sections that read like newspaper headlines and clippings or like the newsreels that would play before a film.

So too in terms of the narrative 1919 in many ways picks up where The 42nd Parallel left off, as we travel with many of the same characters from here to "over there", where the Great War is gaining steam. New characters are also introduced and they find themselves caught up in affairs much bigger than themselves. At home pacifists and other anti-war leftists are thrown in jail without just cause. The labor problem is pushed to the background by focusing on the war. The masses find themselves caught up in a bloody event that is promised to "end all wars" to "make the world safe for democracy."

Much as Gertrude Stein used repetition in Three Women or as Kurosawa would later employ it in Rashomon, Dos Passos makes use of repetition to show us events from the fly on the wall perspective of another character's life. In one fictional narrative the war is over by the end, talks of peace already under way. Then in the next fictional section the war is just getting started. Perhaps the most interesting thing through it all is that the war, or at least the front, is hardly of interest at all. We, as readers, know there is a war on. Americans are in Europe working in public relations, being of service driving ambulances or in the offices of the Red Cross, but combat and death are scarcely mentioned. We're concerned with the lives of the Americans over there, their love lives, their hopes and dreams, the tangled webs they weave while war rages in the background. The characters we follow are affected by the war to be sure, but are not so much its victims. One character, Daughter, loses a brother in aviation training before being sent overseas, but she picks up the pieces and moves on.

The war, like all wars, undoubtedly benefits some - namely bankers and weapons manufacturers - though other ordinary men and women see their stars rise, profiting in some ways from the misery of others. As the peace comes many find that the war was a dream, the peace for them a nightmare. Though for some of modest means, postwar Europe is a cushy place to be. The world made safe for democracy is a world that has opened up new markets for exploitation (which will presumably be the main focus of the third part of the USA Trilogy, The Big Money). And with the crumbling of European economies, the dollar is strong and one can live comfortably abroad.

While the fictional narratives are concerned with the inner lives and future plans of our cast of characters, the headlines and occasional chitter make us aware of the horrors of war, of the death, destruction and devastation which are all around. To the politicians, happy to have quelled the fear of revolution and to have softened their domestic labor problems, the war was a lifesaver. In the States, the agitators, like Eugene Debs, were rounded up and jailed indefinitely; and many a young man who might have been a labor problem at home was sent abroad to risk his life. Many died. Many more were injured. And when all was said and done, the men who sent them to their deaths had many fine things to say about liberty, freedom, service and of making the world safe for democracy. Families were destroyed, economies ruined, cities bombed. Boys died. Many boys died well before their time. And they were acknowledged with flowery speeches and memorials. And "Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies."

Nothing changes ... "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm After They've Seen Paree?"

Book II of the USA trilogy. John Dos Passos' firsthand experience -having fought in WWI for the allies - steeps his characters with such humanity. Experimental, cynical & embittered towards another war the capitalists will profit off of and working people will die for.

Published in 1932, this is the second book in the USA Trilogy. The storyline follows a handful of recurring characters, mostly during the Great War, with the last sections related to the post-war period. It reads as a series of interconnected vignettes. Dos Passos weaves together multiple narratives featuring characters from different social backgrounds, including laborers, soldiers, politicians, and activists. We have an American sailor going AWOL to join the merchant marines, a pacifist who serves as ambulance driver, a union organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies), and a woman who ends up as a Red Cross worker in France. It also contains several minibiographies of notable people such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

The author employs an experimental style (especially for the 1930s) that blends fictional narratives, biographical sketches, newsreel fragments, song lyrics, and fragments of speeches. Themes include class tensions, social injustice, suppression of dissent, political radicalism, and disillusionment. I would not call it a novel, exactly. It is more of a pastiche that captures a wide swath of history and the social and political landscape of early 20th-century America. Unfortunately, it has not aged well and contains many terms that will be offensive to modern readers (e.g., racial, ethnic, and misogynistic slurs). This trilogy is considered a classic. So far, I have not loved the first two books. They are a bit too fragmented for my taste, not to mention the terminology. I need to decide whether to proceed with the third book of the trilogy.

There was once a war in a faraway land
American soldiers were heroes and
The Land of the Free claimed the victor's sword
That king, tsar and kaiser lusted for.

I understand that the Korean War owns the trademark as the "forgotten war," but can anyone explain to me how World War I--a war in which America lost 118,000 men in just over 12 months of fighting, a war whose scars continue to tear at Europe and the Middle East--could have left such little impact on American culture?

George Cohan sang, "Over There" and America fiddled to "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." Fitzgerald and Hemingway romanticized the war. It wasn't until I read Dos Passos that I understood the visceral struggle and the deep sense of cynicism that seethes from many European accounts of the war.

1919 chronicles the war in Dos Passos's unique way, pioneered in the first book in the trilogy, The 42nd Parallel. Collages of headlines and song lyrics blast from Newsreels, joining the poetic, intimacy of Camera Eyes, and the straightforward tales of characters that provide diverse perspectives on the war: the weary second-guessing of Joe Williams, the soulless cynicism of Dick Savage, the naive embrace of adventure of Anne Elizabeth Trent, and the soulful uncertainty of Eveline Hutchens.

So much of contemporary history of the war deals with the military leaders, but Dos Passos presents the war in the context of a nation struggling with labor unrest. Even in 1919 the strikes are presented far more vividly than the actual fighting in the trenches, which also seems to take a back seat to the post-war power grab staged by oil companies and politicians. It's as if the war lures its American characters to Paris to make love, to adventure through southern France and Italy, and to die--but not necessarily to fight.

This book was a worthy five-star successor to The 42nd Parallel, but I didn't like it quite as much. The perspectives are more narrow than in 42P, which varied greater with Janie Williams's pro-war stridency, J.W. Moorehouse & GH Barrow's venal opportunism, and Mac's liberal, binational quest. Most of the action is set in Paris among American expats.

I can't wait to dig into The Big Money now.

"That's a 7/10.
Significantly better than the first one. Here his characters actually connect! Amazing! Writing a book with characters that know each other! On the whole it is much improved, though there are still major problems (he's always introducing people at the end). But yes, he matches his ability to his ambition a lot better this time round.
It's still not a masterpiece, but I actually liked this version."

This book is painful to get through. The story and characters have no depth or personality. It's like you're on a date with someone who just won't shut up! All that's missing is the modern way it would be told by adding "and then, and then, and then" between each sentence. (page 125: "They waited two weeks in Vigo while the officials quarreled about their status and they got pretty fed up with it. [and then] They were all loaded on a train to take them to Gibraltar where they would be taken on board a Shipping Board boat. [and then] They were three days on the train with nothing to sleep on but the hard benches. [and then] Spain was just one set of great dusty mountains. [and then] They changed cars in .....") I understand it's supposed to be a snapshot into the lives of different people during this time in America, but honestly others do it so much better - Wolfe, Marquez, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck. They paint a picture you can see. You can feel it. It's colorful and meaningful. Characters have lives, loves, lusts, depth, personalities, and philosophies all within the confines of the era in which they live. And honesty about halfway through this book I started skipping the newsreals. I couldn't take it anymore. It's just a hodge podge of headlines and article clippings in different sizes and formatting. perhaps it would have had more of an impact if it were actual news clippings in a cut & paste style to have a tangible effect of seeing & feeling them the way they were read in that time.

In this second volume of the USA trilogy, John Dos Passos deals with World War I and the many problems his characters have in negotiating life during the war years. As always, he provides a sympathetic portrayal of some of the members of the American social underbelly (labor unionizers, deserters, and ne'er-do-wells of various stripes).

One of the drawbacks of this particular book in the trilogy is that it finds Dos Passos using more colloquial dialogue. Unfortunately, he isn't as skilled in producing folksy and/or accented dialogue as I would have hoped, and it wears thin in places. Aside from that single gripe, I truly enjoyed this book.

This is the second book in the USA trilogy set in the year of the armistice. Instead of being so much about the prolitariat class, it is about the exploiters and the sellouts living a decadant, careless life in the cities of old Europe--Paris and Rome.
The worlf is being designed as the profiteers Nicky for position in the postwar future.
The grim reality of the war and the hipocracy of the ruling class is powerfully captured in the final chapter about the unknown soldier.

Having spent much of my rearing in many areas of the setting, I felt this volume like a peice of anti-nostalgia, if you’ll forgive my neologism. This book was most likely etched on the wave of sentiment I rode during those difficult times though I was mostly unaware. It may touch you as it did me only in different ways, but it was certainly not disappointing. It might also touch you in the same ways.

The second volume of the USA has all of the merits of the first volume in the trilogy. But it’s interesting to see more on America’s new role in Europe. It’s equally fascinating to see the impact of war, socialism, union protests, and the Russian Revolution on the nation.