Supposing that in some alternate reality Mr. Dos Passos allowed me to read his manuscript before it was published and asked for my suggestions, I think I would have given him three:

1. Drop the "newsreel" gimmicks and just tell the story,
2. Given that this book is set mostly outside of the United States, maybe it shouldn't be part of a trilogy called "U.S.A.", and
3. A novel need not be vulgar to be modern

I imagine that in that alternate reality he would have laughed off my suggestions and proceeded to publish one of the classic works of 20th century American literature.

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.

Volume 2 of the USA trilogy. Okay, but not as good as "The 42nd Parallel." I had intended to read all three volumes of this trilogy, but since I had already read the third volume (The Big Money) years ago, I decided to call it good.

The second part of the Dos Passos, USA trilogy begins with an approximation. 1919, such as its title, is not a question of it. The characters embody how Americans got involved in the Great War and incorporated them into the Red Cross, the merchant navy, the front, and the rear. The novel is marked by the narrative technique used in 42nd Parallel: fictionalized history, the method of collage of headlines, local chronicles, popular songs, biographies of figures in American history, and autobiographical flashes. Despite the gravity of the historical background, the work takes place on a piano rhythm, less hectic than the first, reflecting a country's incomplete fermentation. The novel is no longer American in that it no longer takes place mainly in the New World; it is the meeting of all these destinies with the Old Continent, its culture, and its art of living. Its main interest lies in the personal confrontation of individuals with France, Italy, and especially Paris. Some will develop an unfailing love for our country. Some will get lost in it, and others will return, not quite the same, to a country that has changed—dominated by economic forces, trusts, and big business, where the 'We now hunt for pacifists, for reds that we call yellows. This opus is the story of what was called the Lost Generation. We inevitably think of Ernest Hemingway and Francis Scott Fitzgerald; it is also the sublimated experience of the author himself. So lost, we are also a bit lost in front of the proliferation of beings that it is difficult to follow from time to time and whose destinies intersect: this opus is the midpoint of a titanic, original work, which requires a reading diligent, at the risk of getting lost in all this novelistic corpus, of seeing his involvement, his interest, and his understanding weaken significantly—a demanding read.

Well worth the time and the effort. Recommended.

I picked up the second installment of U.S.A. after finishing The 42nd Parallel about six months ago. This was to allow myself a break, but one that wasn't too long that I'd forget the characters or lose my grasp of the whirlwind style.

Of the handful of new fictional characters who appear and eventually interact with the major players from the first novel, only a few I found to be consistently compelling. They're drawn with great detail, and experience much, but my ability to root for them was often undermined by their pessimism, condescension, and wavering objectives. Of course, what the hell would I know about living through WWI?

It's the War that sets this book apart from its predecessor, and also helps the disparate tales cohere. We get to see the characters experience the war in different ways--from its center, from the outskirts--and eventually cross paths in Europe. We also get to see lots of Paris, and lots of drinking.

The short biographical passages are great. They're informative yet succinct, and are carefully selected to coincide with what's happening in the fictional characters' lives. The bios also reinforce the novel's status as a quasi-documentary; it depicts life's relentless motion and its plethora of sensory experience.

1919 really ends on a strong note with its segment on The Unknown Soldier. Here Dos Passos synthesizes his various stylistic approaches. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier stands as a single monument but stands for so many--the unique lives of whom Dos Passos imagines in fragments, intercut with Harding's address at the Dedication. I found it genuinely moving.

I plan to read the last book, The Big Money, but probably in another six months.

this book was a pain in my ass (I only cared for Daughter)

Long short stories or short novellas with newspaper headlines, song lyrics, and verbal newsreels in between.

U.S.A. continues to frustrate. The Newsreel, Camera Eye, and biographical sections are all phenomenal work. The biographical pieces, were they to be collected in a single volume, would easily be a top-five book. But the whole thing is dragged down by Dos Passos’s characters. Their stories, though told in frictionless run-on prose, rarely rise above a state of Marxist soap opera, with broken hearts and unplanned pregnancies gumming up 1919’s otherwise compelling experimentalism. That said, this one outshines The 42nd Parallel by a decent margin. Here’s hoping the narratives in The Big Money bring a bit more to the table.

Actually loved this, the second in Dos Passos’s U.S.A. (a novel in three parts, but usually described as a trilogy). The first, The 42nd Parallel, I read back in May and wasn’t entirely sure about, although the innovative “Newsreel” and “Camera Eye” sections were certainly memorable. 1919 worked better for me, perhaps because the formal stuff was more familiar the second time around and some of the characters were already introduced in the earlier volume, although obliquely. (For example, our first point of view character in 1919, the merchant sailor Joe Williams, is the cousin of the typist Janey, who’s a main POV character in The 42nd Parallel.) Also, 1919 is about the First World War, so there’s a built-in structure that helps keep the attention: with Dos Passos, there’s really never all that much of a plot, so the structural bolstering is handy. You can’t read too much of this stuff at once, which is why I’ve left volume 3 for the next time I’m over here, but I’m really enjoying it now. Source: family copy

In a time of subjective facts, gaslighting and narrative control it is refreshing to read a work like this which proves that just by stating facts, stating the obvious, and describing incidents plainly one can most eloquently tell what's really happening. There is no need to outright say someone is cruel, selfish, hypocritical, greedy etc as one just needs to describe things from each character's perspective allowing the reader to come to the conclusion that the author intended or not. Highly recommended.

I have a piece IN THE GODDAMN NEW YORKER today about this book and Dos Passos's relevance to today: https://www.newyorker.com/books/secon...