Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos may be highly acclaimed, but I do not like it. It pulsates the down-side and only the down-side of New York City. It draws the lifestyle of the “the Roaring Twenties” and the disillusionment characteristic of authors of the Lost Generation. I dislike the book's excessive fragmentation and the multitude of characters that flash by in a blur.

The characters are a large group of people, from struggling immigrants to the well-established and secure, inhabitants of Manhattan at the turn of the 20th century. The time period covered is two to three decades, from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age, so through the First World War. The setting remains fixed to the city. The city itself is a character—in fact the prime character. The pulse of the city is felt throughout. Life in the city is chaotic and haphazard.

The focus is on the city rather than the story’s characters or even what they do. The characters are each one of a multitude and none do you come to know intimately. You observe from a distance the whirlwind of their lives. Do you care when something bad happens to them? No! They are a part of a group, each is simply an individual of the mass, the people of the city.

The telling is fragmented and disjointed. One shifts rapidly and abruptly from scene to scene. Events are presented as snapshots that zip by in a blur. A reader must fill in for themselves what has happened between snapshots. The hubbub and dirt of the city is hammered in repetitively. Time with characters is spent predominantly in bars and, as a consequence, conversations are shallow and empty.

Dos Passos has drawn a universe where absurdity, tragedy and fatalism reign. His focus is not on individuals. The city is a downward spiraling force bigger than the people in it.

Joe Barrett narrates the audiobook. On top of not liking the book, neither do I like Barrett’s narration. He over dramatizes. His pronunciation of words is unclear. Words are slurred. This is done for effect, an example being when the person speaking is tipsy or drunk. The tempo is fine, but I dislike how the volume at which the words are spoken varies significantly. Some words are yelled, others are whispered. No, I do not like the narration, so I am giving it one star. As usual I rate the book and the narration separately.

I dislike the fragmented style of the writing and the blur of the characters. They are superficial, just as Dos Passos intended them to be.

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One Man's Initiation: 1917 4 stars
Manhattan Transfer 1 star
Three Soldiers maybe

"Se tem curiosidade de saber como é Nova Iorque, a que cheira... então este é o livro indicado para si."
— New York Herald Tribune

Pois... não tenho nariz para tanto...

A narrativa é composta quase exclusivamente por diálogos entre as personagens que aparecem e desaparecem, em vários momentos das suas vidas. São mais de meia centena, que me pareceram mortos-vivos; excepto uma que morreu logo no início.
Suponho que o objectivo é dar a conhecer Nova Iorque, no início do Século XX; a riqueza, a pobreza, a política, a guerra, os sindicatos, a bolsa, a lei seca. E as pessoas; revoltadas, solitárias, mal amadas, infelizes...

Manhattan Transfer un romanzo che è un vero cult su New York, e capisco bene il motivo. Incarna perfettamente l'anima multiforme della città, la sua vita sporca, truffaldina, vivace, dolorante, capace di sembrare dormiente e l'attimo dopo svegliarsi di colpo. Un romanzo caleidoscopico, rumoroso, pieno di personaggi e spostamenti; pieno di battute fulminanti, di immagini che rimangono impresse davanti agli occhi. Un romanzo che ogni amante di New York deve assolutamente leggere, che ha la qualità innegabile del classico moderno. Inoltre, se volete confrontarvi con una scrittura incredibile, se volete essere certi di leggere un autore che ha fatto della costruzione di brani vera e propria arte, anche per questo motivo Manhattan Transfer è da leggere. Il talento mirabolante - sì, a me faceva pensare ad un mago che tira fuori dal capello il coniglio - di John Dos Passos nell'infilare descrizioni fulminanti, visive, e che definirei anche onomatopeiche, mi ha soddisfatto. Una prosa impeccabile, di quelle che si fanno riconoscere. Verrebbe spontaneo, secondo me, aprire questo libro e, senza aver letto la copertina, rendersi conto che si tratta di lui. Una prosa che è un marchio di riconoscimento.

i just started this book, and while it kind of reads as a book where the writer is consciously trying to create the american equivalent of ulysses, it is an otherwise good read so far. it must have been hard to be an intelligent writer in the 20's and not find yourself overly influenced by joyce.

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Actually, now that I'm further into the book, I see less and less relation to Ulysses. The multiple adjectives preceding their subject was a stylistic thing I saw again and again in the opening pages. The story has become quite complicated - lots and lots of characters, reminds me of the new Pynchon novel, Against the Day actually...although it came long before. Now that I read it, I can't help but think that some of those NYC chapters in the new Pynchon novel may have been paying homage to Dos Passos...

Back to Joyce, the structure reminds me of the Wandering Rocks episode of Ulysses - similar roving camera eye on multiple subjects and seemingly random in the interception of paths/narrative streams. It's a good book, I don't know why it took me so long to get around to reading this guy, I've been reading about him for years.

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i'm almost finished with this fine book, and have really grown to like it. because you are constantly viewing the characters from a field of fragmented expositions, it can be hard to feel "close" to them the way you would if you were reading dostoevsky, for example. but you do grow to know them well, and the fragmentation seems to be dos passos' way of maintaining an objective viewpoint that resists sentimentality or other 19th century impulses. it's clearly a work of modernism, and a good one.

es como un cuadro de david macho pero en el que existe el paso del tiempo o uno de los dibujos de chris riddell en cualquier libro de ottoline en los que hay mil millones de detalles...en resumen: un libro muy chulo que te deja con buen cuerpo (sobre todo por como está escrito)

dos recomendaciones:
- creo que es mejor leerlo en vuestra lengua materna, hay mazo mazo mazo mazo palabras extrañas y encima va juan dos pasos y te escribe las palabras de la manera en la que son pronunciadas según cada acento
- hacerse una lista de los nombres que van saliendo para no perderse (son muchos) (más de ochenta)

Μεγάλο βιβλίο, όσο ολάκερη η ζωή, όσο κι η ίδια η Νέα Υόρκη.

Περισσότερα ελπίζω σύντομα.

I’ve been told that Manhattan Transfer is an experimental novel, or at least a key stepping stone to the experimentalism of the USA trilogy. It certainly offers a more original form of storytelling than Three Soldiers (which I nevertheless liked a lot), written only a couple of years earlier. Yet the book doesn’t feel that revolutionary. It does, however, feel fresh and alive. The dialogue is somehow both clever and down to earth. Dos Passos’ characters have their tragic arcs, but seem to accept their fates with a degree of phlegm and even adventure and humor. Like its residents, Dos Passos’ New York seems to have a tragic dimension, but you know it is gallantly or even heroically failing to be a healthy, safe, and supportive place to live.

Here's someone I wanted to read for ages and finally got around to--happy that I did. Dos Passos falls into the semi-classic lefty bind of making what he's ostensibly critiquing also seem awesome: his descriptions of the interiors of the wealthy make them seem amazing, even with the smart set throwing up in wastepaper baskets in the midst of these interiors. The novel sort of makes you spit out cliches in describing it, as it is in fact big, sprawling, Joycean, less about characters than about the setting, New York drunk, etc. etc. Let a thousand vaguely Benjaminian papers be born!

How can there be explained the complicated and fascinating relationship between the city and the narrator in all major Modernist works with themes focused on urbanity? Think of James Joyce’s Dublin, dull and suffocating, with its Evelyns forever clued on the shore they dare not leave. Think of Henry Miller’s Paris, with its siren song that entangles the artists to better devour them. Think of Virginia Woolf’s London, collecting thoughts and fates in the glimpse of a park, the rush of a street, the passing of a tram. Think of John Dos Passos’s New York glowing with promises that it never keeps.

For every one of them and many others, the City is much more than a place, a conventional setting of the narrative, it is truly and fully a character, maybe the most important of all, for it determines the fate of the other characters, making them dependent, helpless, tragic. Furthermore, it has a second role, no less important: to embody History, merciless History that feeds on people and events to show that only the masks change, the stage and the plot remain the same. That there is no real progress, no real escape for the fly under the bell jar, only an incessant return to origins, a despondent circle motion where Dublin is forever full of minor epiphanies, London is haunted by suicide thoughts, Paris is incurably diseased and New York is a Hotel California.

However, where Henry Miller used the full stream of consciousness, Virginia Woolf combined it with free indirect speech and Joyce with interior monologue and objective speech, Dos Passos chooses the collage technique with a subtle care for symmetry and a flagrant indifference for timeline. The cinematic quality of his narrative has been often pointed out, for it is made, apparently, of chaotically arranged snapshots and vignettes, with interchangeable or mirrored characters that create a collective hero even when they seem to focus on a single character. I often, during my lecture, felt like looking at a huge fresco swept by a restless spotlight whose conic light temporarily captures a destiny, then leaves it, takes another, to resume with the first choice at another point in time. Some characters, like Helen, are spotted since birth, or, like Bud, for a shorter period, while others are only shadows without names, only a color, a smile, a dress that leaves however a lasting impression on mind even though they are not followed.

The narrative is thus full of red herrings that appear to contradict Chekov’s gun principle – until the reader realizes that this is the point, really, to show the unity in diversity, the tragic condition of humankind, be them rich or poor (Stan and Bud), successful or failures (James and Joe), educated or ignorant (Jimmy and Jake). Actors on a grim stage (all of them, not only Helen), their individual destiny may fleetingly interest some gossip column of a newspaper, but it is not important per se, a mere drop in the whirlpool of history.

Some read Manhattan Transfer as a fervent critique of the American capitalism, for it is known that, at the time of its creation, Doss Passos was a leftist. Maybe the novel can be interpreted like this also, but it is neither tendentious nor “engagé”. The capitalism is only another way of destruction of the humankind, together with war, time and personal emotions.

Above suicides, lost loves, lost jobs, minor thefts and big larcenies, strikes, war, prohibition, the city blankly contemplates the struggle of generations, knowing so well that no one can truly leave. The last image of the novel, with Jimmy Herf, apparently free of love and society, keen to go “pretty far” is maybe the most tragic of all, for what is the river he travelled down by ferry but Styx?

I’m going to pull a GJ (Ginnie Jones) here and state:

”Manhattan Transfer is a kaleidoscopic portrait of New York City in the first two decades of the 20th century that follows the changing fortunes of more than a dozen characters as they strive to make sense out of the chaos of modern urban existence.”

Yeah, so that’s really what you need to know if you, you know, want the breakdown. Of course, I need to add my own two cents. ( Of course)

Reading this was an act of love. My husband has tried for almost 20 years to get me to read Dos Passos. I usually give it a few pages and then find some excuse (The library asked for it back, I left it on the bus, I’m menstrual…) to drop it and hope that he’d forget… but yeah…he’s stubborn. I’ve tried The USA Trilogy and those Camera Eyes just got to be too much. Dos Passos is often associated with Joyce and some other writers that I’ve never really had much interest in and it’s always sort of daunted me.. made me feel stupid. I began to resent him just for this reason.

So, I picked up Manhattan Transfer with great reluctance. I counted the pages. I did status updates… I soldiered on. Did I hate it? Not really. Would I consider reading more? Not really. I’m extremely lukewarm here.

First of all, ‘more than a dozen characters’ may sound like an okay thing, but try following plot lines for more (and I stress this) than 12 personalities. Not so easy. It’s like sitting on a park bench at a playground and making up stories for each person there and then going back in two weeks and trying to remember each scenario and continue on… You may only follow them around for a page or two because they, you know, die or disappear (Where’d you go, Emile?) or they may be absent for like oh… 100 pages and you’ve ‘met’ so many new people in between that only the name sounds familiar and you’re either too exhausted to recall or you don’t care enough anyway…

Which… I suppose… isn’t all that unlike living in a city… trying to remember who that person who is smiling at you in the corner market and do you really know them or is it someone that you might have seen at a friend’s apartment and it turns out that they’re actually your neighbor down the hall… Yeah, not unlike that.

So, I guess I’d have to say that the main character here IS the city… and how each character deals with it and how their ‘luck’ determines their ‘lot’ in life. This is when unions were being formed and the market was young. This is WWI with a big chunk of immigration. This is not the New York City that I knew… so, again… I wasn’t all that invested in the book. I enjoyed reading each character’s story but I wasn’t attached to any of them (including NYC) and I found that I had to muddle through and fight back some yawns. It took a good third of the book before I found a groove and could resist putting it down. I also felt that none of the characters were particularly fond of New York either and I had to laugh at this phrase:

The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there’s nowhere else to go. It’s the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.

Indeed.

So… I guess I could use the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ excuse… but I’m not so sure. I feel like I shouldn’t really discount myself on this one. Sometimes I just need more to work with.


And it's really about 2.8 stars... because it was more than OK, but I didn't like it...

Dove accadono le cose

Scegliere un punto da cui iniziare questa recensione è stato molto difficile, e non tanto per le 400 pagine fitte fitte in carattere minuscolo che compongono questo "Manhattan Transfer", quanto per il numero di personaggi e di situazioni che vanno a costruire una trama tanto intricata quanto inestricabile. Se però c'è una cosa che ho imparato, a me che piace perdere tempo dietro puzzle da migliaia di tessere, è che per fare un puzzle, per quanto sia complesso, magari puoi partire dalla cornice e poi tutto diventa più semplice. Se dovessimo cercare la cornice di questo libro di Dos Passos potremmo partire proprio dalla primissima pagina, lì dove uno dei tanti protagonisti, sul traghetto che a breve lo sbarcherà a Manhattan, si rivolge a un ragazzo per chiedergli se ci vuole ancora molto ad arrivare. E alla controdomanda del giovane, "Dipende da dove vuole andare", la risposta dell'uomo è la più semplice e al tempo stesso la più rappresentativa di tutto il romanzo: "Come si arriva a Brodway? Vorrei andare dove accadono le cose".

Ecco la chiave di tutto "Manhattan Transfer": dove accadono le cose. Dos Passos è un esperto di puzzle e quello che va a comporre è il più grande puzzle su New York, una grande illustrazione sulle "cose" che accadono ai suoi abitanti e nelle sue strade. In quello che è il suo libro più noto, lo scrittore americano sperimenta con il linguaggio e con lo stile, e ne esce fuori quella che potrebbe essere una raccolta di racconti, ma con tutti i paragrafi mischiati fra loro. Le vite dei protagonisti vengono mescolate proprio come tante tessere di questo grande puzzle: ne troviamo alcune che mai si incontrano, ne troviamo altre che si incastrano fra loro, perdiamo per strada personaggi e ne ritroviamo di dimenticati. Dos Passos intesse così tante storie-racconti che seguire la sua voce a volte diventa disperatamente difficile, ma è una voce, quella di Dos Passos, che è tanto potente e immaginifica che difficilmente può stancare. Una voce che è la voce stessa della città, rappresentata qui in tutte le sue centinaia di luci e in tutto il suo essere uno dei più grandi palcoscenici del mondo: si mischiano storie di felicità e storie di povertà, di scalate al successo e di repentine cadute nella miseria, di amori e disamori, di famiglie che si sfaldano e famiglie che si costruiscono, di nascite e di morti, di proibizionismo, di guerra e di pace. E man mano che la storia procede, Dos Passos reinventa colori e suoni di questa città, fra metafore bellissime e caratterizzazioni uniche che coinvolgono tutti i sensi ("si sentiva odore di caffè e di «New York Times»", "il cielo era del colore blu dell'uovo del pettirosso", "l'amava fino a conoscerne tutta la fitta foresta dei suoi capelli", ...). Più volte in queste pagine si sentono echi dei grandi romanzi americani del periodo e di quello immediatamente successivo, da Fitzgerald a Yates passando per Steinbeck, e non tanto per lo stile, quanto per il fatto che "Manhattan Transfer" racconta in maniera così vivida la vita di tutti i giorni - tanto comune da essere così straordinaria - che ne esce uno dei tanti affreschi, forse il più completo, del XX secolo americano.

Sono quattro stelle piene: non nascondo di aver fatto un po' di fatica a seguire tutte le trame così mescolate fra loro, ma la soddisfazione è stata anche tanta. Probabilmente una seconda lettura mi permetterà di focalizzare l'attenzione su altri aspetti, perché c'è tanto materiale in questo libro su New York che anche dopo diverse letture potrà sorprendervi.

Едно голямо смело платно от крачки, дим, аромати, очаквания, съдби, зарязани завинаги в някои от страниците герои... Едновременно динамичен и пасивен Ню Йорк, описан не с думи, а с къси удари на четка