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The USA Trilogy John Dos Passos (1930-1936) #23


The 42nd Parallel
March 22, 2013

Whoever picked these books for the Modern Library list had a GIANT boner for Marx, communism and the worker’s struggle. I have learned more about the IWW and the Marxist movement and brotherhood than I have ever cared to know. The interesting thing about these books is that they open my eyes to see the history of unified labor (i.e. modern political communism), and understand that the “system�� that people bitch about. It seems then, as now, the people that are pro-communism and “united labor�� talk and wring their hands about problems of “free speech�� and “worker’s rights��, then make poor life decisions that doom them to the “working class��. That, or they are hypothetical academics. Either way, I’m sick of hearing about their ideas that don’t work. You know what gets you ahead in life more than anything else? Personal responsibility, that’s what. The main characters in this book (for the most part) end up bumming around, stealing shit, dropping out of school, knocking up girls, then leaving because they feel trapped by the system. They trap themselves. You can’t have individual freedom without accountability.

1919
April 6, 2013

I found this particular book to be more disjointed than the first. I have read three books during the reading of this and fell asleep reading it (and not even in bed) on four occasions. 1919 focused a bit more on the capitalist aspect (sort of) of one of the main characters, but still relied heavily on the “world revolution�� theme so prevalent in the first novel. Another continued theme in this book is that most of the male characters knock up their girlfriends and then either a) force them to get abortions, or b) leave them. Take this particular example from a character that I liked at first, but ends up being just as despicable as almost every other character encountered so far in this book. He is named Richard Savage (all parentheses are mine):

“He thought of Anne Elizabeth (the girl he knocked up) going home alone in a taxicab through the wet streets. He wished he had a great many lives so that he might have spent one of them with Anne Elizabeth. Might write a poem about that and send it to her. And the smell of the little cyclamens. In the café opposite the waiters were turning the chairs upside down and setting them on tables. He wished he had a great many lives so that he might be a waiter in a café turning the chairs upside down.��

What an asshole. What a savage dick. I just ruined your life �� maybe I’ll write you a poem about my ambiguous notions that if there were multiple “me’s��, I might do the right things, but if there were multiple “me’s��, I might also be a waiter. By the way, nice fucking flowers.

Just a bit earlier in the book he tells her:
“…it’s no more my fault than it is yours…if you’d taken proper precautions…��

All the protagonists in this book suck.

The Big Money
June 6, 2013

You know what �� it has taken me so long to get through this book that it is almost impossible to put it all together in a review. I don’t know if it would have come together anyway. The story line was so weak that this just felt like random essays and Dos Passos trying to tie up loose ends (poorly).
The only interesting part of this whole trilogy happened in this particular installment, and that was the wrapping up of the Charley Anderson story. With a bit more creativity, that might have even redeemed this last book, but it seemed to me that in the end it still somehow managed to fall a bit flat. Then the story jumps right in to a minor character and proceeds to get boring again.
I honestly had to power my way through this book and it was quite a test of patience for me. While the writing style was easy to understand, it seemed like in the Camera Eye and Newsreel snippets that punctured this story Dos Passos tried too hard to be an experimental writer. Instead of adding the intended color to the series, most of the time it bogged down a story that was already mired in literary muck. Yuck, Meh, and further indifference.

3.5