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Nineteen Nineteen

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It seems almost impossible that John Dos Passos has slid into anonymity--his considerable literary reputation once rivaled that of his close friend and drinking buddy, Ernest Hemingway--but few readers today recognize him at all. Part of a trilogy that he published in 1932, entitled, "USA," ("The 42nd Parallel," and "The Big Money") "Nineteen Nineteen" is a novel of extraordinary historical sweep and stylistic craft. Dos Passos was influenced by the great experimental genius of James Joyce's "Ulysses," a novel that revolutionized fictional narration. Using several experimental techniques, fictional and non-fictional biographies, a poetic, stream of conscious voice entitled, "The Camera Eye," and a cinematic-montage technique that Dos Passos called, "Newsreels," this novel sweeps a decade's events from 1910 to 1919. The middle novel of the trilogy, "Nineteen Nineteen" traces historical events, particularly the devastating results of World War I, and individuals caught-up in the gigantic forces that reshaped the 20th Century. His historical portraits, or biographies, of Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Joe Hill, and Woodrow Wilson combine with his stunning fictional, almost Dickensian, characters like a sailor named, Joe Williams, a rich, Harvard kid, named Richard Ellsworth Savage, or an idealistic woman, Eveline Hutchins, who finds the inexorable forces of war and economic power inescapable and ruinous. These accounts are told with a tone of satiric irony and bittersweet fatalism. The novel remains, despite its neglected status, one of the great achievements of American literature despite its flawed politics. Dos Passos began a devoted socialist, convinced that capitalism had both caused and profited from the war. Later in his career, particularly in a 1950's trilogy entitled, "Mid-Century," Dos Passos repudiated his left-wing sympathies for a turn to the political right. In spite of these ideological trappings, he remains, along with William Faulkner, one of the most significant exponents of experimental fiction in America over the past millenium.

It seems almost impossible that John Dos Passos has slid into anonymity--his considerable literary reputation once rivaled that of his close friend and drinking buddy, Ernest Hemingway--but few readers today recognize him at all. Part of a trilogy that he published in 1932, entitled, "USA," ("The 42nd Parallel," and "The Big Money") "Nineteen Nineteen" is a novel of extraordinary historical sweep and stylistic craft. Dos Passos was influenced by the great experimental genius of James Joyce's "Ulysses," a novel that revolutionized fictional narration. Using several experimental techniques, fictional and non-fictional biographies, a poetic, stream of conscious voice entitled, "The Camera Eye," and a cinematic-montage technique that Dos Passos called, "Newsreels," this novel sweeps a decade's events from 1910 to 1919. The middle novel of the trilogy, "Nineteen Nineteen" traces historical events, particularly the devastating results of World War I, and individuals caught-up in the gigantic forces that reshaped the 20th Century. His historical portraits, or biographies, of Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Joe Hill, and Woodrow Wilson combine with his stunning fictional, almost Dickensian, characters like a sailor named, Joe Williams, a rich, Harvard kid, named Richard Ellsworth Savage, or an idealistic woman, Eveline Hutchins, who finds the inexorable forces of war and economic power inescapable and ruinous. These accounts are told with a tone of satiric irony and bittersweet fatalism. The novel remains, despite its neglected status, one of the great achievements of American literature despite its flawed politics. Dos Passos began a devoted socialist, convinced that capitalism had both caused and profited from the war. Later in his career, particularly in a 1950's trilogy entitled, "Mid-Century," Dos Passos repudiated his left-wing sympathies for a turn to the political right. In spite of these ideological trappings, he remains, along with William Faulkner, one of the most significant exponents of experimental fiction in America over the past millenium.