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Title: 1919: Volume Two of the U.S.A. Trilogy by John DOS Passos ISBN: 0-618-05682-3 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 25 May, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Where Are the Reginald Marsh Drawings?
Comment: The one star is not meant as a review of the novel itself (USA is one of the top ten works of 20th Century American fiction) but as a review of this terrible edition, which leaves out the Reginald Marsh drawings. Those drawings comprise an essential part of the text, and you miss out on the whole Dos Passos experience without them.
Rating: 5
Summary: Was the effort worth it?
Comment: "1919" is the sequel to "42nd Parallel", and takes Dos Passos's examination of early twentieth century America on to World War One. In fact, considering that this book is part two of the "USA" trilogy, it might seem strange that remarkably little of it is set in America.
Told in the same picaresque style as "42nd Parallel", with "The Camera Eye" and "Newsreel" sequences, most of the action takes place in England, France, Italy and a variety of other countries: for example, there's a section devoted to volunteer ambulance drivers in France and Italy which reminded me of Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" (although Dos Passos's account is far better).
It could be argued that the location of the plot is not as important as the characters' attitudes to the war and America's role in it, and the post-war "settlement". Dos Passos's characters experience the futility and waste of war, culminating in the superb ending of "Newsreel 43/The Body of an American".
It seemed to me that Dos Passos was saying that for America, World War One was a double-edged sword in that (except for those who objected to US involvement on various grounds) it masked the socio-economic divisions in the country under a patina of patriotism. But it also heightened such tensions, both directly as the fighting men expected to return to a home in which their sacrifices would be rewarded, and indirectly through the revolutionary example set by events in Russia.
"1919" is a pessimistic novel, in that Dos Passos seems to state that the self-sacrifices were not really acknowledged, and the world did not turn out to be a more just or peaceful place. This extended to the personal level - none of the relationships between the characters in the novel really work - most end in bitter disappointment, and in the early parts of the novel sex is often experienced by way of unwelcome harassment.
G Rodgers
Rating: 5
Summary: Amazing what a little focus can do
Comment: The first book of this series, 42nd parallel was simply amazing in the crosscutting technique mixing it up with news clippings and stream of consciousness rantings but in this book does Dos Passos finally find his real voice in his fury at "Mr Wilson's War". His hatred for the war crackles through every page, every sentence is filled with a fury that can't be described, he knows the war was wrong and he knows exactly why and with the patience of a master he sits there and points each of his ideas out and sets it before you and in the end you don't know what to do. The book is more intense than anything I've read before, pages just fly past as the character histories pile up, as the Newsreels and Camera Eyes (definitely at their best here, as he tells his own WWI experiences) flip past each other from one to the other with dizzying speed where you find yourself immsered in a world which you (probably) never knew. For once the workers rights stuff is pushed to the side, showing up mostly toward the end and the last fifty or so pages of the book are breathtakingly brilliant finally hitting the climax with the prosepoem "Body of an American" Dos Passos' own biography of the Unknown Soldier, standing for every American that died for his country without ever really know what he was dying for. The rage and the passion here alone makes it one of the best books of the century and a definite forgotten masterpiece, and coupled with his lyrical prose and sense of characterization you have something that is better than any history book, even if it makes no pretense of being objective and makes the reader think. Don't let this series be forgotten!
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Title: The Big Money: Volume Three of the U.S.A. Trilogy by John Roderigo Dos Passos ISBN: 0618056831 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 25 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The 42nd Parallel: Volume One of the U.S.A. Trilogy by John DOS Passos ISBN: 0618056815 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 25 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, Anna Quindlen ISBN: 0393322572 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered by Howell Raines ISBN: 0140067531 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1983 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Good War: An Oral History of World War II by Studs Terkel ISBN: 1565843436 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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