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wsmythe19's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This book, the second portion of the USA trilogy, is as convoluted as the first, yet different in nature. If the first section revealed the nature of pre-war America, this section shows how much explosion happened within as without the country.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Xenophobia, Racial slurs, War, and Sexism
blueyorkie's review against another edition
4.0
The second part of the trilogy of Dos Passos, USA, begins with an approximation. 1919, such as its title, is not a question of it. The characters embody the different ways Americans got involved in the Great War and incorporated them into the Red Cross, the merchant navy, the front, and the rear. The novel had marked by the narrative technique used in 42nd Parallel: fictionalised 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, 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.
gabi_anq's review
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
awashinfeeling's review
3.0
The second instalment of the U.S.A. trilogy and the most disappointing one as well.
I don't know. I loved The 42nd Parallel so much but when I started reading this all I wanted was to get it over with. I'm not sure why but I would say that the main reason is the repetitiveness. After reading for a while I also started losing track with the sheer amount of characters and who did what, etc.
1919 doesn't engage the reader as much as the other two volumes do. The point of the novel is that there is a war raging on but nobody cares. Everyone is having the time of their life during this war (ironically enough) and they seem even more lost and confused and dazed (with alcohol) when it's all over.
I don't know. I loved The 42nd Parallel so much but when I started reading this all I wanted was to get it over with. I'm not sure why but I would say that the main reason is the repetitiveness. After reading for a while I also started losing track with the sheer amount of characters and who did what, etc.
1919 doesn't engage the reader as much as the other two volumes do. The point of the novel is that there is a war raging on but nobody cares. Everyone is having the time of their life during this war (ironically enough) and they seem even more lost and confused and dazed (with alcohol) when it's all over.
bucket's review
3.0
My interest waned quite a bit in this second installation. I far preferred the sections from women's perspectives (Eveline, Ann Elizabeth) despite the men continuously causing problems for them. Lack of birth control and the lifelong impact to women (but not men) of accidental pregnancy in this time period is both disturbing and infuriating. It's true to how things were at the time, which only makes it harder to read about.
I still enjoyed the scene-setting done through the Camera Eye and Newsreel sections, though not quite as much as in book one. I suppose the go-nowhere nature of some of these lives is starting to weigh on me, and the celebratory humor of these other elements is disconcerting.
The mini bios of famous people are still just as good. For the most part, they manage to tell the story of a life--a whole life--in just a few pages without being boring. It's impressive!
I still enjoyed the scene-setting done through the Camera Eye and Newsreel sections, though not quite as much as in book one. I suppose the go-nowhere nature of some of these lives is starting to weigh on me, and the celebratory humor of these other elements is disconcerting.
The mini bios of famous people are still just as good. For the most part, they manage to tell the story of a life--a whole life--in just a few pages without being boring. It's impressive!
aerdna's review
4.0
This second installment of the U.S.A. trilogy has a distinctly different flavor that the first. Firstly, for a trilogy that is in some ways intended to be some version of the Great American Novel, surprisingly little of it takes place in the US at all. This second volume is instead dominated by The Great War and how the panoply of characters gets sucked into this all encompassing draining War that from the viewpoint of our characters seems to mostly be a long series of tiresome interactions with bureaucracy. At least with good wine over here, seems to be the general shrug. This is no patriotic call to arms.
It is interesting, I have never read an account of the Red Scare in the US by an author that was clearly sympathetic to the movement. Seen from this lens, how disappointing later developments seem. The US becomes more capitalistic in its outlook than ever, the gap between rich and poor becomes ever wider, the word socialist itself becomes dirty. Perhaps this in itself is a reason why Dos Passos has been forgotten and many of his cohort have endured- his vision of the world in impassioned brotherhood has become far more out of fashion than that of Fitzgerald's dissipated dilettantes.
Well, the same format as the last book is in place here, but some new characters are introduced. My favorite new character is Daughter, the impetuous southern belle who manages to get herself into quite the fix over in Italy. Dos Passos seems very reluctant to offer his characters a happy ending- every scene seems to finish with all the characters sitting morose and deflated in a cab rattling over the rainslimy cobblestones of a gray Paris. But then, there seems to be something very honest about that.
It is interesting, I have never read an account of the Red Scare in the US by an author that was clearly sympathetic to the movement. Seen from this lens, how disappointing later developments seem. The US becomes more capitalistic in its outlook than ever, the gap between rich and poor becomes ever wider, the word socialist itself becomes dirty. Perhaps this in itself is a reason why Dos Passos has been forgotten and many of his cohort have endured- his vision of the world in impassioned brotherhood has become far more out of fashion than that of Fitzgerald's dissipated dilettantes.
Well, the same format as the last book is in place here, but some new characters are introduced. My favorite new character is Daughter, the impetuous southern belle who manages to get herself into quite the fix over in Italy. Dos Passos seems very reluctant to offer his characters a happy ending- every scene seems to finish with all the characters sitting morose and deflated in a cab rattling over the rainslimy cobblestones of a gray Paris. But then, there seems to be something very honest about that.
eralon's review
3.0
This is one of my dad’s books, otherwise, I wouldn’t have read the sequel to a book I didn’t like that much in the first place. The second book was a lot like the first, though I was more interested this time by how modern everything seemed in 1919, particularly with regards to sexual mores. (Assuming Dos Passos got that right, and I suspect he did.)
cliff's review
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
2.5
reader_fictions's review
1.0
What a seriously strange book this was. Having received a copy of this book to listen to, I was somewhat dismayed to discover that it was the second book in a series. I absolutely abhor reading or listening to things out of order. However, I decided to start in on it without attempting book one, figuring that if I liked what I was hearing, I could run out and find book one and come back to 1919. The fact that I am reviewing this, having not reviewed the first book in the series should be rather telling.
1919 has zero plot. This is by design, but that does not endear it any more to me. The book is told in various sections: headlines/jingles, stories about regular depressing Americans, autobiographical segments (called Camera Eye) and biographies of famous Americans. Although that mixture of elements sounded really intriguing to me, it came of ass just a confusing jumble, something that I suspect may have been worse in audio format, especially with the headlines.
None of the segments interested me at all, except for some of the stories of regular folk, although those tended not to keep me enthralled either. The problem was that every one of them will destroy themselves with bad decisions, as you discover in the forward by E. L. Doctorow. So, basically, even if I did like someone, it was inevitable that I would come to hate them because they would act like an idiot. Argh!
I will give the narrator his props, because I think he did a pretty good job with this confusing mess of a book. He happily sang the songs in the headline bits and did a pretty good job differentiating the sections. I think he did mispronounce some of the Italian though.
This definitely was not a book for me. In theory, it sounded interesting, but the execution of the different sections and the pointlessness of the main people's stories just wore me down. Maybe it would have been better had I read the first book.
1919 has zero plot. This is by design, but that does not endear it any more to me. The book is told in various sections: headlines/jingles, stories about regular depressing Americans, autobiographical segments (called Camera Eye) and biographies of famous Americans. Although that mixture of elements sounded really intriguing to me, it came of ass just a confusing jumble, something that I suspect may have been worse in audio format, especially with the headlines.
None of the segments interested me at all, except for some of the stories of regular folk, although those tended not to keep me enthralled either. The problem was that every one of them will destroy themselves with bad decisions, as you discover in the forward by E. L. Doctorow. So, basically, even if I did like someone, it was inevitable that I would come to hate them because they would act like an idiot. Argh!
I will give the narrator his props, because I think he did a pretty good job with this confusing mess of a book. He happily sang the songs in the headline bits and did a pretty good job differentiating the sections. I think he did mispronounce some of the Italian though.
This definitely was not a book for me. In theory, it sounded interesting, but the execution of the different sections and the pointlessness of the main people's stories just wore me down. Maybe it would have been better had I read the first book.
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