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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs
4 stars, a fascinating novel with a strong command of tone and voice. It doesn't have a traditional narrative structure which can leave it feeling a bit unmoored at times but I'm intrigued enough and pleased enough with its experimentation to continue on to the sequel. The book does a great job providing various snapshots of early 1900s American life specifically through the lens of political turmoil and working class angst at corporate greed.
John Dos Passos paints the story of a young country in the early 20th century through the eyes of five characters whose lives cross as they follow across the United States and into Mexico. Their paths are very much American: a printer who becomes a wealthy advertising executive (by way of a revolutionary movement in Mexico), a woman typecast as a stenographer who becomes an artsy interior decorator in Chicago, and an opportunist whose mechanical inventiveness leads him to become an airplane manufacturer.
What makes the work stand out are the author's portraits of these characters within their place history. Along with the novel, the author adds to sections to set the period: cameos of Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie and interjections of his memories into a sort of self-portrait.
Through it all, John Dos Passos demonstrates he is unafraid to write about the human condition, both its successes and blemishes. He tackles poverty, racism, gender gaps, and other hardships while tempering those conditions with characters who are unafraid to find their way out of the worst of it. Perhaps that is what makes The 42nd Parallel exceptionally readable. No matter how precarious things become, his characters work themselves out of their situations.
What makes the work stand out are the author's portraits of these characters within their place history. Along with the novel, the author adds to sections to set the period: cameos of Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie and interjections of his memories into a sort of self-portrait.
Through it all, John Dos Passos demonstrates he is unafraid to write about the human condition, both its successes and blemishes. He tackles poverty, racism, gender gaps, and other hardships while tempering those conditions with characters who are unafraid to find their way out of the worst of it. Perhaps that is what makes The 42nd Parallel exceptionally readable. No matter how precarious things become, his characters work themselves out of their situations.
can't say I liked it more than I just tolerated it. Too many halts, lots of emptiness.
adventurous
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
A windy description that shines light on perspective of a straight, white, male America in the early 20th century. It hasn’t aged well besides vignettes or normal peoples’ lives that intertwine there’s not much of a plot.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs
There's something about Dos Passos' fiction that moves me. The episodic nature of his work, combined with very little dialogue, allows me to get completely lost in the world he creates. More than any other writer of his era, Dos Passos makes me feel like I "get" early 20th century America. The only part I don't like is conversely exactly what I do; the spaces between characters make me a more active reader as I fill in the blanks, but they also leave me wanting more of characters like Eleanor Stoddard, Mac, and J. Ward Morehouse.
The 42nd Parallel is the first of the three-volume U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos. It focuses on the era around the turn of the 20th century in the United States of America.
The novel is unique in its strucure as DP uses four distinctive narrative modes (Biographies of known historical figures, fictional narrative sections, Newsreels and "Camera Eye") to approach themes like alienation and/or decadence in modern America.
The novel is unique in its strucure as DP uses four distinctive narrative modes (Biographies of known historical figures, fictional narrative sections, Newsreels and "Camera Eye") to approach themes like alienation and/or decadence in modern America.
I can see why John Dos Passos was such a highly revered author by his peers. His scope is immense, his writing unique, and his ambitions high. But for the same reason, I can see why his works haven't survived as well as some of his contemporaries.
Unlike many others who have reviewed this book, the parts I found most engaging was the Newsreels, fragments from headlines and songs great and small, put together in a seemingly random order. I looked over these many times, trying to make sense of them, to put together a story, to get a sense of place and time and mood. This unconventional style of writing and editing is, to me, the strongest part of the book.
The bulk of the book I found lacking. Though initially I was interested in the characters that he introduced and followed as they grew up and started to make their way in the world, around the time that each character became independent, I lost interest. I found myself digusted and repulsed by them, or the choices they made. I got annoyed with the constant struggle, the repeated theme that so many of the characters took: bum to a new town, try and find work, mess around, leave the town, try and find work somewhere else.
I know the world that Dos Passos was living in, and I know the tradition that he wrote in, and the beliefs he held, and that he was part of a group of writers who were disgusted by the struggle against capitalism in America, but didn't want to abandon the country, wanted to find a part of it that they could survive in. But for me to enjoy a book, I need more than themes. I need to care about the characters, and there was not a time while reading The 42nd Parallel that I really cared.
Unlike many others who have reviewed this book, the parts I found most engaging was the Newsreels, fragments from headlines and songs great and small, put together in a seemingly random order. I looked over these many times, trying to make sense of them, to put together a story, to get a sense of place and time and mood. This unconventional style of writing and editing is, to me, the strongest part of the book.
The bulk of the book I found lacking. Though initially I was interested in the characters that he introduced and followed as they grew up and started to make their way in the world, around the time that each character became independent, I lost interest. I found myself digusted and repulsed by them, or the choices they made. I got annoyed with the constant struggle, the repeated theme that so many of the characters took: bum to a new town, try and find work, mess around, leave the town, try and find work somewhere else.
I know the world that Dos Passos was living in, and I know the tradition that he wrote in, and the beliefs he held, and that he was part of a group of writers who were disgusted by the struggle against capitalism in America, but didn't want to abandon the country, wanted to find a part of it that they could survive in. But for me to enjoy a book, I need more than themes. I need to care about the characters, and there was not a time while reading The 42nd Parallel that I really cared.
I'm not sure exactly what I expected, but this was an outstandingly good read. The format is interesting and unconventional (alternating bits of five different main characters' stories with selections of newspaper headlines and song lyrics, with stream of consciousness vignettes, and with mini biographies of historical figures of the 19teens). These 3 other types of sections add a sense of time and place, and density to the stories woven among them, tying the stories together in a way that the characters' direct interaction (which does sometimes happen) never really good.
I cannot wait to dive into volume 2!
I cannot wait to dive into volume 2!
John Dos Passos doesn't seem to get as much credit as his literary contemporaries and buddies (man I would love to have heard some of these conversations between the literary greats of the 20th century), but I've been hearing for ages that his U.S.A trilogy is a classic of the last century so I finally decided to start it.
Dos Passos is aiming for that literary hallowed ground, The Great American Novel. He winds together the story of several working class people in the early 1900s who are attempting to work their way up in the world using every wile at their convenience. Mixed with that are some stream of consciousness bits that remind me of James Joyce but slightly more readable. Oh, and some brief poetic biographies of famous agitators/politicians/leaders of the time. Everything was just slightly socialist tinged, by the way. I'm sure this was very edgy at the time, in combination with the Joycean interludes (not sure who came first, but Joyce is certainly more famous for this writing style so I'm giving him the adjective). I'm tempted to say some of this feels dated nowadays given that things certainly did not go the way of the People's Revolution but it captures a spirit of the times very well. And perhaps it's more relevant than it seems at first glance, given the current protestations that have shut down France in the worst protest of five decades.
Beyond the controversial politics, I found Dos Passo's storytelling just stellar. Despite the fact that he was telling the story of 5 or 6 pretty average unromantic people, leading average lives in which the end of every episode ends in them being either flat broke or doing something only marginally morally ok, I was glued to the page. The interludes were mercifully brief and although at first annoying, by the end of the book I had begun to feel that they added something to the mood.
Perhaps one could accuse Dos Passos of being bleak in his outlook. The amount of agency he allows his characters is severely circumscribed- the women play up mostly their personal attractiveness and sometimes abilities (although in general his women are more competent than his men) to get access to power and money. Eleanor Stoddard was my favorite of these characters- blessed with a natural elegance, she learns French and plays up her chic-ness while touring the Art Institute to begin moving up in the world. Eventually she ends an interior decorator in NYC, always just one step in front of bankruptcy but at least wearing a fabulous new outfit while doing it. It is interesting that romance is portrayed as fraught with dangers for women in this world. For men as well, in fact, but the ambitious women in this book steer well clear, while the men dabble in marriage and affairs, usually eventually leaving the women involved without a second thought.
The men in 42nd Parallel follow a different trajectory. Some of the characters, like Mac, have a distinct On the Road type flair to them. He wanders all over the US and even Canada and Mexico, occasionally stopping to mine or lumberjack or even get married and have children, but nothing sticks for long and soon he is flat broke and on the road again, always with his socialist ideals in the back of his mind. Ward is an interesting one as well, perhaps the greatest success story of them all- hobnobbing with heads of state and Carnegies through first his wives' connections and then his business. However, it is all clear what a house of cards it all is when his second wife's mother threatens to cut off his capital, saved only by the outbreak of WW1.
There is a clear agenda here, of course. The ugliness of capitalism, the transience of life in a place where you are only as good as your last dollar, the range of human emotion reduced to the struggle to afford a roof for tonight and another meal. But it is also a glorious adventure, filled with the wildness of chance and the variety of human nature. I could hardly put it down.
Dos Passos is aiming for that literary hallowed ground, The Great American Novel. He winds together the story of several working class people in the early 1900s who are attempting to work their way up in the world using every wile at their convenience. Mixed with that are some stream of consciousness bits that remind me of James Joyce but slightly more readable. Oh, and some brief poetic biographies of famous agitators/politicians/leaders of the time. Everything was just slightly socialist tinged, by the way. I'm sure this was very edgy at the time, in combination with the Joycean interludes (not sure who came first, but Joyce is certainly more famous for this writing style so I'm giving him the adjective). I'm tempted to say some of this feels dated nowadays given that things certainly did not go the way of the People's Revolution but it captures a spirit of the times very well. And perhaps it's more relevant than it seems at first glance, given the current protestations that have shut down France in the worst protest of five decades.
Beyond the controversial politics, I found Dos Passo's storytelling just stellar. Despite the fact that he was telling the story of 5 or 6 pretty average unromantic people, leading average lives in which the end of every episode ends in them being either flat broke or doing something only marginally morally ok, I was glued to the page. The interludes were mercifully brief and although at first annoying, by the end of the book I had begun to feel that they added something to the mood.
Perhaps one could accuse Dos Passos of being bleak in his outlook. The amount of agency he allows his characters is severely circumscribed- the women play up mostly their personal attractiveness and sometimes abilities (although in general his women are more competent than his men) to get access to power and money. Eleanor Stoddard was my favorite of these characters- blessed with a natural elegance, she learns French and plays up her chic-ness while touring the Art Institute to begin moving up in the world. Eventually she ends an interior decorator in NYC, always just one step in front of bankruptcy but at least wearing a fabulous new outfit while doing it. It is interesting that romance is portrayed as fraught with dangers for women in this world. For men as well, in fact, but the ambitious women in this book steer well clear, while the men dabble in marriage and affairs, usually eventually leaving the women involved without a second thought.
The men in 42nd Parallel follow a different trajectory. Some of the characters, like Mac, have a distinct On the Road type flair to them. He wanders all over the US and even Canada and Mexico, occasionally stopping to mine or lumberjack or even get married and have children, but nothing sticks for long and soon he is flat broke and on the road again, always with his socialist ideals in the back of his mind. Ward is an interesting one as well, perhaps the greatest success story of them all- hobnobbing with heads of state and Carnegies through first his wives' connections and then his business. However, it is all clear what a house of cards it all is when his second wife's mother threatens to cut off his capital, saved only by the outbreak of WW1.
There is a clear agenda here, of course. The ugliness of capitalism, the transience of life in a place where you are only as good as your last dollar, the range of human emotion reduced to the struggle to afford a roof for tonight and another meal. But it is also a glorious adventure, filled with the wildness of chance and the variety of human nature. I could hardly put it down.