Q's Views

In the foreword by E. L. Doctorow in my editions of USA, Doctorow indicates that the murals of Mexican artist Diego Rivera had an influence on Dos Passos' construct of USA. I find this interestingly appropriate as I continue to work my way through the work.

Dos Passos patches together the stories using four techniques. Each book has central characters, each of whom's stories are told from that character's perspectives. The characters may or may not eventually cross paths. In the 42nd Parallel, we meet 5 characters, the last of whom, Charley Anderson is a main character of The Big Money. Three of the characters from the 42nd Parallel are characters in the stories of the principal characters in 1919. The largest parts of the books are made up of the stories of these major characters. In the spaces between those stories, Dos Passos uses the other three techniques.

One technique he titles the Newsreel and Numbers them sequentially. These newsreels are made up snippets of song lyrics, real headlines from newspaper stories, portions of those stories, and in The Big Money advertisements and classified ads. They serve as short, sometimes obscure, sometimes enlightening, mirrors of what is relevant to the times of the story. The second technique is a stream of consciousness vignette he entitles Camera's Eye and again he numbers them sequentially. In the foreword, Doctorow suggests these are Dos Passos memories and experiences, but I'm not so sure I agree with that. There are times that I think these are memories and experiences of the main characters; there just isn't any indication whose memory it really is. The anonymity of the source makes the memory anybody's and I think that is what Dos Passos is doing, allowing the memory or exprience to strike a chord of familiarity with the reader that this memory can happen to anybody and if it happened to you or is similar to something that happened to you, they you are not alone.

The last technique is the mini-biography of famous people from the times. Some you've heard of (Edison, Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Ford) and some you have not. In the 42nd parallel, they were almost all obituaries, because the individual in the biography was always dead by the end of it. In 1919, it was mixed and in The Big Money, more of the individuals were alive than dead. If you think in terms of murals though, these techniques paint a picture of America and it's people.

The 42nd Parallel focuses very much on the labor movement and how America averts the rise of socialism and anarchy in the early part of the 20th century. I got a lot of feel of Upton Sinclair during this book. 1919 takes place almost entirely in Europe, which is odd for a book in the USA trilogy, but makes sense when you realize it follows the viewpoints of the American characters and their roles overseas during World War I and the peace negotiations. There is very little about the battles or the dismal life in the trenches, but the men are volunteers as ambulance drivers (both Dos Passos and Hemingway served in that capacity) and women volunteered in the Red Cross.

The Big Money, although I'm not quite done, is clearly leading us through the Roaring '20s to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. So I guess I'll sign off and make some more progress toward that end.