The 3 best books by John Dos Passos

America's Lost Generation (early XNUMXth century) was not just a uniform portrait of disgruntled writers, or nihilists, or hedonists. The disenchantment could be the same, the historical coincidence was what he had, but the way of taking sides in life was very different from each other.

The greatest contrast could have occurred precisely between the author who concerns us today, John Dos Passos y Francis Scott Fitzgerald. While John traveled and left his homeland to see different countries and their problems (such as the Spanish case), Francis Scott did the same but almost always for pure leisure.

The disenchanted story, the gray tone may be similar, but the way of acting of one and the other is more up to the very personal decisions over the supposed tendencies of a labeled generation.

John Dos Passos traveled extensively in Spain before and after the war. With an ideology more inclined to socialism, he supported figures of the republican cause. However, it was in our country where he suffered great disappointments with the most violent version of communism and with disappointment in his friendship with Ernest Hemingway.

3 Recommended Novels by John Dos Passos

Manhattan Transfer

The Portuguese origins of the author seem to permeate this novel. Everything is born from a station, the transfer to Manhattan, then the city is busy presenting us with the destinies of each one, of many of those anonymous characters in which we are made to fix our eyes.

While they wait for their train to the Big Apple, we begin to know their life plans, their intentions and wills, their pretensions and the dream of a success won at any price. The reality is that a quick glance over any of those who caught a train at that station could be guessed as a failure beforehand, with no possible failure.

But hope is never lost. The magic of this novel are the bonds that are created between those who once shared a season, and dreams, but who barely maintain a hint of hope.

Manhattan Transfer

Parallel 42

With this novel began the USA trilogy, in which Dos Passos was thoroughly wetted on the great North American country. The book is a particular mosaic, a mixture of chronicle and novel that reflects his desire to show that reality that surpasses all fiction, no matter how bizarre its approach.

The moral ideology of the characters is presented to us as a recapitulation before the action. As if all those characters sat in front of us and explained their essence, what moves them to behave in the way we will see. A singular destructuring that broke the mold in what has been written so far.

parallel 42

1919

The second installment of the saga is worth more than its closure, entitled Big money, in my opinion a more artificial intention to complete a trilogy than anything else. However, 1919 does remain fresh and as innovative as Parallel 42.

The choral nature of the characters and situations remains primary. It's like that feeling that sometimes happens to us in a city... Wouldn't you like to sneak through one of the many windows and see what is happening? Something like this is 1919, a choral novel that takes place for the most part in Paris.

And that is where we meet many of the Americans who temporarily colonized cities in Europe, hoping that the United States could rebuild itself, somehow ...

1919, John dos Passos
5/5 - (4 votes)

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