The 42nd Parallel: Volume One of the U.S.A. Trilogy
by John Dos Passos
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Book Summary Information
Author: John Dos PassosEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-05-25
ISBN: 0618056815
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of The 42nd Parallel: Volume One of the U.S.A. Trilogy
Book Review: Underappreciated Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
"But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people." So says John Dos Passos in the prologue to his outstanding U.S.A. trilogy which spans the first several decades of the 20th century. THE 42nd PARALLEL, the first book of the trilogy, ends just as the First World War is beginning. Dos Passos, talking about the country, fairly summarized his own astounding work of art.
With this trilogy, Dos Passos captures the essence of America at the beginning of the last century. His prose is remarkable and distinctive. With a few efficient strokes, Dos Passos draws full and vibrant characters inhabiting a world that, through this novel, the reader comes to know.
"After a while the boys stirpped to their bathingsuits that they wore under their clothes. It made Janey's throat tremble to watch Alec's back and the bulging muscles of his arm as he paddled, made her feel happy and scared. She sat there in her white dimity dress, trailing her hand in the weedy browngreen water...The cream soda got warm and they drank it that way and kidded each other back and forth and Alec caught a crab and covered Janey's dress with greenslimy splashes and Janey didn't care a bit and they called Joe skipper and he loosened up and said he was going to join the navy and Alec said he'd be a civil engineer and build a motorboat and take them all cruising and Janey was happy because they included her when they talked just like she was a boy too."
While the prose is excellent and the stories compelling, this novel has several experimental aspects. The novel shifts from character to character. In this way, Dos Passos is able to present a broad, though hardly complete, cross-section of America. From train-hopping Mac to dissatisfied Eleanor Stoddard to budding businessman J. Ward Morehouse, various slices of lower, middle, and upper class life are made real and the issues of the day made urgent. The true main character of this work is America and only by shifting among characters could Dos Passos reveal and examine America as he wanted.
The more conventionally narrative portions of the novel are separated by "News Reels", "Camera Eyes", and short biographies of major figures of the day (such as Eugene Debs, Andrew Carnegie, and William Jennings Bryan). The News Reels, to my ear, succeed in giving a sense of the political mood of the time. Though television did not yet exist, the effect is much like flipping through our myriad channels catching sound bites from talking heads, bits of commercials, and snatches of songs. Dos Passos achieved this effect by crafting the News Reels out of incomplete snippets of newspaper stories spliced among bits of political speeches and popular songs. Because it is so unconventional, it can seem disjointed and, perhaps, pointless at first. With repetition, the reader, at least this reader, starts to feel and appreciate the rhythm. In the end, Dos Passos achieved the effect for which I assume he aimed.
The Camera Eye sections consist of stream of consciousness rambling presented in run-on sentences: "...and everything was very kind and grave and very sorry and frigates and the blue Mediterranean and islands and when I was dead I began to cry and I was afraid the other boys would see I had tears in my eyes...I was so sorry I never remembered whether they brought me home or buried me at sea but anyway I was wrapped in Old Glory."
These sections work also. Reader preferences will vary, but I felt these sections added to the novel and, contrary to the ideas of some, did not clutter the narrative. They provide a different, sometimes more intimate, psychological aspect of the times. The narrative itself addresses the characters' minds in a more oblique fashion, whereas these Camera Eyes provide a direct glimpse into the thoughts of yet another character.
The biographies are short, uniquely insightful, and always entertaining. These biographical sketches are alone worth the price of admission.
THE 42nd PARALLEL is not a typical novel in that characters seem to aimlessly wander in and out of the primary story. As I mentioned before, the true subject is not a particular individual, but America. To present America requires examining its people, but the destiny of any one individual is inconsequential to the whole. Dos Passos manages to tell a compelling story about the U.S.A. without telling a complete story about any one individual. Characters as often disappear not to be seen again as die. When they die, America moves on. The trilogy is enthralling. Dos Passos is a master, the trilogy his masterpiece.
Summary of The 42nd Parallel: Volume One of the U.S.A. Trilogy
With his U.S.A. trilogy, comprising THE 42nd PARALLEL, 1919, and THE BIG MONEY, John Dos Passos is said by many to have written the great American novel. While Fitzgerald and Hemingway were cultivating what Edmund Wilson once called their "own little corners," John Dos Passos was taking on the world. Counted as one of the best novels of the twentieth century by the Modern Library and by some of the finest writers working today, U.S.A. is a grand, kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation, buzzing with history and life on every page.
The trilogy opens with THE 42nd PARALLEL, where we find a young country at the dawn of the twentieth century. Slowly, in stories artfully spliced together, the lives and fortunes of five characters unfold. Mac, Janey, Eleanor, Ward, and Charley are caught on the storm track of this parallel and blown New Yorkward. As their lives cross and double back again, the likes of Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie make cameo appearances.
The trilogy opens with THE 42nd PARALLEL, where we find a young country at the dawn of the twentieth century. Slowly, in stories artfully spliced together, the lives and fortunes of five characters unfold. Mac, Janey, Eleanor, Ward, and Charley are caught on the storm track of this parallel and blown New Yorkward. As their lives cross and double back again, the likes of Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie make cameo appearances.
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