The Big Money

Rating:
Summary: The Bubble
Review: "The Big Money" is the final part of John Dos Passos's "USA" trilogy, following "42nd Parallel" and "1919".

World War One has ended, and Dos Passos's characters are facing life in post-war USA. They find that, overall, it's not really a land fit for heroes to live in: the capitalist system is still creating huge economic and social differences. The War has increased the power of large corporations and further eroded workers' rights.

While Charley Anderson and Margo Dowling ride a tide of post-war optimism, Mary French experiences the injustices heaped upon ordinary working people. The optimism creates a speculative bubble. The movies are essentially froth - mass hysteria is caused by the death of Valentino (what Galsworthy termed in another context "a carnival of secondary emotions"). Despite Prohibition, sobriety and morals are dispensed with.

"The Big Money" differs from "42nd Parallel" and "1919": the "Newsreel" and "The Camera Eye" techiniques are still utilised, but they are not so prominent. Dos Passos devotes a lot more space to his characters, and his socio-economic standpoint has to be read more exclusively through the experiences he gives to those characters rather than through a combination of plot, Newsreel, and Camera Eye as in the earlier novels.

In all, a good ending to a fascinating trilogy, giving an alternative view of the development of the USA in the first third of the twentieth century.

G Rodgers

Rating:
Summary: The Bubble
Review: "The Big Money" is the final part of John Dos Passos's "USA" trilogy, following "42nd Parallel" and "1919".

World War One has ended, and Dos Passos's characters are facing life in post-war USA. They find that, overall, it's not really a land fit for heroes to live in: the capitalist system is still creating huge economic and social differences. The War has increased the power of large corporations and further eroded workers' rights.

While Charley Anderson and Margo Dowling ride a tide of post-war optimism, Mary French experiences the injustices heaped upon ordinary working people. The optimism creates a speculative bubble. The movies are essentially froth - mass hysteria is caused by the death of Valentino (what Galsworthy termed in another context "a carnival of secondary emotions"). Despite Prohibition, sobriety and morals are dispensed with.

"The Big Money" differs from "42nd Parallel" and "1919": the "Newsreel" and "The Camera Eye" techiniques are still utilised, but they are not so prominent. Dos Passos devotes a lot more space to his characters, and his socio-economic standpoint has to be read more exclusively through the experiences he gives to those characters rather than through a combination of plot, Newsreel, and Camera Eye as in the earlier novels.

In all, a good ending to a fascinating trilogy, giving an alternative view of the development of the USA in the first third of the twentieth century.

G Rodgers

Rating:
Summary: This is a big book.
Review: I initially read the entire trilogy, U. S. A. by John Dos Passos, as a soldier in Vietnam, in June and July of 1969. Reading the two earlier volumes on America's lofty aims and actual experiences in World War One and the economic boom which followed it in the United States helped me try to imagine what my life would be like, as I faced growing old in a country which increasingly depended upon its global dominance for its style of life. Volume 3, THE BIG MONEY, ended this gigantic series with a political point of view that stuck with me more than any of the fictional parts of this novel. A look at the Contents in the sample pages gives some indication of the other tidbits in this trilogy, Newsreels, popular songs, and short bioographies, which make the composition of this trilogy unique.

Of the biographies, I would consider "The Bitter Drink" on Veblen the most intellectual item in THE BIG MONEY, and my best introduction to how Socrates ended up drinking the hemlock. Most biographies were about people who were so famous that they might still be remembered. "Tin Lizzie" is a life of Henry Ford. "Poor Little Rich Boy" was William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper owner whose father died in Washington, a senator, but who was only elected to the House of Representatives, where he justified his politics with, "you know where I stand on personal fortunes, but isn't it better that I should represent in this country the dissatisfied than have somebody else do it who might not have the same real property relations that I have?" However familiar this might sound today, Dos Passos wrote that "his affairs were in such a scramble he had trouble borrowing a million dollars, and politically he was ratpoison." The biography of Hearst is at page 375 in the paperback which is currently available, a few pages after "The Camera Eye (50) they have clubbed us off the streets" (p. 371) which says:

America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul

their hired men sit on the judge's bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the powerplants

they have built the electricchair and hired the executioner to throw the switch

The final nonfiction biography in THE BIG MONEY is called "Power Superpower" on page 420. Samuel Insull had been learning shorthand "and jotting down the speeches in PARLIAMENT for the papers" before he came to American in 1881 to be Edison's personal secretary. As president of Chicago Edison Company after 1892, "If anybody didn't like what Samuel Insull did he was a traitor." The part I liked best was after the stockmarket crash, when there were accounting problems involving a number of companies. "He held directorates in eightyfive companies, he was chairman of sixtyfive, president of eleven: it took him three hours to sign his resignations." When "Revolt against the moneymanipulators was in the air," he ran off and extradition proceedings involved at least four countries to bring him back to Chicago for a trial. So, "With voices choked with emotion headliners of Chicago business told from the witnessstand how much Insull had done for business in Chicago. There wasn't a dry eye in the jury." The result was different from the trial of Socrates in Athens a few thousand years earlier, and I think Insull had a better retirement than Socrates asked his friends to provide if they had to pay a fine for him. Maybe we are better off than some people. Read this book anyway.

Rating:
Summary: This is a big book.
Review: I initially read the entire trilogy, U. S. A. by John Dos Passos, as a soldier in Vietnam, in June and July of 1969. Reading the two earlier volumes on America's lofty aims and actual experiences in World War One and the economic boom which followed it in the United States helped me try to imagine what my life would be like, as I faced growing old in a country which increasingly depended upon its global dominance for its style of life. Volume 3, THE BIG MONEY, ended this gigantic series with a political point of view that stuck with me more than any of the fictional parts of this novel. A look at the Contents in the sample pages gives some indication of the other tidbits in this trilogy, Newsreels, popular songs, and short bioographies, which make the composition of this trilogy unique.

Of the biographies, I would consider "The Bitter Drink" on Veblen the most intellectual item in THE BIG MONEY, and my best introduction to how Socrates ended up drinking the hemlock. Most biographies were about people who were so famous that they might still be remembered. "Tin Lizzie" is a life of Henry Ford. "Poor Little Rich Boy" was William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper owner whose father died in Washington, a senator, but who was only elected to the House of Representatives, where he justified his politics with, "you know where I stand on personal fortunes, but isn't it better that I should represent in this country the dissatisfied than have somebody else do it who might not have the same real property relations that I have?" However familiar this might sound today, Dos Passos wrote that "his affairs were in such a scramble he had trouble borrowing a million dollars, and politically he was ratpoison." The biography of Hearst is at page 375 in the paperback which is currently available, a few pages after "The Camera Eye (50) they have clubbed us off the streets" (p. 371) which says:

America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul

their hired men sit on the judge's bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the powerplants

they have built the electricchair and hired the executioner to throw the switch

The final nonfiction biography in THE BIG MONEY is called "Power Superpower" on page 420. Samuel Insull had been learning shorthand "and jotting down the speeches in PARLIAMENT for the papers" before he came to American in 1881 to be Edison's personal secretary. As president of Chicago Edison Company after 1892, "If anybody didn't like what Samuel Insull did he was a traitor." The part I liked best was after the stockmarket crash, when there were accounting problems involving a number of companies. "He held directorates in eightyfive companies, he was chairman of sixtyfive, president of eleven: it took him three hours to sign his resignations." When "Revolt against the moneymanipulators was in the air," he ran off and extradition proceedings involved at least four countries to bring him back to Chicago for a trial. So, "With voices choked with emotion headliners of Chicago business told from the witnessstand how much Insull had done for business in Chicago. There wasn't a dry eye in the jury." The result was different from the trial of Socrates in Athens a few thousand years earlier, and I think Insull had a better retirement than Socrates asked his friends to provide if they had to pay a fine for him. Maybe we are better off than some people. Read this book anyway.

Rating:
Summary: Really Good Book
Review: The Big Money is a great work that exposes the American Dream as a destructive race towards an explosive jumping off point. Whichever way we make the money, it will end in devouring the part of us that was never mercenary. I'm a big fan of John Dos Passos, but I have to admit that if you aren't the type of reader who likes to visualize written images, his writing would be pretty wasted on you.

Rating:
Summary: The whole is more than the sum of its parts
Review: The first three decades of the twentieth century in the United States were pivotal in defining what, eventually, the nation would become. At the turn of the century the country was just beginning to find its feet on the world geopolitical scene, ceding power to the colonial powers of Europe but maintaining a dogged independence. A mere thirty years later the United States had not only risen to share world power but dared become a leader on the world stage as the country's wealth, ingenuity, and exportable culture transformed this former isolated nation. This transformation was not lost on John Dos Passos; neither was the importance of history in defining those qualities that became amalgamated and distilled into what is commonly known as national character.

To underscore the importance of these three decades, Dos Passos spent over six years in researching and writing what was to become his materpiece, The USA Trilogy. In these three novels, the author experimented with various narrative techniques combining traditonal story telling; stream of consciousness writing (The Camera Eye sections); biographies of important contemporary persons; clippings from newspapers; snatches of popular songs; advertisements, etc., that created a well definied historical foundation for the events and characters of his novels. Overall, the author was successful in his effort: seldom has history been so well understood by a writer of fiction. The reader not only shares the lives of Dos Passsos' characters but is fully immersed in the politics, culture and economic upheavals of those eras.

Seen as a whole, the trilogy is powerful; however, when the three novels are examined separately as individual works, weaknesses that were camouflaged by the success of the overall scheme are made manifest. The Big Money is the last and worst of the three parts. It seems that the author began to weary as he reached the end of his effort. Dos Passos spends less attention to the Camera Eye sections and biographies (by far, the best two areas of the trilogy) and spends the majority of his attention on developing and bringing to a conclusion the lives of his characters, some of whom have been present in every novel of the trilogy. His attempts at characterization were not successful and his characters come across as wooden caricatures, blindly following the plot from one episode to another, never giving any insight into what motivates them (with the possible exception of the pathetic Mary French). The reader just doesn't care for or about them. Also, perhaps Dos Passos was going through a sort of political catharsis himself and perhaps this added to the malaise and hastiness that is evident in this final novel. The darling of the American left would eventually become an avid backer of Barry Goldwater for President in 1964. Four stars for the trilogy, three stars for The Big Money.

Rating:
Summary: The bitter gaze!
Review: With the parallel 42 and the first catastrophe -1919 - this novel constitutes a trilogy focusing the sentimental , political and economic panorama of USA.
The big money talks about the generation that bloomed after the WW1 ; the lost generation the maxim expression of a media class in advanced discomposure state The story of its pathetic failure, hidden under the veils of the apparent triumph , of many characters who walk through the harsh proof years toward an uncertain destiny .
This book will give you a vital information about the possible consequences of a war to the moral and economic factors of a nation .
Dos Passos was somehow the echo of those dark voices in the first years of the XX Century best known as the perverse poets , headed for Baudelaire and Verlaine , whose role was to expose the crude reality no matter how filthy was .