Rating: 
Summary: Snap-shots
Review: "42nd Parallel" is set in the USA in the early twentieth century, and leads up to America's involvement in World War One. The novel is written in a picaresque style, the author switching between a number of different characters, developing their stories at distinct paces, and gradually entwining their fates.I felt that Dos Passos was trying to give snap-shots of the American society of the time, a society greatly uneasy with itself, in which labour unrest, racism and social divisions seemed to be very stark. For example, Dos Passos accords socialist ideas a greater prominence than I had anticipated, which I found very interesting. Dos Passos's prose style is spare and uncomplicated, reminding me at times of Hemingway. But, whereas I'm not fond of Hemingway's writing, I was carried along by Dos Passos. It's difficult to say why, but perhaps his observational eye and command of dialogue felt more convincing, more authentic. Added to that of course is Dos Passos's frequent use of "The Camera Eye" and "Newsreel" sequences, which change the reader's perception, giving a kaleidoscopic effect, evoking the time at both a personal and "headline" level. I suppose that people perceive and experience their environments through a mixture of different senses and media: it seemed to me that Dos Passos was trying to recreate that feeling for the reader. A stimulating and absorbing read. G Rodgers
Rating:
Summary: A parallel America
Review: "The 42nd Parallel," the first volume of John Dos Passos's "U.S.A." trilogy, is a novel about America and Americans from the 1890s up to the first World War. That sounds ordinary enough, but "The 42nd Parallel"--the title possibly refers to the latitude of Chicago, Dos Passos's city of birth and where a good portion of the action of the novel takes place--is notable more for its style than for its content, not that the latter is uninteresting. Dos Passos invents five young people from different backgrounds and parts of the country and follows the courses of their lives until their destinies eventually intersect.
The first to be introduced is a poor kid from Connecticut by way of Chicago named Fenian "Mac" McCreary who, starting out as an apprentice printer not unlike Benjamin Franklin, travels from city to city hopping trains and falling haplessly into a variety of odd jobs--assisting a con man, writing propaganda for a labor organization--until he ends up in Mexico running a bookstore on the fringe of a revolutionary movement. Then we meet Janey Williams, a middle-class girl from Washington, D.C., who makes a living as a stenographer while she is looking for a husband.
Next is a diligent, intelligent boy from Wilmington, Delaware, named J. Ward Moorehouse who after some bad luck in his career and his marriage becomes a successful public relations consultant for corporations. Eleanor Stoddard, a Chicago girl who dreams of a fashionable and cultured life for herself, breaks the social and economic barriers and becomes a highly reputable interior decorator in New York. Finally, Charley Anderson, a North Dakota native, struggles to find and keep work as a mechanic while he roams the country as a vagrant, ultimately volunteering for the ambulance corps in France as the United States enters the European war.
What all these people have in common is that they each epitomize some facet of the new American socioeconomic picture of the emerging twentieth century--the socialist, the working single girl, the corporate image softener. The novel reflects the changes America was undergoing at the time, especially in light of the problematic relations between labor, industry, and government, and the country's potential position as a new global superpower awaiting the biggest, bloodiest war the world would witness to date. Dos Passos wrote this in 1930, so of course he had the benefit of some hindsight; there was no second world war, nor even yet the threat of one, to obscure his vision of the era.
The narratives of the main characters alternate with "Newsreels" that provide glimpses of contemporary events, headlines, and snippets of popular songs; sections called "The Camera Eye" which record random prattle from snapshot subjects and look like modernist prose poems; and brief versified sketches of actual personalities and prominent figures of the day who shaped American history, from Eugene V. Debs to Thomas Edison to Charles Proteus Steinmetz. The novel is experimental in structure, but Dos Passos is breezily conversational in his prose, telling pure stories with natural drama; there is no unbelievable comedy or tragedy here, no sentimentality or jingoism, just life as it is lived.
Rating:
Summary: A mirror of our troubled times
Review: A politically divided America, under the constant threat of terrorist violence, responds to tragedy with a spontaneous outburst of patriotism and volunteerism. The events, attitudes, and emotions of 2001 are presaged in Dos Passos's description of America 1900-14. The novel follows the intersecting lives of several characters, whom you will find surprisingly modern in their attitudes and morals (or lack of them). Their world is also surprisingly like ours: Anarchists wage a campaign of terrorism that leaves citizens feeling unsafe in public places; technology changes lifestyles and breaks down social barriers. The 42nd Parallel is easy to read--even hard to put down at times. More importantly, it gives a sense of place and perspective that helps us understand our own time a little better.
Rating: 
Summary: An Exhausting, But Rewarding, Experience
Review: I won't write a separate review for each of the three novels in this trilogy, since really they only work when read together as one massive tome anyway. "U.S.A." is John Dos Passos' attempt to paint a verbal mural of life in America in roughly the first quarter of the 20th Century (the story ends somewhere around the beginning of the Great Depression). It's a massive undertaking, and is the kind of stuff I usually love: a large cast of characters swirling through a complex plot. Characters are introduced and drop out of one volume only to be picked up in someone else's story later in the trilogy; stories mix and mingle, with a main character in one plot line becoming a supporting player in someone else's. Interspersed among the conventional narrative chapters are brief biographies of real-life figures of import in American cultural and political history: Carnegie, Henry Ford, Isidora Duncan, Teddy Roosevelt. And if that were not enough, Dos Passos also throws in "newsreel" sections, which are abstract word montages comprised of newspaper headlines, song lyrics, political slogans, etc. I don't know much about Dos Passos, but I imagine this was a fairly revolutionary work for its time. The biography and newsreel sections alone give the work the feeling of nonfiction, but even the narrative portions of the trilogy feel as if they are historical accounts rather than fiction. That makes the books both interesting and ultimately a bit tedious. After three good-sized novels, Dos Passos' clinical, objective tone begins to wear thin, and the reader begins craving some juicy, lyrical, imaginative prose to take its place. That is why I can't quite bring myself to give this work 5 stars. Still, anyone interested in American literature and cultural development should at least give this trilogy a chance.
Rating:
Summary: An Exhausting, But Rewarding, Experience
Review: I won't write a separate review for each of the three novels in this trilogy, since really they only work when read together as one massive tome anyway. "U.S.A." is John Dos Passos' attempt to paint a verbal mural of life in America in roughly the first quarter of the 20th Century (the story ends somewhere around the beginning of the Great Depression). It's a massive undertaking, and is the kind of stuff I usually love: a large cast of characters swirling through a complex plot. Characters are introduced and drop out of one volume only to be picked up in someone else's story later in the trilogy; stories mix and mingle, with a main character in one plot line becoming a supporting player in someone else's. Interspersed among the conventional narrative chapters are brief biographies of real-life figures of import in American cultural and political history: Carnegie, Henry Ford, Isidora Duncan, Teddy Roosevelt. And if that were not enough, Dos Passos also throws in "newsreel" sections, which are abstract word montages comprised of newspaper headlines, song lyrics, political slogans, etc. I don't know much about Dos Passos, but I imagine this was a fairly revolutionary work for its time. The biography and newsreel sections alone give the work the feeling of nonfiction, but even the narrative portions of the trilogy feel as if they are historical accounts rather than fiction. That makes the books both interesting and ultimately a bit tedious. After three good-sized novels, Dos Passos' clinical, objective tone begins to wear thin, and the reader begins craving some juicy, lyrical, imaginative prose to take its place. That is why I can't quite bring myself to give this work 5 stars. Still, anyone interested in American literature and cultural development should at least give this trilogy a chance.
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: if you like On The Road by Jack Kerouac, than you'll love this trilogy.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning.
Review: It took me a bit to get into the flow of the novel. There are three levels of narrative in the book, and two of them - The Camera Eye and Newsreel - are positively Joycean. On top of that, the narratives about individual characters - the most detailed of the three levels - are written so that once you get to know a character, Dos Passos introduces a new character (there are 4 total) in a new narrative. It can be a little exhausting at times. Once I got past that, the richness of the language and brilliance of the story became evident. His style is simple, somewhat similar to Steinbeck's, and reflects the "common man" quality of the people he has created. But his scope is far greater than that of any of his contemporaries. It is truly a work of genius. Dos Passos, through 1000 pages (of all 3 volumes) and a dozen main characters, has managed to accruately tell the story of a coming-of-age United States in a human, compelling way.
Rating:
Summary: Foreshadows our times with a great tale.
Review: There is great vitality in this novel; mirroring the hungry droves of Americans crossing their lands, entering into others and landing in the midst of the embattled end of European monarchies. World War I. Great may not be the correct adjective, as so much of this leap involved the dark side of capitalism, imperialism and the hegemony of the corporate state over the common individual.
There is plenty of sex, scandal and people being less than ideal- there is also a fascinating running panorama of the names of history lessons, made real and woven into the plot which is nothing less than epochal. We find Debs, Edison, the Molly Maguires, the Czar, Wilson- they are vividly real and for that alone, dos Passos has produced a invaluable addition to the purely American literature that is evocative and chillingly foreshadowing of the state of affairs visited upon this nation and the rest of the world in 2003. I will wait a while before the next book in this trilogy, but not too long.
Rating:
Summary: Foreshadows our times with a great tale.
Review: There is great vitality in this novel; mirroring the hungry droves of Americans crossing their lands, entering into others and landing in the midst of the embattled end of European monarchies. World War I. Great may not be the correct adjective, as so much of this leap involved the dark side of capitalism, imperialism and the hegemony of the corporate state over the common individual.
There is plenty of sex, scandal and people being less than ideal- there is also a fascinating running panorama of the names of history lessons, made real and woven into the plot which is nothing less than epochal. We find Debs, Edison, the Molly Maguires, the Czar, Wilson- they are vividly real and for that alone, dos Passos has produced a invaluable addition to the purely American literature that is evocative and chillingly foreshadowing of the state of affairs visited upon this nation and the rest of the world in 2003. I will wait a while before the next book in this trilogy, but not too long.
Rating:
Summary: Honestly...
Review: This book is amazing, much like the other books in this series.In fact I'm thrilled to see that they have finally released it in aversion other than the expensive Library of America version. When I first read this book (with the others) two years back, I was astounded that it isn't more appreciated. I made some inquiries with some of my college lit profs. and found that while many have read the book, few would teach it due to shear bulk. But this book needs to be taught. It is a history lesson, and it is also written in a style that we don't often see. I would almost call it a documentary. The fictional sequences create some fascinating characters - characters that meet and move on to meet other characters whom we've already been introduced to. Set amid the plot Dos Passos gives us small snipits of news as well as biographical illustrations of such people as Henry Ford and The Unknown Soldier (which is one of the most brilliant scenes I've ever read in any book). So do yourself a favor: read this book. You might actually learn something ;-)
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