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10th out of 28 books
—
29 voters
Manhattan Transfer
Considered by many to be John Dos Passos's greatest work, Manhattan Transfer is an "expressionistic picture of New York" (New York Times) in the 1920s that reveals the lives of wealthy power brokers and struggling immigrants alike. From Fourteenth Street to the Bowery, Delmonico's to the underbelly of the city waterfront, Dos Passos chronicles the lives of characters strug...more
Paperback, 342 pages
Published
September 2nd 2003
by Mariner Books
(first published 1925)
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I’m going to pull a GJ (Ginnie Jones) here and state:
”Manhattan Transfer is a kaleidoscopic portrait of New York City in the first two decades of the 20th century that follows the changing fortunes of more than a dozen characters as they strive to make sense out of the chaos of modern urban existence.”
Yeah, so that’s really what you need to know if you, you know, want the breakdown. Of course, I need to add my own two cents. ( Of course)
Reading this was an act of love. My husband has tried for...more
”Manhattan Transfer is a kaleidoscopic portrait of New York City in the first two decades of the 20th century that follows the changing fortunes of more than a dozen characters as they strive to make sense out of the chaos of modern urban existence.”
Yeah, so that’s really what you need to know if you, you know, want the breakdown. Of course, I need to add my own two cents. ( Of course)
Reading this was an act of love. My husband has tried for...more
I had avoided Dos Passos novels for fear that they would be deadeningly political. Was I ever wrong? This book is wonderfully enjoyable. Told in impressionistic vignettes the book moves quickly as stars on the Manhattan stage rise and fall. Dos Passos indictment of the materialism and soulessness of turn of the century New York is told with neither sentiment nor heartlessness, but falls in a middle ground-dispassionate.
The time frames can be confusing. For instance, in the beginning the book,th...more
The time frames can be confusing. For instance, in the beginning the book,th...more
It might be difficult to understand this novel if you've never lived in a large city. Dos Passos captures the chaos and disorientation of trying to survive in an urban battlefield, with all its violence, interruptions, temptations, anonymity, stimuli, and speed by writing in a still experimental modern style of cut-ups, fragments, and stream of consciousness. Manhattan Transfer's ferociously exciting to read, not only because it so accurately represents the physical sensations of modernity in ju...more
5 likes · like · see review
Now that's a whole other kind of fiction. Something to cherish and treasure. It reads like a movie but the good kind. It doesn't really have a plot instead it follows the lives of a few characters throughout the years in early 1900, through WW1 and right before the 1929 crash but you can feel it coming. Written in 1925, translated in French in 1928, it still is as interesting and vibrant as it was then. New York shines through all the pages. Dark and light, how the rich live and how the poor die...more
Jun 27, 2008
Andy
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
people with a lot of patience
Shelves:
20th-century-blues
This book was kind of disappointing and a few of the reviews for the book from other GoodReaders are correct. The book wants to be a sprawling epic of New York life, but so many people are dog-piled one after another it's maddening. I can handle characters intersecting but to introduce even newer characters within the last thirty pages is plain bad writing.
I also didn't think many of the characters were fleshed-out enough so their outcomes left me cold. It's hard to sympathize with people who ar...more
I also didn't think many of the characters were fleshed-out enough so their outcomes left me cold. It's hard to sympathize with people who ar...more
1 like · like · see review
Now we are post credit-crunch this is probably a very good time to read this unusual American novel. At times it was hard to believe that Manhattan Transfer is describing the New York of 80+ years ago, so contemporary did it sometimes feel to me. The blurb on the back implies it is a novel about early 20's N.Y., but this is rather inaccurate. My grasp of history is not good enough to be precise, but the story certainly spans a period of over twenty years, and only reaches the 20s in the third of...more
This book was clearly experimental for its time, and certainly reads experimental in ours. It's possible that the experiment does not quite succeed, but it's still fascinating and well-worth reading.
The book, published in 1925, tries to capture the feeling of New York City in the early 20th century, and it's able to follow a slew of characters across the first 20 years of it through innumerable situations. Like many other books, it wants to be a tone poem, or an impressionist piece, of a time an...more
I enjoyed this book, but with reservations. It is very dated, showing New York City from 1900 or so up until the 1920's. But the fact it is so dated made it interesting in my mind, trying to figure out where certain buildings and businesses were, or, when the author describes a location thinking of how it looks now. I liked the way the book followed certain characters - Ellen, Jimmy Herf, Baldwin, in some instances from birth, through adulthood, in fragmented episodes. The harsh exposition of th...more
Published in the 1920s, this cinematic novel was one of the first literary works of that era to revolutionise the use of the montage and collage technique as it follows a revolving door of characters as they live out their lives in New York.
Modernist in the way the lives of individuals are ellipted as the reader glimpses little pastiches and move on, filling the gaps as he negotiates street corners, back alleys and high society cafes with the cast, the novel seems to present a composite picture...more
Modernist in the way the lives of individuals are ellipted as the reader glimpses little pastiches and move on, filling the gaps as he negotiates street corners, back alleys and high society cafes with the cast, the novel seems to present a composite picture...more
Dos Passos' "modernism" sometimes feels like it consists of two main devices: first, all two word phrases that would ordinarily be printed as separate or hyphenated words are printed as one, creating a lot of Germanic constructions like "orangerinds", "handwinches", "manuresmelling", "leadentired" (those are all on the first page) - the other is, starting a new section (and the change from one set of characters to another is rarely delineated by anything so obvious as a chapter division) with al...more
This is the most readable "experimental" novel I've encountered, actually a "page-turner" with a variety of interesting plots, believable characters, and a vivid portrait of Manhattan. There are techniques more commonly used in film: events presented from several different viewpoints; similar events repeated and juxtaposed like the fires, ship dockings, or sunrises; characters whose social positions reverse (eerily like Proust, whose novels cover the same time period); and the quick passage fro...more
Mar 31, 2012
Francesca
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction-novel-american
Avendo avuto la fortuna di visitare New York, percepisco alla perfezione come ogni pagina di questo libro riveli ancor oggi gli “splendori e miserie” di una città così multiforme e straordinaria che non si può non idolatrare, ma nemmeno non rimanerne inorriditi. Parole che si fanno odori, calore, luce, vetro, rumori…, trascinando con sé le esistenze umane più disparate, accomunate dall’accalcarsi febbrile nella “città che sale” (per dirla con Boccioni).
New York è l’inferno e il paradiso, è la te...more
New York è l’inferno e il paradiso, è la te...more
I have to say I liked Manhattan Transfer but mostly because I didn't hate it, as odd as that sounds. I remember reading the first two novels of the USA Trilogy back when I was a senior in high school, although I have no memory of the story or the style of writing. Because that's why I didn't love this novel. The New York Tribune described the style of writing as "its kaleidoscopic pattern." Translation: Dos Passos jumps around among characters, making the story line (such as it is) very choppy....more
Ho letto Manhattan Transfer di John Dos Passos in lingua originale. In Italia non sembra aver avuto grande successo, così come Dos Passos sembra essere caduto nel dimenticatoio.
Il punto di vista dell'autore sulla lotta quotidiana per realizzare il Sogno americano è spietato. Sono più le sconfitte (anche definitive) che i successi.
Jimmy Herf se ne va dalla crudele metropoli compiendo l'esatto percorso inverso di George Willard in Winesburg, Ohio di Sherwood Anderson.
Per un'analisi più approfondit...more
Il punto di vista dell'autore sulla lotta quotidiana per realizzare il Sogno americano è spietato. Sono più le sconfitte (anche definitive) che i successi.
Jimmy Herf se ne va dalla crudele metropoli compiendo l'esatto percorso inverso di George Willard in Winesburg, Ohio di Sherwood Anderson.
Per un'analisi più approfondit...more
Some great visual puns and a great example of modernist style. John Dos Paasos has written similar stuff but Manhattan Transfer is the best example of his style.
His literature is very and style throughout the book is a collage of what could only be described as city life flashing before you at a time when the city and all its cohabitants are being born.
Sometimes racey and at other times there is no end to where here began but that's ok because the book is more like one giant poem.
The characte...more
His literature is very and style throughout the book is a collage of what could only be described as city life flashing before you at a time when the city and all its cohabitants are being born.
Sometimes racey and at other times there is no end to where here began but that's ok because the book is more like one giant poem.
The characte...more
I found it quite difficult to get into this book and almost wanted to give up but am glad I stuck with it. I didn’t start enjoying it until around page 50 and I finally started getting into its rhythm. It was confusing, chaotic and hit you from all sides. Too many characters, too many stories, too many assaults on the senses, too much energy. But that’s Manhattan isn’t it? Then and now.
The book is like a collage, it chronicles the lives of a range of characters struggling to survive in New York...more
Rather a flat novel which emphasises the issues of modernity. The reader is presented with a wide variety of characters who use various names making it difficult to track and also the characters are not fully formed. The readers only glimpse a superficial insight into the various lives of the citizens of New York as they embark on their own personal American dream, or the persuit of happiness.
The language is vivid and intensely descriptive, almost as if it is not a novel but rather a screenplay...more
The language is vivid and intensely descriptive, almost as if it is not a novel but rather a screenplay...more
Hard to believe that this was written in 1925 the same year as The Great Gatsby. This is a very modernist impressionistic novel telling the story of New York's development in the 1920's and 30's through the lives of several of its inhabitants. Some of the inhabitants lives intertwine and the paths they choose in life take them through various strands of New York society. It can be seen as a warm up for his U.S.A trilogy which tells a similar story in the same style but on a much bigger scale.
The...more
The...more
This is one of those books that seem to improve with age - I've read it before, but it comes up as very modern each time. It's a very cinematic book, and illuminating on many levels. Dos Passos was a genius and his books bear this opinion out.
2 likes · like · see review
In a lot of ways, this book is like an Edward Hopper painting, minus any embellishment. Each character, and there are many, exists with each other, but on another level, remains isolated and independent from everything. Dos Passos is reminiscent of Joyce in many ways, but I thoroughly enjoyed his style, whereas with Joyce I've been known to struggle occasionally.
One reviewer previously said that it's hard to understand this book unless you've lived in a large city, and I think that's fairly acc...more
One reviewer previously said that it's hard to understand this book unless you've lived in a large city, and I think that's fairly acc...more
It really seemed readable back at uni; New York in the 20's is something I'm fascinated about. Problem is that I got really bored at some point while reading, a few years later. Maybe it just wasn't the time for it then.
Jun 15, 2012
Belen
added it
Algo nos llevó aquerer leer esta novela. La pasión por Faulkner imagino y su relación con Dos Passos, que nno sé si hubo alguna o simplemente los consideran miembros ambos de "la generación perdida". El caso es que nos pusimos a ello.
Resultó que sin saberlo, Manhattan Transfer tiene un estilo muy similara La Colmena, bueno, al revés, claro. La Colmena no es un invento de Cela sino de John Dos Passos.
Como manejo del estilo me gustó más La Colmena pero no porque el estilo sea mejor, sino porque c...more
Resultó que sin saberlo, Manhattan Transfer tiene un estilo muy similara La Colmena, bueno, al revés, claro. La Colmena no es un invento de Cela sino de John Dos Passos.
Como manejo del estilo me gustó más La Colmena pero no porque el estilo sea mejor, sino porque c...more
This is the book you give the next person who says "in the good ole days everything was wholesome." This novel follows dozens of characters (some major, some minor-recurring and some never recurring at all) through the years 1900 -- when the major characters were children -- through the mid-20s. Manhattan Island is descriptively conjured up as a Capitalist Hell (sunsets in smog filled skies blazing red, silhouetted by factory chimneys etc.) Although it contains the usual "Lost Generation" elemen...more
Hello Everybody
been meaning to try
Manhattan Transfer
for about 20 years
Manhattan
told in a hundred or so very short stories
that connect,
don't connect
inter connect
and re connect
don't even try
to think of this as one story
its hundreds of plots
each with a life of its own
characters
come and go
some appear
never to be seen again
some appear to be seen fifty or more pages later
easy to lose track
where you are
but it's almost as if
it does not matter
open the book
to any page
find yourself
sucked in to a little s...more
been meaning to try
Manhattan Transfer
for about 20 years
Manhattan
told in a hundred or so very short stories
that connect,
don't connect
inter connect
and re connect
don't even try
to think of this as one story
its hundreds of plots
each with a life of its own
characters
come and go
some appear
never to be seen again
some appear to be seen fifty or more pages later
easy to lose track
where you are
but it's almost as if
it does not matter
open the book
to any page
find yourself
sucked in to a little s...more
Una novela que tengo que releer en pocos años. Para mi fue imposible no pensar en 'La Colmena' mientras la leía (evidentemente Dos Passos es anterior a Cela). Me daba la impresión de estar asistiendo a la creación de un tapiz: los hilos aparecen y desaparecen, unos de colores siempre reconocibles, otros que se funden con el fondo, otros que son cortados... Al principio la lectura me resultó exigente, pero cuando el salto de un hilo a otro en vez de desorientar va reforzando el reconocimiento del...more
What can I say about this book that hasn't already been said? Save perhaps that I read it two days, I have two comments:
1. The description of the night lights in the city as dark opressing and squeezing the light out of this gigantic living organism is one of the best and most beautiful metaphors I've encountered in my whole life. As a writer myself, this is what I strive for.
2. I have not yet read any piece of work describing the accents of multicultural people living in a city better than in t...more
1. The description of the night lights in the city as dark opressing and squeezing the light out of this gigantic living organism is one of the best and most beautiful metaphors I've encountered in my whole life. As a writer myself, this is what I strive for.
2. I have not yet read any piece of work describing the accents of multicultural people living in a city better than in t...more
Apr 23, 2009
cats and babies
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommended to cats and babies by:
winter 2008 American Lit
Shelves:
20th-century-american,
fiction
Passos structures his novel around the “chronicle,” a term he understands as
all the little dramas in other people's lives he gets glimpses of without knowing just what went before or just what will come after, the fragments of talk he overhears in the subway or on a streetcar, the letter he picks up on the street addressed by one unknown character to another, the words on a scrap of paper found in a trash-basket, the occasional vistas of reality he can pick out of the mechanical diction of a ne...more
all the little dramas in other people's lives he gets glimpses of without knowing just what went before or just what will come after, the fragments of talk he overhears in the subway or on a streetcar, the letter he picks up on the street addressed by one unknown character to another, the words on a scrap of paper found in a trash-basket, the occasional vistas of reality he can pick out of the mechanical diction of a ne...more
This book is an interesting and illustrative mosaic of lives in and around the city. As I was reading this book sitting in the New York subway I realized that in almost a century since Dos Passos wrote it absolutely nothing has changed. People here are having the same ambitions, the same fears, the same problems.Poverty and inequality is the same as it was during the Big Depression and ambitions of success for anyone who comes into this beautiful, but monstrous metropolis are as powerful.This co...more
You've probably heard of the band, but perhaps not that it was named after this jazz-age novel. Described as "experimental", that term is usually a euphemism for "incomprehensible", and I certainly found this book very difficult to follow. There are so many characters, from different social levels, covering everybody from pan-handlers to factory workers, actresses and middle class educated types with ambition, all the way up to eccentric businessmen and the city elders, it was difficult to keep...more
I really enjoyed this. There are several things I liked about his style, these are things that can be quite tedious when done badly. He uses a great deal of repetition, some of it is in scene description and dialogue, which is reflective of life in a city. But he also uses structural repetition, setting, physical description of characters, dialogue, pretty much over and over again in each of the little chunks that make up the story. The way the story is told feels very contemporary to readers wh...more
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John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.
He received a first-class education at The Choate School, in Connecticut, in 1907, under the name John Roderigo Madison. Later, he traveled with his tutor on a tour through France, England, Italy, Greece and the Middle East to study classical art, architecture and literature.
In 1912 he attended Harvard University and, after graduating in...more
More about John Dos Passos...
He received a first-class education at The Choate School, in Connecticut, in 1907, under the name John Roderigo Madison. Later, he traveled with his tutor on a tour through France, England, Italy, Greece and the Middle East to study classical art, architecture and literature.
In 1912 he attended Harvard University and, after graduating in...more
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“Weißt du, Jimmy, ich glaube, es wird ganz lustig sein, ein Weilchen in einer Redaktion zu sitzen."
"Ich fände es schon sehr lustig, wenn ich _irgendwo_ sitzen dürfte... Na ja, da bleibe ich eben zu Haus und passe auf das Baby auf."
"Sei nicht so verbittert, Jimmy, es ist ja nur vorübergehend."
"Das ganze Leben ist nur vorübergehend." (S. 250)”
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1 person liked it
More quotes…
"Ich fände es schon sehr lustig, wenn ich _irgendwo_ sitzen dürfte... Na ja, da bleibe ich eben zu Haus und passe auf das Baby auf."
"Sei nicht so verbittert, Jimmy, es ist ja nur vorübergehend."
"Das ganze Leben ist nur vorübergehend." (S. 250)”
Dec 15, 2010 06:20am
Dec 13, 2012 12:16pm