U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel/1919/The Big Money (Library of America #85) by John Dos Passos

Oct 11, 2007 Jonathan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Together, the three novels represent a compelling character sketch of the United States during the first three decades of the 20th century, when America was awakening to its growing power and reveling in its seemingly endless prosperity. Dos Passos advances his episodic narrative through several meticulously drawn characters that span the gamut of Jazz Age archetypes: the flapper, the revolutionary, the industrialist, the speculator, etc. Dos Passos uses his characters’ intertwined lives to expl...more

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Mar 30, 2013 Geoffrey Benn rated it 5 of 5 stars

USA is a trilogy, but should really be viewed as a grand novel in three parts. The first section, “The 42nd parallel,” takes place in the decade prior to WWI, in the United States. It is an optimistic, coming of age story – the characters are primarily young, idealistic. Many of the characters are working class people and become involved in radical politics. Throughout “42nd parallel,” you get the feeling of rising class consciousness and working class power – strikes are being won, the workers...more USA is a trilogy, but should really be viewed as a grand novel in three parts. The first section, “The 42nd parallel,” takes place in the decade prior to WWI, in the United States. It is an optimistic, coming of age story – the characters are primarily young, idealistic. Many of the characters are working class people and become involved in radical politics. Throughout “42nd parallel,” you get the feeling of rising class consciousness and working class power – strikes are being won, the workers are revolting in Mexico. In “1919” America enters WWI, and a surge of nationalism wipes out all of the gains made previously by the working class. The government and industry become much more heavy-handed in their repression of activism. Other characters, previously radical, become swept up in the nationalist fervor, or are corrupted by a dionessyian lifestyle as officers with ambulance corps and the red cross in France during and immediately after the war. Suddenly, people care less about their fellow man, and more about themselves. The final scene of 1919 is exceptionally powerful: a returning veteran joins a protest against lumber barons in Oregon, and is brutally murdered. The final book, “The Big Money,” takes place in the 1920s, and follows a number of people as they try to ascend into wealth and success, primarily in NYC. Some succeed, some are crushed – all end up lonely and bitter. The final part of “The Big Money” returns to a number of the radicals introduced in the previous books, whom are fighting hopelessly against the government (Sacco and Vanzetti) and industry, while becoming increasingly radicalized. Overall, USA has a very interesting style – it jumps from sections about particular characters, to excerpts from newsreels, to short stream of consciousness sections, to brief narratives detailing the entire lives of important figures (Henry Ford, President Wilson, Thomas Edison etc). As historical fiction, I liked it, because it felt very real – it was chaotic and unpredictable, with characters subject to fits of irrationality, depression, and bad luck – nothing felt inevitable. This book is a great commentary on what changed in America over the period of 1900-1930, as we became the economic superpower of the world. It is also a commentary on the shift towards conservatism and selfishness that comes with age. USA’s scope and overall end – painting a picture of a whole country during a tumultuous period of time – remind me very much of War and Peace. However, USA is told through the prism of the working class, where War and Peace is told through the prism of the Russian nobility.(less)

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Dec 13, 2012 Bruce rated it 4 of 5 stars

John Dos Passos published his trilogy in the 1930’s. The titles of the three volumes are The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money. The work is a collage of newspaper headlines, biographies of famous Americans, stream-of-consciousness autobiography, and fictional narrative that traces through its segmented story the history of the country from the Spanish American War through the First World War and into the decade thereafter. The first novel in the trilogy ends just as the United States is mak...more John Dos Passos published his trilogy in the 1930’s. The titles of the three volumes are The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money. The work is a collage of newspaper headlines, biographies of famous Americans, stream-of-consciousness autobiography, and fictional narrative that traces through its segmented story the history of the country from the Spanish American War through the First World War and into the decade thereafter. The first novel in the trilogy ends just as the United States is making its rather belated entry into World War I. The second novel ends as the war is over. The final work moves into the 1920’s. The portions of the book that contain fictional narrative are told through the lenses of twelve diverse characters whose lives intersect unpredictably, gradually forming a tapestry of political and economic life as well as social commentary, most of it generally pessimistic about the trajectory of the country during the first few decades of the 20th century. The labor movement and issues of capitalism and exploitation of workers continue to interest the author throughout the narrative, his sympathies being generally socialistic. Dos Passos is a perceptive writer as well as a skillful stylist, and the book is easy to read even as it raises social and philosophical issues worth pondering today. He has had an important influence on subsequent American fiction writers even as he also wrote in other genres, work sometimes reflecting his gradual movement to the political right, a surprise in view of his leftwing perspectives in the present trilogy.

Dos Passos’ syntax is often luxuriant, his command of long complex sentences being flawless and even riveting. His use of dialogue clearly differentiates his characters. The dialogue is also often dated, his idioms and clichés probably accurately reflecting the period of which he writes, but they can quickly becoming cloying and distracting. He writes mostly of the middle and the under-class of society, although some of his characters have flashes of existence among the well-to-do, usually at the expense of those less fortunate. For most of the men, sex and alcohol function as palliatives to the disappointment of their lives. For the women, the same is often true, although sex also functions as a means – often successfully, sometimes not – of insuring male interest and financial support. This is a creative work that illuminates a three-decade period of American history, focusing less on major historical events in themselves than on the lives of common people impacted by the shifts of history going on around them. If the tone seems often to be grim and gritty and the lives of the characters too often alcohol-sodden, that may accurately reflect the lives of many people then alive. It is hard to read this book without being mindful of today’s increasing income disparity between the super-wealthy and the rest of society. The pace of the trilogy moves quickly, and the story and its method of presentation are not usually dull, although midway through the third volume this reader found the tedium of the characters’ lives beginning to precipitate tedium in his continued reading of the narrative. Nonetheless the trilogy is worth the effort.
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Jul 21, 2012 Smcleish rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Originally published on my blog here in May and June 2000.

The 42nd Parallel

The first novel of the famous USA trilogy presents a picture of that country from the beginning of the century until 1917, when the US declared war on Germany. (The trilogy as a whole continues until the early 1930s.) In these novels, dos Passos created a new literary style, frequently admired if rarely imitated, in which documentary style clips are used to create background, to relate the characters to political and econ...more

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Feb 19, 2010 Chad rated it 2 of 5 stars

I want to appreciate stream of consciousness writing, but I cannot find any artistic merit in it. Thankfully, John Dos Passos restricts that style to certain short sections of The 42nd Parallel, 27 mini-chapters intended to give a broader perspective than those of the expository characters. Perhaps for other readers it serves that purpose. The narrative is also interspersed with 19 “newsreels”, in which he cuts short phrases from the headlines of various contemporary news stories. Unfortunately,...more I want to appreciate stream of consciousness writing, but I cannot find any artistic merit in it. Thankfully, John Dos Passos restricts that style to certain short sections of The 42nd Parallel, 27 mini-chapters intended to give a broader perspective than those of the expository characters. Perhaps for other readers it serves that purpose. The narrative is also interspersed with 19 “newsreels”, in which he cuts short phrases from the headlines of various contemporary news stories. Unfortunately, for a reader far removed from the time in which these events took place there is rarely enough detail to have more than guess at what is actually happening. I do enjoy the stories of Mac, Janey, J.Ward, Eleanor, and Charley, but even here Dos Passos manages to annoy by being cute with language, inventing his own compound words with no discernible rhyme or reason for their selection. Each of the narratives are interesting in their own right, but while a few of the main characters do have chance encounters there is no overarching plot holding them together. This is almost more like a collection of short stories written to together paint a picture of American life at the beginning of the 20th century than a traditional novel. I cannot say that this is among my favorite reads, but it has shown enough to convince me to give 1919 a try.

...

It was with some trepidation that I followed The 42nd Parallel with the remaining two books in the series. To make the task a bit less onerous, I stopped reading the “Camera Eye” sections entirely and only skimmed through the “Newsreel” chapters. Dos Passos took up a new frustrating habit of inserting paragraph breaks seemingly arbitrarily in the middle of sentences. I am sure there was some poetic purpose behind this, but its effect was to remove any interest I may have had in reading something else “artistic” in the near future. The cast of disparate characters fractured enough over the rest of the series that by the time I reached a chapter about some particular character I had forgotten entirely which of the stories thus far applied to them. As I expected, there was nothing to eventually tie the stories together. Both books end around momentous events — the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, but these cannot be seen as real resolution since most of the characters are involved peripherally or not at all.

I can say a few good things about the books. They have indeed painted a broad picture of life in the United States in the first 30 years of the 20th Century. I learned more about the socialist movements during those times than in any study of history, and have seen more clearly how the transfer from government by/for/of the people to government by/for/of the corporations was already well underway before even my grandparents were born. In the one Camera Eye that I did read carefully after the fact, Dos Passos wonderfully turns around the anti-immigrant sentiment that fueled the Red Scare to note that it was the men who sailed from distant shores to find a land where all men were created equal who were Americans in spirit:

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
all right we are two nations
America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people and when they want to they hire the executioner to throw the switch
…
we stand defeated America

(Lack of punctuation, capitalization, and sensible structure preserved in case you somehow find it meaningful.) Now, time to pick up a book from someone who knows how to tell a story.
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Dec 01, 2010 Veronica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Veronica by: Modern Library's 100 Best Novels

Attempting to tackle Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy in one week, Thanksgiving week, nonetheless, was quite a challenge and has put my "book a week" schedule a tad behind, however, this phenomenal masterpiece (yes, I am singing its praises) was worth the eyestrain and resulting bloodshot eyes.
I wrestled with the idea of giving the 1200+ page tome three weeks reading time since U.S.A. consists of three novels; The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money, however, since Modern Library listed it singly a...more Attempting to tackle Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy in one week, Thanksgiving week, nonetheless, was quite a challenge and has put my "book a week" schedule a tad behind, however, this phenomenal masterpiece (yes, I am singing its praises) was worth the eyestrain and resulting bloodshot eyes.
I wrestled with the idea of giving the 1200+ page tome three weeks reading time since U.S.A. consists of three novels; The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money, however, since Modern Library listed it singly and it was highly recommended to read as one, I held myself to task.
U.S.A. takes the reader from the east to the west with stops in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and on to Fargo, North Dakota and out to Hollywood, California. Contrary to its title, there are also tales set in Paris, France, Italy and Cuba.
Dos Passos manages to cover an array of subjects including social inequality, sexual promiscuity, abortion, suicide, prohibition, the stock market and more without haranguing the reader.
There are twelve central characters in U.S.A., all introduced as children and we see them leave home and attempt to find their way in the U.S.A. as they deal with love and betrayal, birth and death, purpose and loneliness. While some of the characters and stories are interwoven, there are not always neat and happy endings. In fact, some characters are hinted to be in failing health, yet we don't get the answers to our speculations.
I was not so crazy about some of the little extras in the book; Newsreel listed actual headlines from the time period, Camera Eye was stream of consciousness (not my cup of tea) said to be autobiographical, and Bios of actual figures from the time. Although relevant, the sheer volume of the trilogy made it difficult to appreciate the additional text.
Charley Anderson is a mechanic who makes it big, yet struggles with fitting in and turns to alcohol which eventually has devastating consequences.
Margo Dowling is a tenacious gal who faces obstacles from the very start, when her mother dies in childbirth and her father turns to booze. Her stepmother remarries a cad who rapes her and she flees with a Cuban who is an drug addicted homosexual, but she eventually makes it to Hollywood and becomes a star, albeit, short-lived once the silent movies are given "voice".
Someone should make this into a mini-series! I'm sure people would get hooked on the story lines and lovable and loathsome characters and hopefully be compelled to read the book.
I would love, love, love to spend some time with Mr. Dos Passos. He most certainly could tell some wonderful tales and I'd love to hear about his travels throughout the world. If he were to share his expertise with crafting both dialogue and descriptives, I would be in heaven.
My rating for U.S.A. is a 10 out of 10.(less)

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Oct 28, 2011 Rob T rated it 5 of 5 stars

I had a habit of writing English papers about economics in literature, so the U.S.A. trilogy is like a dream come true. A student could spend years writing about class and money in this book. What really made it sing for me was my own sadness about the America that could have been and the America that happened instead. Add to that Dos Passos's fantastic voices and it's well worth a read.

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Jan 27, 2012 Patrick Sprunger rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, read-in-2012

As far as opuses go, U.S.A. is probably about as good as they come. The problem is, I'm not sure how much demand there is for an opus these days. Contemporary readers love quantity, form, repetition (see: Harry Potter, Twilight, Game of Thrones, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc.) - when duly monetized and adaptable for film. But we, as a people, may be turning our back on the Tolstoys and Joyces and Dos Passoses of yesteryear.

I think the reason is pretty simple. The opus, grand as it is, co...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Avi rated it 5 of 5 stars

I don't generally write reviews for the classics, since I figure that many other people have already done a better job than I could do, and this isn't any exception. However, there has been some discussion of these books' connections with some Rush songs, and I do feel qualified to discuss that shortly.

Most Rush fans will make the connection with the song "The Big Money", but there two other songs whose titles also bear similarities with these books: "The Camera Eye" and "Middletown Dreams". The...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Jim Leckband rated it 4 of 5 stars

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman was talking about himself, but that quote could be the U.S.A. talking in Dos Passos overwhelming series of books that make up the U.S.A. trilogy. The trilogy is an outstanding document of how life was lived in the early part of the twentieth century up to the Depression. And I mean really how life was lived. Dos Passos attention to period details of how people dress, eat, room, travel, work,...more

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman was talking about himself, but that quote could be the U.S.A. talking in Dos Passos overwhelming series of books that make up the U.S.A. trilogy. The trilogy is an outstanding document of how life was lived in the early part of the twentieth century up to the Depression. And I mean really how life was lived. Dos Passos attention to period details of how people dress, eat, room, travel, work, love, play and drink, drink and drink is shown in bringing his multitude of characters to life.

But it's the contradictions and oppositions that Dos Passos is concerned about. How the new way of modern life is embraced and resisted - sometimes by the same character! How the opposition of labor and capital tears apart the society while nobody sees the big picture (except, perhaps, Thorstein Veblen and, of course, the author). And it's the contradiction that all the main characters are madly on the make, shooting to the next big thing, whether it's money, "revolution", the movies, etc. while yearning for the stability they can't ever seem to get. Physically the perpetual motion machine is impossible, but figuratively, the people in the U.S.A. embody it.

In terms of technique, Dos Passos reminds me of Orson Welles. In fact, the book contains biographies of two of the role models of Citizen Kane - William Randolph Hearst and Samuel Insull. The bravura technique involves four basic types - 1. Following the lives of characters 2. Biographies of eminent or notorious Americans 3. Newsreel snippets of headlines and text of news events and 4. Impressionistic renderings of the memory of the author at various times and places. Together these techniques situate the reader into a front row seat of the 1900's through the 1920's. As I was finishing, I found I wanted more of these books for the times afterwards! But I think I'd find, that while the characters and events have changed, Americans are still restless and still unclear how organized labor and uncompassionate capital need each other.(less)

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Sep 11, 2009 S.D. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money) is something of an anti-heroic epic, in which the intertwined lives of characters representing broad American types unfold to present a vision of America that fulfills the promise of American Idealism by drawing attention to the very elements that idealism so frequently undermines. In that sense, the U.S.A. of Dos Passos’ is a utopia – yet his abrupt juxtaposition of poeticized abstractions of historical elements and disjoin...more

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Mar 08, 2011 Brian Burt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Although I read somewhere a critic's remark that the style of this book is now dated and its effect diminished, I'd like to think that they were speaking out of condescension (perhaps due to insecurity at not having published a book at all worth mentioning) since the style is easily one of the highlights of this great novel. Perhaps we've grown accustomed to such a work just as when we listen to The Beatles: still sweet, but their overall impact and effect somewhat lost due to the thousands of r...more

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Jul 04, 2012 Miranda Davis rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the Great American Novel Trilogy. Innovative structure even for today (storytelling through vignettes as well as straight narration). Just an incredible, involving, sweeping epic depiction of the U.S. in the 20's (wobblies, Fighting Bob Lafollette, unions, everything and everyone, no joke). From the snapshots and the fragments from various characters' POV emerges a portrait of our country that is unforgettable. This, for me, is a desert island book. I could read it hundreds of times and...more

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Mar 10, 2012 Gregory Sotir rated it 5 of 5 stars

I avoided reading this book until my late 40s. After reading it I felt I had just been witness to the crucible that was American 20th century political change. It was a sputtering, melting storm of different elements, converging and reforming as something different. Like the great films of old Hollywood, this epic is a type of American vision now sadly absent in American lit and arts. And it's replacements seem to me to be pale replicas, as if we lost something somewhere, or it was taken away fr...more

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Feb 12, 2013 David Hewitt rated it 5 of 5 stars

With the USA trilogy, John Dos Passos attempted to paint a comprehensive portrait of the United States through the entire first three decades of the 20th century, by means of an extremely creative range of techniques. This trilogy can very rightfully be compared beside other extremely ambitious works like The Grapes of Wrath or Atlas Shrugged--and in fact, in sheer ambition and scope, and especially in even-handedness, it surpasses both by a wide margin. Though his name has slipped into relative...more

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Nov 20, 2008 Hamish rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: lit

I think the moral of this story is that if you marry anyone or get pregnant, it will only end in utter and total disaster. Or it might have been that anything you do will end up in utter and total disaster and you are totally screwed because the USA (of which there are two, apparently) sucks.

The prose is lovely, the man has fine story-telling skills, the structure is interesting and the sweep is quite grand. But at times I found the characters to be kind of two-dimensional and often very stereot...more

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Aug 23, 2012 Sam Reaves rated it 4 of 5 stars

Consisting of the novels The 42nd Parallel, 1919 and The Big Money, this was the work that made Dos Passos's reputation, a panoramic look at the United States in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century. Interspersing newspaper excerpts and popular culture references with the life stories of disparate characters as they gradually converge, Dos Passos shows the country moving into the modern age, with labor struggles, the dawning of the consumer age and the transforming upheaval of th...more

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Jun 29, 2009 Elh52 rated it 5 of 5 stars

I don't understand why everyone is still looking for the Great American Novel. It was written by John Dos Passos back in the '30s. Ok, its actually three novels bound together as a trilogy, but more's the luck. It you have ever wanted to go back in time and stand in the middle of America during the first part of the 20th century while everything happened around you, now's your chance. And be sure to have music by George Gershwin playing in the background. I like this book so much I own two copie...more

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May 10, 2013 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, politics, poetry, american

John dos Passos was clearly someone who soaked himself in life. The pages of U.S.A. are brimming with it, in a simple way that breathes extraordinary observational power and storytelling sophistication. The story is clearly fueled by anger (that apparently he lost when he grew older) at the hatefulness of greed and ambition, but tempered by a wholehearted and even enthusiastic understanding of the hopelessly complex prism of drives and reactions on the personal level that lead people to prize or...more John dos Passos was clearly someone who soaked himself in life. The pages of U.S.A. are brimming with it, in a simple way that breathes extraordinary observational power and storytelling sophistication. The story is clearly fueled by anger (that apparently he lost when he grew older) at the hatefulness of greed and ambition, but tempered by a wholehearted and even enthusiastic understanding of the hopelessly complex prism of drives and reactions on the personal level that lead people to prize or torment themselves and others, and ultimately help fuel injustice and oppression.

None of the characters are over-explained, they are just left to talk and do, with a real deftness of touch that for all its lightness feels cinematic. The dialogues are uncannily "true to life" to the point of often masking unheard conversation and unexplained context that has to be inferred. There are over a dozen main characters who come and go throughout the story, which switches perspective according to the protagonist at the time.

I took such a long time to get through it (in fits and starts over the space of a year) that I wish I'd made a few notes to keep names and "faces" together. Reading it through steadily would have made for a more integrated overview, but it is massive - not only in physical size but in the big spans of time and scope of action that can happen in the course of just one page. I meandered through its massiveness very very slowly: for all its apparent narrative simplicity it is plenty lyrical enough to be constantly going back a page or two and rereading, whether the "main story" bits, the cut-and-paste "newsreel" bits, or the stream-of-consciousness Beat generation "camera eye" bits. I've read complaints in other reviews about the latter two types of passage interspersed throughout, but if you love poetry, you'll love them too.

Dos Passos has as keen an eye for the natural world as for the human, and U.S.A. melds them magically together, even as most of the self-obsessed humans run through it all seemingly without a second look. There's a beauty in the writing that, like the best objets, is expressed seemingly effortlessly, even artlessly. A random sample:
"It was a bright fall morning with blue mist in the hollows. Dry cornstalks rustled on the long hills red and yellow with fall. It was late when she got home. Dad was up reading the war news in pajamas and bathrobe. 'Well, it won't be long now, Daughter,' he said. 'The Hindenburg Line is crumpling up.'"

Finally, I learned a lot from U.S.A. about famous historical figures in U.S. history, presented in something like parable form, and brought to almost palpable life with the same quiet, patient, almost at-armslength passion that the author brings to everything else. The last tome I read having been War and Peace, it was great to read a work on a similar scale that talked a modern tongue, still as startlingly current today as it was when penned over 80 years ago.(less)

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Jul 06, 2008 Cyril rated it 5 of 5 stars

The USA trilogy comprises three books that really read as one continuous story. It tells the tales of numerous individuals as they are buffeted by the currents of history around the early part of the 20th century. The format of the novels is uncoventional: interspersed among the passages about the characters in the book are news headlines, vignettes of historical figures and autobiographical sketches. There is no single plot, and there is no tidy ending for many of the characters

The lives are co...more

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Apr 22, 2009 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars

Yow! Too much to say about this - random observations - the depictions of post-WWI US and European strategy around control of oil-producing parts of the globe seems startlingly up-to-date, as do the wrangling of various business tycoons with the recently birthed FDA.
By contrast, the tribulations of anyone who catches a venereal disease in the era before antibiotics, the passing reference to an "icebox" that actually required blocks of ice to keep things cold and so on are interesting period deta...more

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Feb 04, 2012 PJ Ebbrell rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a sprawling massive novel, not for its complexity of characters who weaved in and out of each other lives, but the 'lost' history of the USA. The brutality of the Corporatons as they seek to secure their position within the industrialisation of the country. Book 1 deals with the situation in Mexica, Book 2 called 1919 is the Great War and how the USA is drawn into the conflict.

Not only does it have this dense narrative, Pasos uses differing narrative techniques of switching each story a...more

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Nov 08, 2012 Christopher rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Many writers get lost in trying to tell a great American story, USA is a triumphant anthology of tales that delivers both on the grand scope of life stories but also with reverence for the everyday flotsam.

History, satire, a collection of characters from across country and classes intersecting in a trilogy of novels that brings to life the language and energy of early 20th century America. Dos Passos is a technician in how he paces and breaks narrative, collages headlines and streaming consciou...more

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Mar 19, 2010 Andrew rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: novel

This is one of those books you read because of its literary and historical significance. You get a good feel for lifestyles and culture in the US in the years surrounding WWI. It shows the political movements of workers that dominated the early part of the last century.

There are also the famous "stream of conscience" sections.

Good to know what it is about.

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Jan 06, 2011 Dallisonam rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book is interesting as a glimps into the time it was written. It strongly endorses the disdain for capitalists taking the working man's fruit of his labors. Dos Passos employs a few different techniques, some apparently attempting to mimic Joyce, while others appear to foreshadow Pynchon, though he does neither as well as those authors.

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Aug 24, 2012 Anne-marie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this before moving to America years ago. It's a fascinating study of the rise of big business in the U.S. told through a wonderfully generous narrative filled with big characters and all the while a news ticker tape clicks away in the background giving time, place and scope of real-life events. Loved it.

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May 16, 2008 Joseph rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Dos Passos made me want to start a union at my own job. The trilogy starts off great in the 42nd Parrallel, but starts to lag in 1919. The Big Money is where Dos Passos makes his message, along with his disappointment clear. America it appears really hasn't changed. If anything, it's cyclical.

"They have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspapereditors the old judges the small men with reputations the collegepresidents the wardhee...more

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May 18, 2010 Bryan (Beej) Jones rated it 2 of 5 stars

I was not overly impressed by any of the three books that made up Dos Passos' trilogy. I believe that the high literary opinion of this trilogy is built more on the shock value of its writing style than on its sheer literary merit. More form than function.

I will say that it did emphasize (or perhaps overemphisize) the depth and breadth of the grass roots socialist movement that took place in American in the first quarter of this century. After McCarthyism, fifty years of Cold War, it is hard to...more

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May 04, 2009 Andrew added it

Shelves: american-fiction, pre-wwii-american-fiction

Christ, took me long enough, but I finally finished the whole trilogy. And damned if it wasn't totally rewarding. The 42nd Parallel was the most enjoyable of the three to read, with its long, almost proto-beat travel passages and its sense of boundless optimism for the working class in America. As the characters become more and more complex and their actions become more and more intertwined over the course of the trilogy, you find yourself totally sucked into their world. Highlight moment: the e...more

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Jun 22, 2012 ماهر Battuti rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: life-long-readings

A triology that is considered a landmark in the history of the novel.Dos Passos introduced in it new techniques in story - telling that other novelists did imitate after him.
It ranked number number 38 in my 101 best international novels.

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U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel/1919/The Big Money (The U.S.A. Trilogy)

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Trivia About U.S.A.: The 42nd ...