Dos Passos, a Poet Who Didn't Know It?
I’ve only just begun The 42nd Parallel, but my initial sense is that U.S.A. will be a fascinating, awe-inspiring, and somewhat tedious work. There’s a good chance I won’t finish it. Indeed, my main aim at this point is merely to complete the first book.
Part of it is that, having read the foreword, I know it’s not going anywhere in the traditional narrative sense. There’s no mystery that will be solved, no plot mechanisms that will drop satisfyingly into place. It’ll just go on, alternating, as it does, between scraps of news, episodic reports on varied lives, and impressionistic word-mess.
Because the book is so controlled in its formal methods, and because it deals more in imagistic fragments than in traditional narrative arcs, it almost seems to have more in common with poetry than with fiction. Indeed, I’m barely 50 pages in, but I already sense a fair bit of connection to poets who were Dos Passos’ contemporaries, broadly speaking. The Camera Eye bits are Joycean, of course, but I’m also reminded of Gertrude Stein, whose self-consciously broken word jumbles seemed designed to test — and break — the limits of language. The “story” bits, meanwhile, resemble reported pieces to some extent, but they also strike me as similar to the poetry of William Carlos Williams: Dos Passos uses simple language to describe simple scenes of life; there are few stylistic flourishes or references to anything beyond the present place and time.
Yet by interweaving the stories of the individuals with the news fragments and the impressionistic babble, Dos Passos hints at something larger: a national experiencing not just expanding, but breaking apart; a population in the throes of an event-driven, anxiety-inducing identity crisis; and a web of individuals who, caught up in it all, get by the only way they can — one small moment at a time.
No, that’s a wrong impression, there’ll be a few narrative arcs.
“There are few stylistic flourishes.” What? Peter, shit, put the comic books away.
Reread the trilogy last weekend to follow this discussion, it occured to me that I should also go back and reread the Man in Motion trilogy; even though it was written much later it begins to seem like the natural answer with not identical but answering themes.
— Sanjay · Oct 3, 01:46 PM · #
I haven’t read USA but your description makes it sound like “Patterson,” the book length collage of a poetry and news clippings by WCW. Although if I remember correctly there was some kind of “narrative arc” involving the waterfall. It wasn’t just observations. The WCW novels that I’ve read (which I really like) are pretty much traditional in form, although they definitely are not constructed to be page turners.
— cw · Oct 3, 04:10 PM · #
I’m close to the end of The 42nd Parallel. When you’re with Mac, it seems like he’s just wandering, Augie March style, but after you get past him the characters are a little bit more purposeful, and you get the narrative arcs. One thing that’s interesting so far is how Dos Passos varies the “plain prose” of the character sections — Mac’s a wanderer, so his sections seem somewhat aimless, whereas J. Ward Moorehouse is more driven and his sections move more quickly, especially as he gets older. There’s a lot going on in the “plain prose.”
I’m very glad that The American Scene got me to read this book.
— william randolph · Oct 3, 09:52 PM · #
Sanjay — Like I said, I haven’t gotten very far in, and the introduction may have colored my expectations a bit much. But so far, the “story” sections seem fairly plain. It’s a careful and purposely executed sort of plainness, of course, but I don’t recall much that seems designed to call attention to the writing.
— Peter Suderman · Oct 4, 01:53 AM · #
Where is that painting from?
— Freddie · Oct 4, 04:08 PM · #
The omniscient third-person narration in the voice of the character, across an array of characters, is every bit the stylistic flourish as it was in Dubliners, I think.
— Matt Frost · Oct 4, 05:10 PM · #
I’m going to agree with william randolph here: even though it doesn’t have a typical narrative arc, it’s not aimless, and it’s not without by any means without style. Doctorow may have really been the wrong guy to write the forward; it colored my expectations initially, but I think what’s important to Doctorow may not be what’s ultimately important to Dos Passos. I like your thought of comparing it to poetry, though – not a comparison I’d have made, but given that it’s not exactly shaped like a novel the question does arise, “ok, then what is it shaped like?”
As for Dubliners – and Joyce more generally – I’m not feeling that close a kinship. The “Camera Eye” sections feel more Woolfean than Joycean – maybe because I don’t much like them (I love the “Newsreel” sections, tough), maybe because they aren’t heady and wise-cracking the way Joyce always seems to be (and don’t get me wrong – I love Joyce . . . she’s my favorite writer).
In case you didn’t guess, I’m really enjoying the trilogy – and long overdue for a post here on the subject, as I’m now about 1/4 of the way into 1919 and haven’t said anything yet. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get around to it . . .
— Noah Millman · Oct 5, 01:11 AM · #
That’s a Quintanilla, Freddie, but I’ve no idea if it’s supposed to be DP. Might be. I’ve seen a picture of the much older DP painting.
One thing — this is my third (I think) reading of USA and for the other two I was still a hip, angry young man. Now I’m generally kind of calm about shit, and reading this I’m stunned how bitter the guy is (which in no way lessens the work for me). And where that jumps out for me most is in the character plots: the way he skates right on by when the horrible happens.
For those stopping at 42nd I should say: 1919 always strikes me as easily the best of the three.
Doctorow wrote the forward in your edition? Not a choice I get.
I think linking the “Camera Eye” style directly to Joyce at this time — post Thomas Wolfe and Faulkner — is a mistake, btw, so I am glad Noah said that. The section gets more lucid and personally I think he was trying to be obscure in the early ones: father was I think sort of a playboy and it caused a lot of issues, was what I get out of it, but maybe I’m reading too much into those 42nd Camera Eyes.
— Sanjay · Oct 5, 02:33 AM · #
U.S.A. Assignment desk:
The whole story is fraught with a dreary sexual tension, since few of the characters have the resources they need to integrate sex, romance, and economic commitment. Somebody needs to write about the way that economic uncertainty and precariousness make stable male-female coupling almost impossible.
It’s an interesting thesis from a writer who was an illegitimate son.
And I’m not linking the Camera Eye sections to Joyce. I’m thinking of the way JDP uses each character’s voice to narrate that character’s chapters, as william randolph mentions. Didn’t Joyce do this in Dubliners? It’s been a while.
— Matt Frost · Oct 5, 02:48 AM · #
Matt, cf. Rorty’s “Love and Money,” Ch. 16 in “Philosophy and Social Hope.”
— James · Oct 5, 02:59 AM · #
First of all thank you American Scene for getting me into this work. I had just finished off “Theodore Rex,” the follow up the Edmund Morris’ Pulitzer-winning “The Rise of Teddy Roosevelt” and so the timing was near perfect, chronology wise. Noah, I’m glad see someone else state right out that Doctorow’s forward was off. For me it was heavy handed, especially since it predicates such an understated book. The news clip montages look and read like Found Art, the passages regarding the Titantic simply wonderful. What immediately came to mind when reading Peter’s post comes in Newsreel XII, where a snippet of a William Jennings Bryan gold standard speech at a convention hall is broken up into such natural free verse poetry it demands several rereads.
And one other thing: was TAS undergoing some maintenance last night? Couldn’t get much of anything to load.
— ASKlein · Oct 14, 02:52 PM · #