Back to the Lists: #23 The USA Trilogy

John Dos Passos

The USA Trilogy(1930 - 1936) by John Dos Passos is often referred to as the American version of Ulysses.  Having read both, I can now say with conviction that Passos is much easier to read than Joyce, although at times I was challenged by his narrative choices.

The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936) follow several characters through the years leading up to and including World War I as well as the boom years that followed. The final volume ends in 1930. As with many of the modernist books written during this period, Passos experiments with narrative and time. Each chapter is dedicated to a single character and how they experience these years.

Passos introduces each character with a lengthy personal history providing all the facts the reader needs to understand or recognize each character type. The cast of characters includes labor agitators, socialists, politicians, business men, socialites, a handsome man who twice marries well, journalists, artists, a preacher's daughter, a Texas heiress, a mechanic turned aviator, and an aspiring starlet. Each brings their own cast of characters. And, as time passes, they each pass through each others' spheres - some briefly and others intimately.

Between each rather long chapter, Passos inserts brief chapters entitled the "Camera's Eye" and "Newsreel." The first consists of short stream-of-consciousness passages lacking a defined narrator, punctuation, or immediate relationship to the previous chapter. Instead these passages serve as personal snapshots of the time - much like memories of a distant past. The second of these inserts consists of seemingly random lists of actual headlines and lyrics from popular songs of the time. However,  when compared to the characters' stories, these snippets help to more clearly define actual public sentiment compared to the characters' beliefs. Some of these "Newsreels" are rather humorous while others are tragic - particularly when viewed from the perspective of hindsight.

The narrative style within the USA Trilogy is quite easy to read. The writing is sparse and elegant, but once a character is introduced, you may not see them again for hundreds of pages. For me, this made it a a little difficult to keep everyone sorted. Other than that, I think the book does an excellent job of capturing its time.

I was most interested by the parallels of that time to our own Great Recession. In this work, Passos theorizes that the easy money of the 1920s was one of the direct causes of that historical stock market crash. Passos describes people who were feverishly borrowing money to invest, but once the investments went south and the loans were due, everyone paid the price of greed - whether they were playing the market or not.

Of even more interest, during the years between WWI and the Great Depression, there was a bit of a domestic war brewing between the "Makers and Takers" - except back then the workers were the makers and the bosses, financiers, and bankers who benefited from the labor of others were the takers. It is a bit of revisionism that allows this same argument to adopted and reversed during our recent hard times where the wealthy indignantly assumed the label of makers while labeling workers (and the unemployed) as takers.


Rating: 4 out of 5 bootlegged bottles of whiskey.

And, unless I am misreading the list, this is the last multiple volume entry among the remaining books. From here on out, it will be smooth sailing.

Next up: #22 Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara