A review by aerdna
1919 by John Dos Passos, E.L. Doctorow
4.0
This second installment of the U.S.A. trilogy has a distinctly different flavor that the first. Firstly, for a trilogy that is in some ways intended to be some version of the Great American Novel, surprisingly little of it takes place in the US at all. This second volume is instead dominated by The Great War and how the panoply of characters gets sucked into this all encompassing draining War that from the viewpoint of our characters seems to mostly be a long series of tiresome interactions with bureaucracy. At least with good wine over here, seems to be the general shrug. This is no patriotic call to arms.
It is interesting, I have never read an account of the Red Scare in the US by an author that was clearly sympathetic to the movement. Seen from this lens, how disappointing later developments seem. The US becomes more capitalistic in its outlook than ever, the gap between rich and poor becomes ever wider, the word socialist itself becomes dirty. Perhaps this in itself is a reason why Dos Passos has been forgotten and many of his cohort have endured- his vision of the world in impassioned brotherhood has become far more out of fashion than that of Fitzgerald's dissipated dilettantes.
Well, the same format as the last book is in place here, but some new characters are introduced. My favorite new character is Daughter, the impetuous southern belle who manages to get herself into quite the fix over in Italy. Dos Passos seems very reluctant to offer his characters a happy ending- every scene seems to finish with all the characters sitting morose and deflated in a cab rattling over the rainslimy cobblestones of a gray Paris. But then, there seems to be something very honest about that.
It is interesting, I have never read an account of the Red Scare in the US by an author that was clearly sympathetic to the movement. Seen from this lens, how disappointing later developments seem. The US becomes more capitalistic in its outlook than ever, the gap between rich and poor becomes ever wider, the word socialist itself becomes dirty. Perhaps this in itself is a reason why Dos Passos has been forgotten and many of his cohort have endured- his vision of the world in impassioned brotherhood has become far more out of fashion than that of Fitzgerald's dissipated dilettantes.
Well, the same format as the last book is in place here, but some new characters are introduced. My favorite new character is Daughter, the impetuous southern belle who manages to get herself into quite the fix over in Italy. Dos Passos seems very reluctant to offer his characters a happy ending- every scene seems to finish with all the characters sitting morose and deflated in a cab rattling over the rainslimy cobblestones of a gray Paris. But then, there seems to be something very honest about that.