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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN num: 9780618056828
ISBN number: 0618056823
Label: Mariner Books
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 464
Printing Date: May 25, 2000
Publishing house: Mariner Books
Sale Popularity Level: 130525
Studio: Mariner Books
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With 1919, the second volume of his U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos continues his 'vigorous and sweeping panorama of twentieth-century America' (Forum), lauded on publication of the very first volume not only for its scope, but also for its groundbreaking style. Again, employing a host of experimental devices that would inspire a whole new generation of writers to follow, Dos Passos captures the many textures, flavors, and background noises of modern life with a cinematic touch and unparalleled nerve.
1919 opens to find America and the world at war, and Dos Passos's characters, many of whom we met in the very first volume, are thrown into the snarl. We follow the daughter of a Chicago minister, a wide-eyed Texas girl, a young poet, a radical Jew, and we glimpse Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Unknown Soldier.
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Rated by buyers 
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After reading and greatly enjoying the very first volume (The 42nd Parallel) in Dos Passos' acclaimed "USA trilogy", I quickly moved on to this subsequent volume. Picking up where that one left off, it takes the reader from America's entry in World War I through the end of the war. As with "The 42nd Parallel", this is done by following several characters through the war era, interspersed with Dos Passos' experiment modernist sequences "The Camera Eye" and "Newsreel." (These are kind of abstract prose collages or montages comprised of headlines, snatched phrases of songs, news clippings, and random phrases -- presumably intended to convey some of the mood and seeming frenetic pace of the time. At the time they might have seemed startling and striking, however to me they muddy up what is already a wide-ranging and complex narrative.) There are also sketches of major figures, such as Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, Joe Hill, J.P. Morgan, and the Unknown Soldier, which are miniature masterpieces of biography.
Unfortunately, while that very first book was a revelation, I found this one exceedingly tedious. Dos Passos' antiwar sentiment is so strong and vociferous throughout the book that it lacks the range of the very first book and settles into a more or less repetitive rut. While it's certainly instructive to see how almost a century ago, a nation could be easily seduced by manufactured patriotism, Dos Passos' take is so decidedly ideological that he masks some of the complexities of the situation. His bitter cynicism about it all -- which, to be fair, was hard won through his ambulance duty on the Western Front -- results in a very negative novel, in which all relationships are a failure, all promises broken, all politics corrupt, and even those who mean well are rendered ineffective by larger forces.
The book introduces a new set of characters, including a sailor, a poet, a Jewish radical, a small-town Texas woman, and a preacher's daughter. However, for some reason, their tales aren't nearly as compelling as those in "The 42nd Parallel." While this may be because they are overshadowed by the war, it doesn't help that many characters from that earlier book turn up in France to steal a good deal of the narrative thunder. In any event, what was exciting about the very first book is decidedly less so here, and I don't think I'll move on to complete the trilogy -- at least not any time soon.
Rated by buyers -
This is a review of the Mariner paperback edition, published by Houghton Mifflin. The U.S.A. trilogy is wonderful, and Dos Passos' seemingly artless style--it's as if each of the many characters whose fates he intertwines has written his or her story as a chatty, intimate letter and Dos Passos has simply edited them lightly--fairly sweeps you along. BUT don't buy this edition! The covers are beautifully designed, but these volumes contain a scandalous number of typographical errors. The proofreader, if there was one, was clearly asleep on the job.
Rated by buyers 
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Those words, written by John Dos Passos while serving as a Red Cross Ambulance Driver during the First World War, provide the underlying theme for "1919", Volume II of Dos Passos' "USA Trilogy".
Dos Passos is one of the (now) lesser known literary giants of the very first half of the 20th-century. At the height of his fame in the 1930s he found himself on the same pedestal as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. By the time Volume III (The Big Money) was released in 1936, Jean-Paul Sartre hailed him as "the greatest writer of our time". Edmund Wilson's review went so far as to claim that Dos Passos was "the very first of our writers, with the possible exception of Mark Twain, who has successfully used colloquial American for a novel of the highest artistic seriousness." Dos Passos' literary reputation began to change during the Spanish Civil War. Dos Passos, along with Hemingway and many other literary figures including George Orwell, made his way to Spain to assist in the Republican cause. Like Orwell, Dos Passos was deeply affected by the brutal infighting amongst Republican supporters. In the case of Dos Passos he was deeply distressed by murder of a friend (anarchist and Johns Hopkins Professor Jose Robles) apparently executed by Stalinist cadres for his nonconforming radicalism. Hemingway mocked Dos Passos for his unmanly concern for his friend. Dos Passos reports that he told Hemingway that "the question I keep putting to myself is what's the use of fighting a war for civil liberties, if you destroy civil liberties in the process?" Hemingway replied "civil liberties, [__ _ _ ]. Are you with us or against us?" It is no surprise that Dos Passos' subsequent book was criticized severely. The New Masses magazine referred to it as a "crude piece of Trotskyist agit-prop". Dos Passos never reclaimed the popularity he had achieved with the USA Trilogy.
1919 takes up where "42nd Parallel" left off. President Wilson, despite his 1916 campaign slogan "He kept us out of War" had taken the United States to war against Germany in 1917. Many of the characters found in 42nd Parallel, including Eleanor Stoddard, J. Ward Moorehouse, Eveline Hutchins, and Joe Williams find their to France. Along with a few new characters, their lives intersect and divert throughout the war and the subsequent peace talks at Versailles. With the exception of J. War Moorehouse these are all relatively `little people' who have no real influence on the course of events but who simply must endure them.
In addition to the stories of these fictional characters, 1919 is interspersed with mini-biographies of real people, newsreel clippings that place the story in a social a political context, and a series of autobiographical sketches in which Dos Passos steps out from the story and provides his own personal context to the times. The writing is terse and enjoyable. The highlights of the book for me were his biographical sketches. His mini-biography of Woodrow Wilson ("Meester Vilson"), J.P. Morgan, Theodore Roosevelt and Joe Hill say more about those men than many full length biographies. His closing biography, of the Unknown Soldier ("The Body of an American") picked from among the unidentified American casualties of the war,is a beautiful, politically charged piece of writing."
The use of the Camera Eye, biographies, and newsreels create a literary mosaic that leaves the reader feeling he is in the middle of a multi-media experience within the confines of a book. Later generations of writers have adopted this technique to great success. E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime is a case in point. (Doctorow wrote an appreciative foreword to this edition.)
1919 is a worthy successor to 42nd Parallel that leaves this 21st-century reader with a feeling that he had stepped back almost 100 years to a different time and place in American history. I would only note that his book will not be appreciated unless one has read "42nd Parallel". It is an investment in time that no reader with an interest in political (or politicized) fiction will regret making.
Rated by buyers -
This is a great book - arguably the best of the trilogy, although it should be said that none of these books really stands on its own; U.S.A. is a single book in three volumes. Compared to other versions of Dos Passos, Mariner's quality paperback editions leave a great deal to be desired. Even the Signet mass markets featured the original Reginald Marsh illustrations, which add a great deal of texture to the experience of reading the novel. I don't know why they weren't included here. Their absence almost feels pretentious, part of a general move toward the more respectable, 'literary' QP format, after Signet's humbler, plebian MMs. Moreover, Mariner's 1919 is littered with printing errors, sometimes two or three in a paragraph. Given the fragmented nature of [much of] Dos Passos's text to begin with, Mariner's contribution of spelling mistakes and other typos can make a conscientious reader feel paranoid. Read the book, but seek out another edition.
Rated by buyers -
I was prompted to read this book (and many others by the author) by an Amazon.com reviewer of Norman Mailer's 'The Naked and the Dead.' The reviewer completely trashed the Mailer World War II book, which I always believed was as good a war novel that had ever been written. The 'Naked and the Dead' was a groundbreaker in many ways, and set the tone for his great literary career that has ultimately had some ups and admittable downs. The reviewer said that if I want to see some 'real writing', to read John Dos Passos.
So in a way, this is more for the reviewer than anyone else. Even with all the interesting bells and whistles (the use of newsreels in the form of verse and even bleeping out his own cursewords, s______t or f________g, gee what are we three years old now!), '1919' is an outright snorefest. I challenge you to get past the very first twnty pages without hitting your head as you fall down in despairing boredom. Please, do all of yourselves a favor and stick with the real deal, Norman Mailer.
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