“I never could keep the world properly divided into gods and demons for very long,” wrote John Dos Passos, whose predilection toward nuance and tolerance brought him to see himself as a “chronicler”: a writer who might portray political situations and characters but would not deliberately lead the reader to a predetermined conclusion. Privileging the tangible over the ideological, Dos Passos’s writing between the two World Wars reveals the enormous human costs of modern warfare and ensuing political upheavals.
This wide-ranging and engaging collection of essays explores the work of Dos Passos during a time that challenged writers to find new ways to understand and render the unfolding of history. Taking their foci from a variety of disciplines, including fashion, theater, and travel writing, the contributors extend the scholarship on Dos Passos beyond his best-known U.S.A. trilogy. Including scholars from both sides of the Atlantic, the volume takes on such topics as how writers should position their labor in relation to that of blue-collar workers and how Dos Passos’s views of Europe changed from fascination to disillusionment. Examinations of the Modernist’s Adventures of a Young Man, Manhattan Transfer, and “The Republic of Honest Men” increase our understanding of the work of a complicated figure in American literature, set against a backdrop of rapidly evolving technology, growing religious skepticism, and political turmoil in the wake of World War I.
págs. 1-21
Warring Bodies: World War I Burial Practrices in John Dos Passos's One Man's Initiation : 1917 and 1919
págs. 25-48
págs. 49-72
Glenn Spotswood as Cannon Fodder: Myth vs. Reality at the International Brigades
págs. 73-94
The Hat in Manhattan Transfer: A Jazz Age Tale of the Man in the Straw Hat and the Arrow Collar
págs. 97-119
Between a Novelist and a Chronicler: John Dos Passos in Manhattan Transfer
págs. 121-143
Avatars of the American Dream: Manhattan Transfer, King Vidor's The Crowd, and Modernity
págs. 145-166
págs. 169-189
págs. 191-211
Representing Authors as Producers: Labor and the New Deal Intellectual in John Dos Passos's U.S.A. Trilogy
págs. 213-232
Transatlantic Tensions: Charging Views of Europe and the United States in Dos Passo's Interwar Writings
págs. 235-247
"Roots Striking into the Infinite Past": John Dos Passos's Quest for the Modernist Cosmopolitan Subject in Rosinante to the Road Again
págs. 249-269
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