The Bowie Book Club discussion

Tell us all about your reading :-)

This one was a very pleasant surprise. I mean, I rarely totally dislike classics, but somehow i was a bit afraid of the 42nd Parallel - I thought it would be a hard read, and would take me weeks to finish it. Well, it was totally accessible - and so interesting that I will definitely read the whole trilogy now.

I recommend you to read it - it is a little bit like the fictional version of the Zinn History. There is a lot of workers movements stuff in it, but as it has quite a few protagonists, we get to know different points of view. Meanwhile, the characters are easily relatable and interesting to follow.

There are different narrative modes: the usual chapters, dealing with the stories, but there are also some stream of consciousness parts, supposedly dealing with memories of Dos Passos himself. I found some of these quite dated, but it's true that I'm a guy who prefers stories to images. Some of them were really interesting even for me. There are also the so-called Newsreels parts, taking headlines and some parts of articles from newspapers from the era. These are sometimes hilarious, sometimes moving - but they usually work well. And there are also some short biographies of famous people among the chapters.

All in all, I guess these narrative modes are what the book - and the trilogy - is famous for. I would say I enjoyed it not because of them, but more in spite of them - but they might yet grow on me with time.