Reading 1001 discussion

Recently listened to this one on audio, and overall liked it and gave it 3 stars. It follows the intersecting stories of New Yorkers from all areas and classes on society from the gilded age to the jazz age, with the interruption of WWI playing a significant role.

I did really like how this book laid bare the hollow consumerism and uncaring alienation of the city culture, and how it showcased social justice movements and the consequences of the first red scare.

The only reason I’m going with 3 instead of a 4 is because the actual reading experience was fine and not as riveting as I felt the content could have been.

Rating: 3 stars


This was a disappointment for me. I had looked forward to this book for so long that if failed to live up to my expectations.

Set mainly in the 1920's, this book is an homage to New York City. During this time, NYC was the largest city in the US and the second largest city in the world. One might say that the city was essentially the main character in the book. The rest of the characters were connected to the city but not really connected to one another.

There were some great elements, but I didn't find the book to be overly engaging.

This was a library book so I started reading early but I have had to renew as I didn't finish in the 3 weeks allowed. What this tells me is that I was not engaged with the book and I know this to be true because I never really wanted to read more than a chapter a day.

The vignettes didn't really work for me as I am not a short story fan and that is essentially what these felt like.

I clearly lost track of characters and was not really interested in their outcome.

I did like the portrayal of life in New York on a surface level.

All I can say is that this was not a book for me.

Reason Read: Reading 1001 botm September 2023, TIOLI #9
This book was published in 1925 and covers the time period of the Gilded age to the Jazz age in New York City. It is a series of overlapping individual stories and narrative collage (These works tell visual stories of individuals, businesses, organizations and communities. They are bold, personalized forms of visual communication, identity and storytelling.) John Dos Passos was an American socialist novelist and in this work he is showing New York to be a city in motion; there are ships, trains, buses, taxicabs. On importance is the Manhattan transfer which stands for people who are just passing through. Architectures include the skyscrapers and the bridge, Broadway and Wall street.

Themes also include youth and wealth. A person needs to look good, to be young to survive in New York. Another is the wealthy capitalist and the trade unions. Interestingly, the press is a symbol of distrust. One character is a radical journalist and another one wants to be a reporter. He is unable to get his articles published because they don't fit the mainstream idea. Some things don't change. The implication that the media is blamed by a judge as emboldening burglars. Some things don't change I guess.

There are 4 main characters and several secondary characters; Ellen Thatcher a successful actress, several marriages/divorces. Bud Korpenning; farmer roots unable to make it in the city. George Baldwin; young lawyer makes a successful law suit thant benefits Gus the milkman. Jimmy Herf, his mother dies, he has money and can go to school and go into business but chooses instead to enlist and also be a reporter.
rating 3.6 or B-

I listened to an Audible version, narrated by Joe Barrett, who conveyed the indifference of the city of New York to those who tried to gain success there. New York itself is almost a character, similar to Madrid in The Hive, which I read last month. The novel is a series of vignettes, with a shuffled chronological order, which increases the feeling of chaos and random luck. There is a large cast of characters, some of whose stories overlap, some who seem to be incredibly unlucky, despite good intentions, and some who gain wealth and prestige despite unethical behaviour. There were some memorable descriptions and the dialogue was lively and seemed to an outsider wonderfully authentic. A five star read (or listen)

I loved this book by an author I’d never read before.

Dos Passos creates a vivid, almost cinematic, impression of New York in the years of the Gilded Age leading into the Jazz Age. There are many characters whose stories appear through short overlapping vignettes, and the narrative is lively and engaging.

There are themes of corruption and financial hustling, youth and aging, and the place of women in what is a very forceful and male dominated society. Fortunes are made and lost in an instant, and both luck and determination are needed to succeed.

New York, a veritable caldron of people desperate to live their dreams, play out their delusions, pursue their wildest ambitions and simply attempt to survive. Dos Passos captures the tenor of the city with an ensemble of characters who are always on the edge of extreme success or complete failure. The city is home to the US market economy and its inhabitants suffer accordingly as no one is in it for his fellow man. Dos Passos gives us this glimpse of New York in the early 1900s through a young actress turned editor, a socialist writer who occasionally makes his living as a reporter, a couple of well breed alcoholics, immigrants fresh off the boat who go on to make their fortune, a working class couple pressed into robbery after earlier ambitions fail, a labor organizer seamstress, a lawyer turned DA who is forever falling in love with women he can not have, a milkman turned corrupt politician who climbs to the heights of influence and on. Together they express the theme of how luck and chance play such a large part in the twists life takes.

****

A feast for the senses about a place where people of contrasting fortunes can walk into the next opportunity or disaster around the corner. Not as tedious as some of the other modernist classics.

A slice of life through rich and poor (but all or almost all white) in 1920s New York. Jobs, money, and marriage partners come and go with frightening speed. I have no idea how true to life it was, never having been to New York even a hundred years later, but it felt realistic in a dispiriting way. I'm glad I read it quickly, so I didn't completely lose track of the characters.