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1919 by John Dos Passos - 3* - My Review

Published in 1932, this is the second book in the USA Trilogy. The storyline follows a handful of recurring characters, mostly during the Great War, with the last sections related to the post-war period. It reads as a series of interconnected vignettes. Dos Passos weaves together multiple narratives featuring characters from different social backgrounds, including laborers, soldiers, politicians, and activists. We have an American sailor going AWOL to join the merchant marines, a pacifist who serves as ambulance driver, a union organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies), and a woman who ends up as a Red Cross worker in France. It also contains several minibiographies of notable people such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

The author employs an experimental style (especially for the 1930s) that blends fictional narratives, biographical sketches, newsreel fragments, song lyrics, and fragments of speeches. Themes include class tensions, social injustice, suppression of dissent, political radicalism, and disillusionment. I would not call it a novel, exactly. It is more of a pastiche that captures a wide swath of history and the social and political landscape of early 20th-century America. Unfortunately, it has not aged well and contains many terms that will be offensive to modern readers (e.g., racial, ethnic, and misogynistic slurs). This trilogy is considered a classic. So far, I have not loved the first two books. They are a bit too fragmented for my taste, not to mention the terminology. I need to decide whether to proceed with the third book of the trilogy.

PBT November BWF Extra N/P - fits letters not tag