John Dos Passos
Encyclopedia
John Roderigo Dos Passos (dɵsˈpæsɵs; January 14, 1896 – September 28, 1970) was an American novelist and artist.
, Illinois
, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos (1844–1917), a distinguished lawyer of Madeira
n Portuguese
descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia
. The elder Dos Passos was married with a son several years older than John. John's father married his mother after his wife died in 1910, although he refused to acknowledge his second son for another two years, until John was 16. John Randolph Dos Passos was an authority on trusts, a staunch supporter of the powerful industrial conglomerates
that his son would come to oppose in his fictional works of the 1920s and 30s.
The younger Dos Passos received a first-class education, enrolling at The Choate School
(now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut
in 1907 under the name John Roderigo Madison, then traveling with a private tutor on a six-month tour of France
, England
, Italy
, Greece
, and the Middle East
to study the masters of classical art, architecture
, and literature
.
In 1912 he attended Harvard University
. Following his graduation in 1916 he traveled to Spain
to study art and architecture. With World War I
raging in Europe and America not yet participating, Dos Passos volunteered in July 1917 for the S.S.U. 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with friends E. E. Cummings
and Robert Hillyer
. He worked as a driver in Paris, France
and in north-central Italy
.
By the late summer of 1918, he had completed a draft of his first novel. At the same time, he had to report for duty with the U.S. Army
Medical Corps
at Camp Crane in Pennsylvania
. At war's end, he was stationed in Paris, where the U.S. Army Overseas Education Commission allowed him to study anthropology
at the Sorbonne
. A character in U.S.A. trilogy
goes through virtually the same military career and stays in Paris after the war.
writers, Dos Passos published his first novel in 1920, One Man's Initiation: 1917. It was followed by an antiwar story, Three Soldiers
, which brought him considerable recognition. His 1925 novel about life in New York City, titled Manhattan Transfer
, was a commercial success and introduced experimental stream-of-consciousness techniques into Dos Passos's method. These ideas also coalesced into the U.S.A. Trilogy
(see below), of which the first book appeared in 1930.
At this point a social revolutionary, Dos Passos came to see the United States as two nations, one rich and one poor. He wrote admiringly about the Wobblies, and the perceived injustice in the criminal convictions of Sacco and Vanzetti
, and joined with other notable personalities in the United States and Europe in a failed campaign to overturn their death sentences
. In 1928, Dos Passos spent several months in Russia
studying their socialist
system. He was a leading participator in the April 1935 First Americans Writers Congress sponsored by the Communist
-leaning League of American Writers
, but he eventually balked at the idea of the control that Stalin
would have on creative writers in the United States.
In the 1930s, he served on The American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky
, commonly known as the "Dewey Commission
," with other notable figures such as Sidney Hook
, Reinhold Niebuhr
, Norman Thomas
, Edmund Wilson
and chairman John Dewey
which had been set up following the first of the Moscow "Show Trials"
in 1936. The following year, he wrote the screenplay
for the film
The Devil is a Woman, starring Marlene Dietrich
and directed by Josef von Sternberg
, adapted from the 1898 novel La Femme et le pantin
by Pierre Louÿs
.
In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War
, he returned to Spain
with his friend Ernest Hemingway
, but his views on the Communist movement had already begun to change. Dos Passos broke with Hemingway and Herbert Matthews
over their cavalier attitude towards the war and their willingness to lend their names to deceptive Stalinist
propaganda
efforts, including the cover-up
of the Soviet responsibility in the murder of José Robles
, Dos Passos's friend and translator of his works into Spanish. (In later years, Hemingway would give Dos Passos the derogatory moniker of "the pilot fish" in his memoirs of 1920s Paris, A Moveable Feast
.)
Of communism, Dos Passos would later write: "I have come to think, especially since my trip to Spain, that civil liberties must be protected at every stage. In Spain I am sure that the introduction of GPU
methods by the Communists did as much harm as their tank men, pilots and experienced military men did good. The trouble with an all powerful secret police in the hands of fanatics, or of anybody, is that once it gets started there's no stopping it until it has corrupted the whole body politic. I am afraid that's what's happening in Russia."
Dos Passos had attended the 1932 Democratic National Convention
and subsequently wrote an article for The New Republic
in which he harshly criticized the selection of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the party's nominee. In the mid-1930s he wrote a series of scathing articles about Communist political theory, and created an idealistic Communist in The Big Money who is gradually worn down and destroyed by groupthink
in the party. As a result of socialism gaining popularity in Europe as a response to Fascism
, there was a sharp decline in international sales of his books. Between 1942 and 1945, Dos Passos worked as a journalist and war correspondent covering World War II
.
In 1947, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Tragedy struck the same year when an automobile accident killed his wife of 18 years, Katharine Smith, and cost him the sight in one eye. The couple had no children. Dos Passos married Elizabeth Hamlyn Holdridge (1909–1998) in 1949, by whom he had an only daughter, Lucy Hamlin Dos Passos (b. 1950).
His politics, which had always underpinned his work, moved to the right, and Dos Passos came to have a qualified, and temporary, sympathy for the goals of Joseph McCarthy
in the early 1950s. However, his longtime friend, journalist John Chamberlain
, believed that "Dos always remained a libertarian
." In 1950s, Dos Passos also contributed to publications such as the libertarian journal The Freeman
and the conservative
magazine, National Review
.
In the same decade, he published the influential study, The Head and Heart of Thomas Jefferson
(1954), about which fellow ex-radical Max Eastman
wrote: "I think John Dos Passos has done a great service to his country and the free world by lending his talents to this task. He has revived the heart and mind of Jefferson, not by psycho-analytical
lucubrations or soulful gush, but in the main by telling story after story of those whose lives and thoughts impinged upon his. And Jefferson's mind and heart are so livingly related to our problems today that the result seems hardly to be history."
Recognition for his significant contribution to literature
would come thirty years later in Europe when, in 1967, he was invited to Rome, Italy, to accept the prestigious Antonio Feltrinelli Prize
for international distinction in literature. Although Dos Passos's partisans have contended that his later work was ignored because of his changing politics, many critics agree that the quality of his novels declined following U.S.A.
In the 1960s, he actively campaigned for presidential candidates Barry Goldwater
and Richard M. Nixon, and became associated with the group Young Americans for Freedom
. He continued to write until his death in Baltimore
, Maryland
in 1970. He is interred in Yeocomico Churchyard Cemetery
in Cople Parish, Westmoreland County, Virginia
, not far from where he had made his home.
Over his long and successful career, Dos Passos wrote forty-two novels, as well as numerous poems, essays, and plays, and created more than four hundred pieces of art.
Dos Passos was the subject of a poem by writer Charles Bukowski
entitled 'Having the Flu and Nothing Else to Do.' Mentioning Dos Passos's economic conversion from Communism, Bukowski writes:
, comprising The 42nd Parallel (1930), Nineteen Nineteen or 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936). Dos Passos used experimental techniques in these novels, incorporating newspaper clippings, autobiography, biography and fictional realism
to paint a vast landscape of American culture during the first decades of the twentieth century. Though each novel stands on its own, the trilogy is designed to be read as a whole. Dos Passos's political and social reflections in the novel are deeply pessimistic about the political and economic direction of the United States, and few of the characters manage to hold onto their ideals through the First World War.
's art colony in Ogunquit, Maine
. Many of his books published during the ensuing ten years used jackets and illustrations that Dos Passos created. Influenced by various movements, he merged elements of Impressionism
, Expressionism
, and Cubism
to create his own unique style. And his work evolved with his first exhibition at New York's National Arts Club
in 1922 and the following year at Gertrude Whitney's Studio Club in New York City.
While Dos Passos never gained recognition as a great artist, he continued to paint throughout his lifetime and his body of work was well respected. His art most often reflected his travels in Spain, Mexico
, North Africa, plus the streets and cafés of the Montparnasse
Quarter of Paris that he had frequented with good friends Fernand Léger
, Ernest Hemingway
, Blaise Cendrars
, and others. Between 1925 and 1927, Dos Passos wrote plays as well as created posters and set designs for the New Playwrights Theatre in New York City. In his later years, his efforts turned to painting scenes around his residences in Maine
and Virginia
.
In early 2001, an exhibition titled The Art of John Dos Passos opened at the Queens Borough Library in New York City after which it moved to several locations throughout the United States.
fiction were a major influence in the field. In particular Alfred Döblin
's Berlin Alexanderplatz
and Jean-Paul Sartre
's The Roads To Freedom
trilogy show the influence of his methods. In an often cited 1936 essay, Sartre referred to Dos Passos as "the greatest writer of our time." Writer Mary McCarthy
reported that The 42nd Parallel was among the chief influences on her own work. In the television documentary, The Odyssey of John Dos Passos, Norman Mailer
said simply: “Those three volumes of U.S.A. make up the idea of a 'great American novel.'” Perhaps the best-known work partaking of the "collage technique" found in U.S.A. is science fiction
writer John Brunner's
Hugo Award
-winning 1968 "non-novel" Stand on Zanzibar
, in which Brunner makes use of fictitious newspaper clippings, television announcements, and other "samples" taken from the news and entertainment media of the year 2010. Joe Haldeman
's novel Mindbridge also uses the collage technique, as does his short story, "To Howard Hughes
: A Modest Proposal."
. The prize seeks to recognize "American creative writers who have produced a substantial body of significant publication that displays characteristics of John Dos Passos's writing: an intense and original exploration of specifically American themes, an experimental approach to form, and an interest in a wide range of human experiences."
Early life
Born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos (1844–1917), a distinguished lawyer of Madeira
Madeira
Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago that lies between and , just under 400 km north of Tenerife, Canary Islands, in the north Atlantic Ocean and an outermost region of the European Union...
n Portuguese
Portuguese people
The Portuguese are a nation and ethnic group native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian peninsula of south-west Europe. Their language is Portuguese, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion....
descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia
Petersburg, Virginia
Petersburg is an independent city in Virginia, United States located on the Appomattox River and south of the state capital city of Richmond. The city's population was 32,420 as of 2010, predominantly of African-American ethnicity...
. The elder Dos Passos was married with a son several years older than John. John's father married his mother after his wife died in 1910, although he refused to acknowledge his second son for another two years, until John was 16. John Randolph Dos Passos was an authority on trusts, a staunch supporter of the powerful industrial conglomerates
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
that his son would come to oppose in his fictional works of the 1920s and 30s.
The younger Dos Passos received a first-class education, enrolling at The Choate School
Choate Rosemary Hall
Choate Rosemary Hall is a private, college-preparatory, coeducational boarding school located in Wallingford, Connecticut...
(now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut
Wallingford, Connecticut
Wallingford is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 43,026 at the 2000 census.- History :Wallingford was established on October 10, 1667, when the Connecticut General Assembly authorized the "making of a village on the east river" to 38 planters and freemen...
in 1907 under the name John Roderigo Madison, then traveling with a private tutor on a six-month tour of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, and the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
to study the masters of classical art, architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
, and literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
.
In 1912 he attended Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. Following his graduation in 1916 he traveled to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
to study art and architecture. With World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
raging in Europe and America not yet participating, Dos Passos volunteered in July 1917 for the S.S.U. 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with friends E. E. Cummings
E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings , was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright...
and Robert Hillyer
Robert Hillyer
Robert Silliman Hillyer was an American poet.-Life:He was born in East Orange, New Jersey. He attended Kent School in Kent, Connecticut and graduated from Harvard in 1917, after which he went to France and volunteered with the S.S.U. 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps serving the Allied...
. He worked as a driver in Paris, France
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and in north-central Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
.
By the late summer of 1918, he had completed a draft of his first novel. At the same time, he had to report for duty with the U.S. Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
Medical Corps
Medical Corps (United States Army)
The Medical Corps of the U.S. Army is a staff corps of the U.S. Army Medical Department consisting of commissioned medical officers – physicians with either an MD or a DO degree, at least one year of post-graduate clinical training, and a state medical license.The MC traces its earliest origins...
at Camp Crane in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. At war's end, he was stationed in Paris, where the U.S. Army Overseas Education Commission allowed him to study anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
at the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
. A character in U.S.A. trilogy
U.S.A. trilogy
The U.S.A. Trilogy is a major work of American writer John Dos Passos, comprising the novels The 42nd Parallel ; 1919, also known as Nineteen Nineteen ; and The Big Money . The three books were first published together in a single volume titled U.S.A by Harcourt Brace in January, 1938...
goes through virtually the same military career and stays in Paris after the war.
Literary career
Considered one of the Lost GenerationLost Generation
The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...
writers, Dos Passos published his first novel in 1920, One Man's Initiation: 1917. It was followed by an antiwar story, Three Soldiers
Three Soldiers
Three Soldiers is a 1920 novel by the American writer and critic John Dos Passos. It is one of the key American war novels of the First World War, and remains a classic of the realist war novel genre. H.L. Mencken, then practising primarily as an American literary critic, praised the book in the...
, which brought him considerable recognition. His 1925 novel about life in New York City, titled Manhattan Transfer
Manhattan Transfer (novel)
Manhattan Transfer is a novel by John Dos Passos published in 1925. It focuses on the development of urban life in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age as told through a series of overlapping individual stories....
, was a commercial success and introduced experimental stream-of-consciousness techniques into Dos Passos's method. These ideas also coalesced into the U.S.A. Trilogy
U.S.A. trilogy
The U.S.A. Trilogy is a major work of American writer John Dos Passos, comprising the novels The 42nd Parallel ; 1919, also known as Nineteen Nineteen ; and The Big Money . The three books were first published together in a single volume titled U.S.A by Harcourt Brace in January, 1938...
(see below), of which the first book appeared in 1930.
At this point a social revolutionary, Dos Passos came to see the United States as two nations, one rich and one poor. He wrote admiringly about the Wobblies, and the perceived injustice in the criminal convictions of Sacco and Vanzetti
Sacco and Vanzetti
Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during a 1920 armed robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts, United States...
, and joined with other notable personalities in the United States and Europe in a failed campaign to overturn their death sentences
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
. In 1928, Dos Passos spent several months in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
studying their socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
system. He was a leading participator in the April 1935 First Americans Writers Congress sponsored by the Communist
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
-leaning League of American Writers
League of American Writers
The League of American Writers was an association of American novelists, playwrights, poets, journalists, and literary critics launched by the Communist Party USA in 1935...
, but he eventually balked at the idea of the control that Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
would have on creative writers in the United States.
In the 1930s, he served on The American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
, commonly known as the "Dewey Commission
Dewey Commission
The Dewey Commission was initiated in March 1937 by the "American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky." It was named after its Chairman, John Dewey...
," with other notable figures such as Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was known for his criticisms of...
, Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world...
, Norman Thomas
Norman Thomas
Norman Mattoon Thomas was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.-Early years:...
, Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson
Edmund Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.-Early life:Wilson was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father, Edmund Wilson, Sr., was a lawyer and served as New Jersey Attorney General. Wilson attended The Hill School, a college preparatory...
and chairman John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
which had been set up following the first of the Moscow "Show Trials"
Moscow Trials
The Moscow Trials were a series of show trials conducted in the Soviet Union and orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge of the 1930s. The victims included most of the surviving Old Bolsheviks, as well as the leadership of the Soviet secret police...
in 1936. The following year, he wrote the screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
for the film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
The Devil is a Woman, starring Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
and directed by Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.-Youth:Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish...
, adapted from the 1898 novel La Femme et le pantin
La Femme et le pantin
The Woman and the Puppet is a novel by Pierre Louÿs that was adapted for film several times.-Film adaptations:*1920 - The Woman and the Puppet - Frank Lloyd, starring Geraldine Farrar...
by Pierre Louÿs
Pierre Louÿs
Pierre Louÿs was a French poet and writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who "expressed pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection."-Life:...
.
In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, he returned to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
with his friend Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, but his views on the Communist movement had already begun to change. Dos Passos broke with Hemingway and Herbert Matthews
Herbert Matthews
Herbert Lionel Matthews was a reporter and editorialist for the New York Times who grew to notoriety after revealing that Fidel Castro was still alive and living in the Sierra Maestra mountains, though Batista had claimed publicly that he was killed during the 26th of July Movement's...
over their cavalier attitude towards the war and their willingness to lend their names to deceptive Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
efforts, including the cover-up
Cover-up
A cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal evidence of wrong-doing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing information...
of the Soviet responsibility in the murder of José Robles
José Robles
José Robles Pazos was a Spanish academic and independent left-wing activist. Born to an aristocratic family, Robles embraced left-wing views which forced him to leave Spain and go into exile in the United States....
, Dos Passos's friend and translator of his works into Spanish. (In later years, Hemingway would give Dos Passos the derogatory moniker of "the pilot fish" in his memoirs of 1920s Paris, A Moveable Feast
A Moveable Feast
A Moveable Feast is a set of memoirs by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years in Paris as part of the American expatriate circle of writers in the 1920s. The book describes Hemingway's apprenticeship as a young writer in Europe during the 1920s with his first wife, Hadley...
.)
Of communism, Dos Passos would later write: "I have come to think, especially since my trip to Spain, that civil liberties must be protected at every stage. In Spain I am sure that the introduction of GPU
State Political Directorate
The State Political Directorate was the secret police of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1934...
methods by the Communists did as much harm as their tank men, pilots and experienced military men did good. The trouble with an all powerful secret police in the hands of fanatics, or of anybody, is that once it gets started there's no stopping it until it has corrupted the whole body politic. I am afraid that's what's happening in Russia."
Dos Passos had attended the 1932 Democratic National Convention
1932 Democratic National Convention
The 1932 Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago, Illinois from June 27 - July 2, 1932. The convention resulted in the nomination of Governor Franklin Roosevelt of New York for President and Speaker of the House John Nance Garner of Texas for Vice-President...
and subsequently wrote an article for The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
in which he harshly criticized the selection of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the party's nominee. In the mid-1930s he wrote a series of scathing articles about Communist political theory, and created an idealistic Communist in The Big Money who is gradually worn down and destroyed by groupthink
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without...
in the party. As a result of socialism gaining popularity in Europe as a response to Fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
, there was a sharp decline in international sales of his books. Between 1942 and 1945, Dos Passos worked as a journalist and war correspondent covering World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
In 1947, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Tragedy struck the same year when an automobile accident killed his wife of 18 years, Katharine Smith, and cost him the sight in one eye. The couple had no children. Dos Passos married Elizabeth Hamlyn Holdridge (1909–1998) in 1949, by whom he had an only daughter, Lucy Hamlin Dos Passos (b. 1950).
His politics, which had always underpinned his work, moved to the right, and Dos Passos came to have a qualified, and temporary, sympathy for the goals of Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
in the early 1950s. However, his longtime friend, journalist John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain (journalist)
John Rensselaer Chamberlain was an American journalist, historian of business and the economy, and literary critic, dubbed "one of America’s most trusted book reviewers."-Early life:...
, believed that "Dos always remained a libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
." In 1950s, Dos Passos also contributed to publications such as the libertarian journal The Freeman
The Freeman
The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty is one of the oldest and most respected libertarian journals in the United States. It is published by the Foundation for Economic Education . It started as a digest sized monthly study journal; it currently appears 10 times per year and is a larger-sized magazine. FEE...
and the conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
magazine, National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
.
In the same decade, he published the influential study, The Head and Heart of Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
(1954), about which fellow ex-radical Max Eastman
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...
wrote: "I think John Dos Passos has done a great service to his country and the free world by lending his talents to this task. He has revived the heart and mind of Jefferson, not by psycho-analytical
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
lucubrations or soulful gush, but in the main by telling story after story of those whose lives and thoughts impinged upon his. And Jefferson's mind and heart are so livingly related to our problems today that the result seems hardly to be history."
Recognition for his significant contribution to literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
would come thirty years later in Europe when, in 1967, he was invited to Rome, Italy, to accept the prestigious Antonio Feltrinelli Prize
Antonio Feltrinelli Prize
The Antonio Feltrinelli Prize is a prestigious award for achievement in the arts, music, literature, history, philosophy, medicine, and physical and mathematical sciences. The award comes with a monetary grant, a certificate, and a gold medal. The prize is awarded once every five years in each...
for international distinction in literature. Although Dos Passos's partisans have contended that his later work was ignored because of his changing politics, many critics agree that the quality of his novels declined following U.S.A.
In the 1960s, he actively campaigned for presidential candidates Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. An articulate and charismatic figure during the first half of the 1960s, he was known as "Mr...
and Richard M. Nixon, and became associated with the group Young Americans for Freedom
Young Americans for Freedom
Young Americans for Freedom is a 501 non-profit organization and is now a project of Young America's Foundation. YAF is an ideologically conservative youth activism organization that was founded in 1960, as a coalition between traditional conservatives and libertarians...
. He continued to write until his death in Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
in 1970. He is interred in Yeocomico Churchyard Cemetery
Yeocomico Church
Yeocomico Church is an historic church in Westmoreland County in the U.S. state of Virginia. The original wooden structure was built in 1655. It was replaced in 1706 by a structure built of locally fired bricks...
in Cople Parish, Westmoreland County, Virginia
Westmoreland County, Virginia
As of the census of 2000, there were 16,718 people, 6,846 households, and 4,689 families residing in the county. The population density was . There were 9,286 housing units at an average density of...
, not far from where he had made his home.
Over his long and successful career, Dos Passos wrote forty-two novels, as well as numerous poems, essays, and plays, and created more than four hundred pieces of art.
Dos Passos was the subject of a poem by writer Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
entitled 'Having the Flu and Nothing Else to Do.' Mentioning Dos Passos's economic conversion from Communism, Bukowski writes:
I read a book about John Dos Passos and according to
the book once radical-communist
John ended up in the Hollywood Hills living off investments
and reading the
Wall Street Journal
this seems to happen all too often.
U.S.A. trilogy
His major work is the celebrated U.S.A. trilogyU.S.A. trilogy
The U.S.A. Trilogy is a major work of American writer John Dos Passos, comprising the novels The 42nd Parallel ; 1919, also known as Nineteen Nineteen ; and The Big Money . The three books were first published together in a single volume titled U.S.A by Harcourt Brace in January, 1938...
, comprising The 42nd Parallel (1930), Nineteen Nineteen or 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936). Dos Passos used experimental techniques in these novels, incorporating newspaper clippings, autobiography, biography and fictional realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
to paint a vast landscape of American culture during the first decades of the twentieth century. Though each novel stands on its own, the trilogy is designed to be read as a whole. Dos Passos's political and social reflections in the novel are deeply pessimistic about the political and economic direction of the United States, and few of the characters manage to hold onto their ideals through the First World War.
Artistic career
Before becoming a leading novelist of his day, John Dos Passos sketched and painted. During the summer of 1922, he studied at Hamilton Easter FieldHamilton Easter Field
Hamilton Easter Field was an important American artist, teacher, author, critic, collector and patron of the arts.-References:...
's art colony in Ogunquit, Maine
Ogunquit, Maine
Ogunquit is a town in York County, Maine, United States. As of the 2000 census its population was 1,226. The popularity of the town as a summer resort is epitomized by its motto, "Beautiful Place by the Sea."...
. Many of his books published during the ensuing ten years used jackets and illustrations that Dos Passos created. Influenced by various movements, he merged elements of Impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
, Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, and Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
to create his own unique style. And his work evolved with his first exhibition at New York's National Arts Club
National Arts Club
The National Arts Club is a private club in Gramercy Park, New York City, New York, USA. It was founded in 1898 to "stimulate, foster, and promote public interest in the arts and to educate the American people in the fine arts". Since 1906 the organization has occupied the Samuel J...
in 1922 and the following year at Gertrude Whitney's Studio Club in New York City.
While Dos Passos never gained recognition as a great artist, he continued to paint throughout his lifetime and his body of work was well respected. His art most often reflected his travels in Spain, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, North Africa, plus the streets and cafés of the Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
Quarter of Paris that he had frequented with good friends Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, Blaise Cendrars
Blaise Cendrars
Frédéric Louis Sauser , better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss novelist and poet naturalized French in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the modernist movement.-Early years:...
, and others. Between 1925 and 1927, Dos Passos wrote plays as well as created posters and set designs for the New Playwrights Theatre in New York City. In his later years, his efforts turned to painting scenes around his residences in Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
and Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
.
In early 2001, an exhibition titled The Art of John Dos Passos opened at the Queens Borough Library in New York City after which it moved to several locations throughout the United States.
Influence
Dos Passos's pioneering works of nonlinearNonlinear (arts)
Nonlinear narrative, disjointed narrative or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique, sometimes used in literature, film, hypertext websites and other narratives, wherein events are portrayed out of chronological order...
fiction were a major influence in the field. In particular Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin was a German expressionist novelist, best known for the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz .- 1878–1918:...
's Berlin Alexanderplatz
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Berlin Alexanderplatz is a novel by Alfred Döblin, published in 1929. The story concerns a small-time criminal, Franz Biberkopf, fresh from prison, who is drawn into the underworld. When his criminal mentor murders the prostitute whom Biberkopf has been relying on as an anchor, he realizes that...
and Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
's The Roads To Freedom
The Roads to Freedom
The Roads to Freedom is a series of novels by Jean-Paul Sartre. Intended as a tetralogy, it was left incomplete with only three of the planned four volumes published....
trilogy show the influence of his methods. In an often cited 1936 essay, Sartre referred to Dos Passos as "the greatest writer of our time." Writer Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy (author)
Mary Therese McCarthy was an American author, critic and political activist.- Early life :Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918...
reported that The 42nd Parallel was among the chief influences on her own work. In the television documentary, The Odyssey of John Dos Passos, Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
said simply: “Those three volumes of U.S.A. make up the idea of a 'great American novel.'” Perhaps the best-known work partaking of the "collage technique" found in U.S.A. is science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
writer John Brunner's
John Brunner (novelist)
John Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...
Hugo Award
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
-winning 1968 "non-novel" Stand on Zanzibar
Stand on Zanzibar
Stand on Zanzibar is a dystopian New Wave science fiction novel written by John Brunner and first published in 1968. The book won a Hugo Award for Best Novel at the 27th World Science Fiction Convention in 1969, as well as the 1969 BSFA Award and the 1973 Prix Tour-Apollo Award.-Description:A...
, in which Brunner makes use of fictitious newspaper clippings, television announcements, and other "samples" taken from the news and entertainment media of the year 2010. Joe Haldeman
Joe Haldeman
Joe William Haldeman is an American science fiction author.-Life :Haldeman was born June 9, 1943 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His family traveled and he lived in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Bethesda, Maryland and Anchorage, Alaska as a child. Haldeman married Mary Gay Potter, known...
's novel Mindbridge also uses the collage technique, as does his short story, "To Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...
: A Modest Proposal."
Dos Passos Prize
The John Dos Passos Prize is a literary award given annually by the Department of English and Modern Languages at Longwood UniversityLongwood University
Longwood University is a four-year public, liberal-arts university located in Farmville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1839 and became a university on July 1, 2002...
. The prize seeks to recognize "American creative writers who have produced a substantial body of significant publication that displays characteristics of John Dos Passos's writing: an intense and original exploration of specifically American themes, an experimental approach to form, and an interest in a wide range of human experiences."
Literary works
- One Man's Initiation: 1917 (1920). Reprinted in 1945, under the title First Encounter
- Three SoldiersThree SoldiersThree Soldiers is a 1920 novel by the American writer and critic John Dos Passos. It is one of the key American war novels of the First World War, and remains a classic of the realist war novel genre. H.L. Mencken, then practising primarily as an American literary critic, praised the book in the...
(1920) - A Pushcart at the Curb (1922)
- Rosinante to the Road Again (1922)
- Streets of Night (1923)
- Manhattan TransferManhattan Transfer (novel)Manhattan Transfer is a novel by John Dos Passos published in 1925. It focuses on the development of urban life in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age as told through a series of overlapping individual stories....
(1925) - Facing the Chair (1927)
- Orient Express (1927)
- U.S.A. (1938). Three-volume set includes
- The 42nd Parallel (1930)
- Nineteen Nineteen (1932)
- The Big Money (1936)
- Tour of Duty (1946)
- The Ground we Stand On (1949)
- District of Columbia (1952). Three-volume set includes
- Adventures of a Young ManAdventures of a Young ManAdventures of a Young Man is a 1939 novel by John Dos Passos, which eventually became the first in this writer's District of Columbia Trilogy....
(1939) - Number One (1943)
- The Grand Design (1949)
- Adventures of a Young Man
- Chosen Country (1951)
- Most Likely to Succeed (1954)
- The Head and Heart of Thomas Jefferson (1954)
- The Men Who Made the Nation (1957)
- The Great Days (1958)
- Prospects of a Golden Age (1959)
- Midcentury (1961)
- Mr. Wilson's War (1962)
- Brazil on the Move (1963)
- The Best Times: An Informal Memoir (1966)
- The Shackles of Power (1966)
- World in a Glass - A View of Our Century From the Novels of John Dos Passos (1966)
- The Portugal Story (1969)
- Century's Ebb: The Thirteenth Chronicle (1970)
- Easter Island: Island of Enigmas (1970)
- Lettres à Germaine Lucas Championnière (2007) - only in French
Published as
- U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money (Daniel Aaron and Townsend Ludington, eds.) (Library of AmericaLibrary of AmericaThe Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
, 1996) ISBN 978-1-88301114-7.
- Novels 1920-1925: One Man's Initiation: 1917, Three Soldiers, Manhattan Transfer (Townsend Ludington, ed.) (Library of AmericaLibrary of AmericaThe Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
, 2003) ISBN 978-1-93108239-6.
- Travel Books & Other Writings 1916-1941: Rosinante to the Road Again; Orient Express; In All Countries; A Pushcart to the Curb; Essays, Letters, Diaries (Townsend Ludington, ed.) (Library of AmericaLibrary of AmericaThe Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
, 2003) ISBN 978-1-93108240-2.
External links
- Works by John Dos Passos at http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/jimspdf.htm PSU's Electronic Classics Series.
- Ludington, Townsend, "John Dos Passos, 1896-1970: Modernist Recorder of the American Scene", Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1996
- Three Soldiers from American Studies at the University of Virginia.
- Stephen Koch, “The Breaking Point: Hemingway, dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles” reviewed by George Packer