John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was a prominent American novelist, playwright, and journalist, known for his critical portrayal of American society in the early 20th century. Born in Chicago on January 14, 1896, to Portuguese American parents, he graduated from Harvard University in 1916 and served in the ambulance corps during World War I. His experiences during the war inspired his first notable novel, *Three Soldiers*, which aimed to demystify the glorification of war. As a member of the "lost generation," Dos Passos focused on depicting the social and economic landscape of America through works like *Manhattan Transfer* and the *U.S.A.* trilogy, where he utilized innovative narrative techniques, including the “Camera Eye” and “Newsreel” formats.
His early writings reflected leftist sympathies, and he became an advocate for the working class, even facing imprisonment for participating in protests. However, his views shifted towards the political right after witnessing the Spanish Civil War, a change that alienated some of his early supporters. Despite mixed critical reception of his later works, Dos Passos’s contributions are significant for their sociological insights into American life, particularly during the tumultuous years of the 1930s. His literary legacy includes a diverse array of novels, plays, poetry, and nonfiction, underscoring his multifaceted engagement with the American experience.
Subject Terms
John Dos Passos
American novelist, artist, journalist, playwright, and poet.
- Born: January 14, 1896
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Died: September 28, 1970
- Place of death: Baltimore, Maryland
Biography
Of Portuguese American ancestry, John Roderigo Dos Passos was born in Chicago on January 14, 1896, and educated at Harvard University, graduating in 1916. During World War I, he served in the ambulance corps, and from his experiences grew his first novel to attract attention, Three Soldiers, a contribution to a large body of fiction intended to strip war of any shreds of glamour or romance. Disillusioned like so many of the now-famous "lost generation," Dos Passos next turned his attention to an exhaustive study of the American scene, trying to pack into Manhattan Transfer and the trilogies that followed it a picture, as nearly complete as possible, of society during a significant and crucial period of American history.
During his early career as a novelist, Dos Passos displayed distinctly leftist and radical sympathies that he carried into practice to the extent of being jailed for joining a picket line during the furor that attended the Sacco-Vanzetti case. This was the period of the proletarian novel, a type that he did much to form, not just by his sympathies with the underdog—those whom he considered to be exploited and abused by the American system. During the Depression years, when so much in America received sharp critical attention, the point of view maintained by Dos Passos had great popularity and influence.
In massive novels crowded with characters, like the U.S.A. and District of Columbia trilogies, the real protagonist can be described as society itself. As much effort is made to describe and make realistic the social scene of a given period as would normally be expended upon the development of a human hero. The characters are subordinate to society; the important point is the effect that the social and particularly the economic milieu has upon the individual. Thus it is vital for the success of the book that the reader be given as vivid a picture of the era as is possible. To accomplish this purpose, Dos Passos employed a variety of experimental and technical devices: the "Camera Eye," which focused on atmospheric details subjectively and impressionistically rendered; the "Newsreel," made up of snatches of popular songs, quotations from speeches, reproductions of newspaper headlines and related reportage of the time; and interpolated biographical sketches of real historical figures whose activities coincided with those of his fictional creations. It was a kind of literary pastiche which proved successful. The accuracy of detail, adding up to a portrait of modern America, won the highest praise of Dos Passos’s contemporaries as well as later critics.
The Spanish Civil War was a disillusioning experience to Dos Passos, as it was to many writers; it was to turn his sympathies toward the political Right and to deepen his interest in American history and the democratic tradition. It was a shift, however, which lost him the support of some of his earlier admirers. Further, critics were not so kind to his later novels; the documentary style, they felt, had been overworked. Nevertheless, Dos Passos’s novels are important in that they reveal varied aspects of American life from a sociological viewpoint largely ignored until the revival in the 1980s of interest in the political literature of the 1930s.
Author Works
Long Fiction:
One Man’s Initiation—1917, 1920
Three Soldiers, 1921
Streets of Night, 1923
Manhattan Transfer, 1925
The 42nd Parallel, 1930
1919, 1932
The Big Money, 1936
U.S.A., 1938 (includes previous 3 novels)
Adventures of a Young Man, 1939
Number One, 1943
The Grand Design, 1949
Chosen Country, 1951
District of Columbia, 1952 (includes Adventures of a Young Man, Number One, and The Grand Design)
Most Likely to Succeed, 1954
The Great Days, 1958
Midcentury, 1961
World in a Glass, 1966
Century’s Ebb: The Thirteenth Chronicle, 1975 (posthumous)
Drama:
The Garbage Man, pr., pb. 1926 (as The Moon Is a Gong, pr. 1925)
Three Plays, pb. 1934
Poetry:
A Pushcart at the Curb, 1922
Nonfiction:
Rosinante to the Road Again, 1922
Orient Express, 1927
In All Countries, 1934
Journeys Between Wars, 1938
The Ground We Stand On: Some Examples from the History of a Political Creed, 1941
State of the Nation, 1944
Tour of Duty, 1946
The General, 1949
The Prospect Before Us, 1950
The Head and Heart of Thomas Jefferson, 1954
The Theme Is Freedom, 1956
The Men Who Made the Nation, 1957
Prospects of a Golden Age, 1959
Mr. Wilson’s War, 1962
Brazil on the Move, 1963
Occasions and Protests, 1964
Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address, 1964
Thomas Jefferson: The Making of a President, 1964
The Shackles of Power: Three Jeffersonian Decades, 1966
The Best Times: An Informal Memoir, 1966
The Portugal Story, 1969
Easter Island: Island of Enigmas, 1971
The Fourteenth Chronicle, 1973
Bibliography
Becker, George J. John Dos Passos. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1974. A critical biography, this short book links Dos Passos’s major works, his artistic observations, and his treatment of American social institutions.
Carr, Virginia Spencer. Dos Passos: A Life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984. Presents a detailed biography with critical insights into the personal and political influences on Dos Passos’s fiction.
Casey, Janet Galligani. Dos Passos and the Ideology of the Feminine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Discusses Dos Passos’s female characters. Includes bibliographical references and an index.
Colley, Lain. Dos Passos and the Fiction of Despair. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1978. One of the most frequently cited texts in Dos Passos scholarship.
Ludington, Townsend. John Dos Passos: A Twentieth Century Odyssey. Rev. ed. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998. A standard biography first published in 1980; updated introduction.
Maine, Barry, ed. Dos Passos: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1988. Devoted to the contemporary critical reception of Dos Passos’s individual novels. Divided into twelve sections, each covering a major work. These chapters contain between two (Number One, The Grand Design) and twelve (The Big Money) different reviews, taken from publications ranging from American Mercury to the Daily Worker.
Maine, Barry, ed. "U.S.A.: Dos Passos and the Rhetoric of History." South Atlantic Review 50, no. 1 (1985): 75-86. This important article treats the role of narrative in conveying history in the first of Dos Passos’s trilogy, with attention to the relationship between narrative and film.
Nanney, Lisa. John Dos Passos. New York: Twayne, 1998. An excellent introductory study of Dos Passos and his works.
Sanders, David. John Dos Passos: A Comprehensive Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1987. Includes an index.
Strychacz, Thomas. Modernism, Mass Culture, and Professionalism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Places the U.S.A. trilogy in historical context.
Wagner, Linda W. Dos Passos: Artist as American. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. A comprehensive (624–page) study of Dos Passos’s development as artist/observer, treating his quest for an American hero through his major works.