Manhattan Transfer: John Dos Passos (Penguin Modern Classics)

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I dislike the book's excessive fragmentation and the multitude of characters that flash by in a blur.

I know that Dos Passos was a leftist at the time he wrote this, and there are certainly some anti-capitalist passages in the book, but it didn't seem like a political book to me. une fois le transfert effectué, plus de communication entre l’île et le reste de la terre, un sol désespérément plat, une bulle entourant ce quartier, sont tout ce que les new-yorkais voient de leur environnement. A whole lot of people, from varying financial circumstances, experience life in New York City in the early 20th century. My grasp of history is not good enough to be precise, but the story certainly spans a period of over twenty years, and only reaches the twenties in the third of the three sections into which it is divided. It was quite obvious that the author had absolutely no sympathy for this character, which made him seem lifeless and robotic - a hopeless token in an otherwise exciting book.The fear is that they might be part of an intergalactic zoo exhibit or worse, the sole survivors of planets due for destruction. There are lots of other moments, too, when Dos Passos holds back the drama and gives us instead a lot of drinking and talking and ennui. First of all, ‘more than a dozen characters’ may sound like an okay thing, but try following plot lines for more (and I stress this) than 12 personalities.

For once, we find an alien race that breaks the stereotypical mode of earth invaders who are lecturing do-gooders and who are given an atypical appearance compared to what is found in most sci-fi fare. In 1917 he volunteered for the Sanitary Squad Unit 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with Edward Estlin Cummings and Robert Hillyer. Gates fold upwards, feet step out across the crack, men and women press through the manure-smelling wooden tunnel of the ferry house, crushed and jostling like apples fed down a chute into a press.Another quirk of Dos Passos is mashing together subsequent interestingadjectives and occasionally relatedverbs into singlewords. A relative of Jimmy's, by the time he appears in the novel he is an penniless alcoholic who begs for money from family and friends. The time period covered is two to three decades, from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age, so through the First World War.

Oglethorpe finally snaps, and stands outside Stan's apartment building one night screaming in a drunken fury.

What I love about both novels is that they achieve to show the big city both as a moloch and a melting pot; as a a source of alienation and a place where very different people cross paths; as a shattered place that allows for connection, contention, and social mobility - in both directions. On the one hand, it is highly critical of capitalism and materialism and of the pursuit of wealth which drives the lives of its people. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

Which… I suppose… isn’t all that unlike living in a city… trying to remember who that person who is smiling at you in the corner market and do you really know them or is it someone that you might have seen at a friend’s apartment and it turns out that they’re actually your neighbor down the hall… Yeah, not unlike that. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Above suicides, lost loves, lost jobs, minor thefts and big larcenies, strikes, war, prohibition, the city blankly contemplates the struggle of generations, knowing so well that no one can truly leave.When the war was over, he stayed in Paris, where the United States Army Overseas Education Commission allowed him to study anthropology at the Sorbonne. Todos os caminhos vão dar a Nova Iorque, e «o que é terrível no facto de Nova Iorque nos começar a cheirar a mofo é que não há mais nada. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. Dos Passos doesn't use the mythical method of Joyce or the detailed symbolism, so this book is considerably less dense. When I was fifteen, living in Rochester, NY I needed a book that could only be found at the University of Rochester library.