U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos

The U.S.A. Trilogy by John Dos Passos is a group of three books that traces a group of relatively young people as they experience the time before, during, and after World War I. I must admit, I was somewhat cautious starting these books. First, they're really long, and I was relying on the library (stupidly, I checked all three out at once) for these books and felt really rushed getting through them (the books were 300ish, 350ish, and 450ish pages long). Also, I've not had good experience with novels written by disillusioned people set in the post World War I time period (forefront in my mind here is On the Road by Kerouac); I just don't enjoy reading about wayward youth who I tend to think are wasting their brains, their drive, and their use to society. But I really thought Dos Passos' U.S.A. moved past that by fully developing his characters' motives, feelings, and actions but still not ignoring his own political viewpoint of the time period.

The most successful element of the trilogy is Dos Passos' characterization. There's an incomprehensible number of characters including in these novels, and they all move in and out of the storyline at somewhat random times. Still, despite the sheer number of characters, Dos Passos still carefully created and maintained his characters throughout the novels. Each character does different things, has different political and ideological views, and plays different roles in the historical events happening at the time. I found it particularly interesting to see how each of the characters interacted with each other as they moved in and out of each other's lives. Also, I thought it was really interesting to see how Dos Passos placed each character in the political, historical, and technological developments of the time period, including World War I, the airplane industry, and the "Roaring Twenties." This has always been one of my favorite parts of reading novels set in a historical time period that I know something about. I also really enjoyed the sections of "Newsreels" where Dos Passos includes the headlines and text of front-page newspapers of the time period. (As a history major, I found a nerdy interest in how he picked out individual parts of the various news stories.) These sections also included lyrics from songs and protest chants. In addition, Dos Passos weaves in short biographies of important figures of the time period, which I thought were well-researched and rightfully cynical of these "heroes" of the time period. For example, he doesn't buy into the typical hero-worship of Henry Ford and included some of the seedier parts of his background. All of this made me a very happy history-loving girl.

I won't pretend that I understand the literary elements of this book, especially since I've always been rather disinterested in that part of reading novels. As a result, I found the sections called "Camera Eye" difficult. I know that they are basically autobiographical, telling Dos Passos' experiences during the same time period that he is discussing in the main body of the novel, but honestly, I just had a difficult time following the stream-of-consciousness from one section to the next. And I didn't try too hard either; I was much more interested in the other parts of the novel so I generally focused on those.

Also, I thought, in general, the female characters in this book were relatively weak. Some end up killing themselves through their own naivete, and others just seemed whiny, politically uninvolved. Basically, most of them seemed to be "follower" characters who accompany their male acquaintances into whatever political endeavor they decide. Very few (in comparison to the male characters) follow through on any jobs or political actions on their own accord. They always seem to be acting like a "puppy dog" to follow attractive men into the movement. I didn't think it detracted much from the book and probably had much more to do with the time period that the author wrote in than any purposeful attempt by Dos Passos to detract from women's roles in any sort of political movements in the time period.

In general, I found this book really interesting, but I don't think I need to re-read it again; still, I'd definitely recommend it to other people.

My rating: 8.5/10

Up next: A Rush to Injustice by Nader Baydoun and R. Stephanie Good, which is a well-researched recounting of the Duke lacrosse rape case.