A truly fascinating perspective. I never would have expected a review of The Ambulance Drivers at the EMS World website. It’s lengthy and very interesting. Hemingway and Dos Passos were deeply affected by their experience as ambulance drivers in World War I. An excerpt: Much as Hemingway and Dos Passos may have been unaware of… Read more »
I was reading an extended article in Vanity Fair on the U.S. Dept. of Energy and I came across a quote that reminds me of Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy: “At any given time in America there are lots of seriously smart people with bold ideas that might change life as we know it—it may be… Read more »
People have complained before that Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy is hard to read, beyond just the length. I get it. Yes, the language is very plainspoken. You’re not gonna consult the dictionary except in cases of outdated slang. But one of the principal difficulties in tracking characters is that you have to follow both words… Read more »
I’ve been re-reading The 42nd Parallel. It might be the 3rd or 4th reading. I’m nearly finished. With this reconsideration of the work, I was hoping to come into wisdom, and I think I did. I think it’s a novel about selling out. These strivers begin with idealism and potential and the sell out to… Read more »
Third Biennial John Dos Passos Society Conference (June 20-22, 2018, Lisbon, Portugal) Abstract Submission Deadline: January 31, 2018 Graduate students wishing to be considered for supplemental travel funding must submit a full paper by February 28, 2018 The John Dos Passos Society invites papers for its third biennial conference to be held in Lisbon, Portugal…. Read more »
Even after all these years of studying his work, I still happily uncover new bits of history. And sometimes these bits are truly fascinating and uplifting. Consider this: In July 1933, upon Einstein’s request, a committee of 51 American artists, intellectuals and political leaders came together to form the International Relief Association. Among them were… Read more »
Happy Independence Day! Whitman was a strong influence on John Dos Passos. I’ve nearly finishing reading Leaves of Grass and then I’m on to Democratic Vistas. I’m enjoying the read so far. It’s wonderful to sense that the nation is counting a bumper crop, when the news today suggests something more reminiscent of utter disaster…. Read more »
JDP legacy news has been at king tide lately. On Twitter, I found a very rare audio recording of John Dos Passos reading from U.S.A. and discussing the influences on him as a young artist. 1965 at the 92nd Street Y in NYC. The reading, of course, is before a live audience. It’s interesting hearing… Read more »
As a lover of film music, I often think of what sort of orchestral score should accompany a potential film or TV adaptation of John Dos Passos stories. I’m a big fan of legendary Hollywood film composer Jerry Goldsmith and I think one of this themes from the film City Hall (1996), “The Bridge,” is… Read more »
I’ve ordered a used copy of John Dos Passos’ Tour of Duty. I’ve never read it before and I think now is a great time for it. Americans of my generation–the millennials–tend to take for granted that Europe is stable, democratic, and aligned perfectly with the United States. I don’t remember the Soviet Union at… Read more »
My grandfather wrote in summer 1916 of Dos Passos Farm: “A wonderful blowy day and the hollyhocks are nodding and bowing like tall ladies at a country dance–the poppies are all a-flutter and the lavender comes in puffs of glorious fragrance through the window.” The summer magic is still here.
Reading a bit of Virginia Spencer Carr’s bio of John Dos Passos for a writing gig. She writes that in 1916, Harvard did not yet have a single course in American literature. Nor did any university except Princeton. That’s a remarkable thing. That truly explains the mind of a Lost Generation writer. Hemingway, Dos Passos,… Read more »
Dos Who? When one thinks of the American modernist pantheon—and who doesn’t at least three times daily?—I suspect the usual names rise to the fore: Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot. For reasons not always so clear, the name that is often either left off this list,… Read more »
Intriguing new article in The Guardian about the “sound art” of Manhattan Transfer and parallels between Dos Passos and composer Edgar Varèse. “The writer John Dos Passos and composer Edgard Varèse would intuit a different, deeper truth about the city they lived and worked in during the 1920s – that its identity is inseparable from… Read more »
Coming of age in the Washington DC area, learning how to write and finding my way as a writer, I’ve long loved The Washington Post. It represents Woodward and Bernstein. It represents truth. The First Amendment. The end of the Nixon era. I’m delighted to see Gary Krist’s review of James McGrath Morris’ Hemingway-Dos Passos… Read more »
I’ve been doing so much JDP legacy work lately I was inspired to write a poem about it: Dos Passos-savvy When I was a boy I knew books; they showed sharks, rays, barracudas, saw-jawed megalodons, Tyrannosaurus rex, Fujita scale tornadic intensity, cirrus, cumulocirrus, cumulonimbus clouds, Hercules holding up the world, no tears, no help…. Read more »
I found this quote quite recently in the Dos Passos oeuvre. Given the salience of environmental matters today and always, I’m delighted to share it. It’s certainly appropriate for Earth Day. It’s from a little-known Dos Passos nonfiction work called The Ground We Stand On. We have taken the accomplishments in state building of the… Read more »
Congratulations to author James McGrath Morris for this fine review of his new Dos Passos-Hemingway book in The Economist. A career achievement indeed!
Introducing the brand new John Dos Passos Society website! Join today! The next conference is in 2018 in Lisbon.
The Loyalty of John Dos Passos (For the upcoming John Dos Passos Society Newsletter) The 2016 2nd biennial John Dos Passos Society conference in Madrid brought me to joyful tears. My first trip to Madrid in 2014 gave me the chance to participate in Sonia Tercero Ramiro’s wonderful documentary on the Robles-Dos Passos story,… Read more »
