U.S.A.

Product Description

” The Penguin Modern Classics” edition of John Dos Passos` ”U.S.A.” is a groundbreaking work of experimental fiction which, with its unique melange of fact & fiction, creates a compelling, tragic vision of America at the dawn of the twentieth century. In this experimental trilogy, Dos Passos uses `camera eye` & `newsreel` sections to create a fragmented atmosphere. Through the testimony of numerous characters, both fictional & historical figures, he builds up a composite picture of American society in the first quarter of the 20th century. Richly detailed & throbbing with vitality, ”U.S.A.” vividly evokes that uncertain period when America, so full of ideas & potential, was slowly & painfully abandoning the great American Dream. John Dos Passos (1896-1970) was born in Chicago, the son of an eminent lawyer. After graduating from Harvard he served in the US Army Medical Corps during the First World War, & dabbled in journalism before embarking on life as a writer. In 1925 he published Manhattan Transfer, his first experimental novel in what was to become his peculiar style
- a mixture of fact & fiction. His began a series of panoramic epics of American life with the ”U.S.A.” trilogy, using the same technique & tracing, through interwoven biographies, the story of America from the early twentieth century to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. If you enjoyed ”U.S.A.”, you might like E.L. Doctorow`s ” Ragtime”, also available in ” Penguin Modern Classics”. ” Wonderful & extraordinary”. (Robert Mc Crum, ” Observer”). ” No novelist in America has written more sombrely of the dangers to individual integrity in a centrally controlled society”. (Alfred Kazin).