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Big Money (Signet Classics) (Paperback)

by John Dos Passos (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 560 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin; Reissue edition (May 1993)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0451524012
  • ISBN-13: 978-0451524010
  • Product Dimensions: 17.3 x 10.4 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,151,582 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #21 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Dos Passos, John

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars All right, we are two nations, 29 May 2006
By Leonard Fleisig "Len" (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
This review is from: The Big Money (U.S.A.) (Paperback)
So says John Dos Passos in `The Big Money", Volume III of his USA Trilogy. Just as Benjamin Disraeli saw two nations in mid-19th century Britain ("who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws...the rich and the poor"), John Dos Passos saw two nations in the United States in the roaring 1920s.

Dos Passos is one of the U.S.'s (sadly) lesser known literary giants of the 20th-century. At the height of his fame in the 1930s he found himself on the same pedestal as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. The first two volumes of the USA Trilogy (42nd Parallel and 1919) were enormous successes. By the time "The Big Money" was released in 1936, Jean-Paul Sartre hailed him as "the greatest writer of our time". Edmund Wilson's review went so far as to claim that Dos Passos was "the first of our writers, with the possible exception of Mark Twain, who has successfully used colloquial American for a novel of the highest artistic seriousness." Dos Passos' literary reputation began to change during the Spanish Civil War. Dos Passos, along with Hemingway and many other literary figures including George Orwell made his way to Spain to assist in the Republican cause. Like Orwell, Dos Passos was deeply affected by the brutal infighting amongst Republican supporters. In the case of Dos Passos he was deeply distressed by murder of a friend (anarchist and Johns Hopkins Professor Jose Robles) apparently executed by Stalinist cadres for his nonconforming radicalism. Hemingway mocked Dos Passos for his unmanly concern for his friend. Hemingway's friends and most of the hard left literary community joined in. It is no surprise that Dos Passos' next book was criticized severely. The New Masses magazine referred to it as a "crude piece of Trotskyist agit-prop". Dos Passos never reclaimed the popularity he had achieved with the USA Trilogy. Unlike Orwell, whose fame and reputation survived and grew after his Spanish Civil War experience, Dos Passos slowly fell out of the public eye. That fate is a shame when one considers the enormous energy and creativity that went into the USA Trilogy.

The idea of two paralel nations, one for the rich and their minions and one for the huddled masses, provides substance to Dos Passos' unique multi-media structure. In addition to the stories of these fictional characters, The Big Money is interspersed with mini-biographies of real people, newsreel clippings that place the story in a social a political context, and a series of autobiographical sketches (The Camera Eye) in which Dos Passos steps out from the story and provides his own personal context to the times.

The key fictional characters in "The Big Money" are Charley Anderson, Mary French, Margo Dowling, and Richard Ellsworth Savage. The "Great War" is over and the USA has, in the words of Warren G. Harding, returned to normalcy. The roaring 20s is in full swing". In one America the characters experience the world of prohibition and speakeasies; stock speculation by millions of Americans are buy and selling shares on profit and margins that are as ephemeral as they are risky. In the `other' America the characters see labor at war with management. Union busting and red baiting is the rule not the exception and urban workers; particularly immigrants are seen as Bolshevik threats. Charley Anderson crashes and burns after a meteoric rise. Mary French is absorbed in the workers' battles of the 1920s and Margo Dowling sleeps her way to fame and fortune in Hollywood.

The biographies cover the same two nation ground with min-biographies of Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, Thorstein Veblen, Isadora Duncan, Rudolf Valentino, and William Randolph Hearst amongst them. Dos Passos' personal Camera Eye observations reach their emotional climax as the story reaches the execution of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. It is here where Dos Passos makes his two nations observation.

The Big Money is a worthy finale to The USA Trilogy. After re-reading the entire trilogy, thirty years or so after my first exposure to it in High School, I think it safe to say that it has still holds up under perhaps more mature observation.

The USA Trilogy remains one of the major literary works of the (U.S.) twentieth century and remains a work that should be read and read again. Highly recommended.
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