Manhattan Transfer - Dos Passos, John

. .

Résumé :
2021 Reprint of the 1925 Edition. Manhattan Transfer is considered to be one of Dos Passos' most important works. The book attacks the consumerism and social indifference of contemporary urban life, portraying a Manhattan that is merciless yet teeming with energy and restlessness. The book shows some of Dos Passos' experimental writing techniques and narrative collages that would become more pronounced in his U.S.A. trilogy and other later works. The technique in Manhattan Transfer was inspired in part by James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, and bears frequent comparison to the experiments with film collage by Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein. Sinclair Lewis described it as a novel of the very first importance ... The dawn of a whole new school of writing. D. H. Lawrence called it the best modern book about New York he had ever read, describing it as a very complete film ... of the vast loose gang of strivers and winners and losers which seems to be the very pep of New York. Contents: Ferryslip -- Metropolis -- Dollars -- Tracks -- Steamroller -- Great Lady on a White Horse -- Longlegged Jack of the Isthmus -- Nine Days' Wonder -- Fire Engine -- Went to the Animals' Fair -- Five Statutory Questions -- Rollercoaster -- One More River to Jordan -- Rejoicing City That Dwelt Carelessly -- Nickelodeon -- Revolving Doors -- Skyscraper -- The Burthen of Nineveh.

Biographie:
John Roderigo Dos Passos (1896 - 1970) was an American novelist and artist active in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He was well-traveled, visiting Europe and the Middle East, where he learned about literature, art and architecture. During World War I, he was a member of the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in Paris and in Italy, later joining the U.S. Army Medical Corps. In 1920 Dos Passos' first novel, One Man's Initiation: 1917 was published and in 1925 his novel, Manhattan Transfer, became a commercial success. In 1928, he went to the Soviet Union to study socialism and later became a leading participant in the 1935 First American Writers Congress sponsored by the communist-leaning League of American Writers. He was in Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, when the murder of his friend Jos? Robles soured his attitude toward communism and led to severing his relationship with fellow writer Ernest Hemingway.