The reputation of the American novelist John Roderigo Dos Passos (1896-1970) is based chiefly on his early work, especially the trilogy "U.S.A." John Dos Passos was born in Chicago on Jan. 14, 1896, the illegitimate son of a noted New York lawyer, John...

For readers familiar with his work in the 1920s and 1930s, John Dos Passos's public image seemed clearly defined. His friends and colleagues were expatriate writers such as Ernest Hemingway, experimental dramatists such as John Howard/Lawson, and...

For readers in the 1930s and 1940s the career of John Dos Passos had its puzzling aspects, but the image of the man seemed to possess a certain clarity. He was, according to the dust jackets, "Chicago-born," hence another of the mid-western realists, a...

Friend of Ernest Hemingway, contemporary of F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Steinbeck and e.e. cummings, writer John Dos Passos chronicled America's turbulent '20s and '30s, hammering away at themes that revolved around alienation and isolationism, the power of the ordinary man and the way governments...

A dramatic change in the literary and political life of John Dos Passos is evident between his writing of the U.S.A trilogy in 1936 and 'Adventures of A Young Man' in 1938. Dos Passos's change in political direction is explored in this essay. ...

Our culture of publicity makes it difficult to talk in negative terms about a new book without sounding dismissive or mean-spirited—all the more so when the author of the disappointment has to his credit Mystery Train (1975), which many consider one of the best books...

Our culture of publicity makes it difficult to talk in negative terms about a new book without sounding dismissive or mean-spirited—all the more so when the author of the disappointment has to his credit Mystery Train (1975), which many consider one of the best books...

In the following essay, Levin discusses the political beliefs of John Dos Passos, particularly in U.S.A.

Although Dos Passos' writing eventually focused on American themes, his earliest poetry and fiction were more self-conscious than country-conscious. His favorite protagonist was a young, well-educated naif—usually a Brahmin—hungering for all experience simultaneously. There was much fascination with women, with sex (although never explicit), and with travel, all described through a romantic haze of impressionist color. There was also a strong sense of rootlessness, and the most carefull...

[Dos Passos'] preparation as a writer may be seen as four separate rites of passage, subjection to major ordeals of mind and spirit, which determined and tempered his view of the world and therefore the nature of his art. He had, first of all, to come to grips with the actualities of life in the United States, from which he was isolated by the unusual circumstances of his birth and upbringing. Beyond that, World War I was to him a genuine initiation, a quick—and safe—plunge into the str...