The radical intellectual had lost his bearings, and reactions ranged from anger to pity. It was only in the 1950s, when new interest in Dos Passos stirred after a period of relative neglect, that some more accurate image of the man, and of the work, could be formulated. The process was helped immeasurably by Dos Passos himself, who began in a modest way to make himself available to his public and let himself be known. This was Dos Passos in his early sixties, to be sure--inevitably different from what he had been in earlier years--but it seemed clear to those who talked to him that his was a whole and healthy personality, with nothing in his manner to suggest that there had been some cataclysmic change. In appearance he was the perfect country squire: tall, portly, dressed in rumpled tweeds. He smoked cigars, enjoyed a glass of bourbon, and radiated amiability. He liked jazz and had a boyish sense of humor.
Dos Passos preferred not to make speeches, but would read from his work in a gravelly voice further congested by the lingering accents of Choate and Harvard. It was not an ideal voice for public performance, but audiences found themselves captivated both by his charm and by their realization that the voice, whatever its obscurities, was the real thing.
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