His novel
The Big Money (1936) marks the end of that Lost Generation, a time of disillusionment, cynicism, and youthful idealism. Dos Passos, along with his fellow writers, witnessed the horrors of war and contemplated the true meaning of life and humanity, particularly in terms of American materialism and excess. Ironically, due to Dos Passos's changing political views, he became relatively unknown compared to Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and other members of the Lost Generation.
The Big Money is the third and final book in a series called the "U.S.A. Trilogy." Alfred Kazin in "Dos Passos, Society, and the Individual" calls The Big Money "the most ambitious" of the series. Stylistically speaking, The Big Money resembles the other two novels in the trilogy—42nd Parallel and 1919—by telling the stories of Mary French, Margo Dowling, Richard Ellsworth Savage, among others, through a stream-of-consciousness technique and a montage of biographical, journalistic, and fictional pieces. This fragmented style reflects the Lost Generation's uncertainty and search for self in a world where the future was no longer guaranteed.
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