Inventing Memory | Literary Precedents

Inventing Memory Literary Precedents

The multifaceted formal structure of Inventing Memory resembles a less orderly version of the literary techniques pioneered by John Dos Passes in his trilogy U.S.A., consisting of The Forty-Ninth Parallel (1930), Nineteen Nineteen (1932), and The Big Money (1936; see separate entry). Dos Passes was a member of the Paris society of American expatriates in the 1920s and would have been living and writing there during the time that Salome is publishing her literary magazine, Innuendo. He moved in the circle of poets, novelists, and painters that Salome mingles with, but she does not seem to have encountered him in spite of her wide acquaintance (she would certainly have mentioned him in her journal!). Dos Passos used innovative literary techniques which included the fragmenting of his narrative with bits of cultural flotsam and jetsam: newspaper headlines, snatches of popular songs, lyrical personal observations, and an eclectic parade of biographical sketches...
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