John Dos Passos Writing Styles in U.S.A.

Experimental Techniques

A notable feature of U.S.A. is its experimental sections, the "Camera Eye," "Newsreel," and biography sections. The Camera Eye sections offer a disjointed collage of headlines, story fragments, song lyrics, and other scraps, almost like what one would have heard while walking down the street in a busy town during the period. The scraps are carefully chosen to reflect, amplify, or comment on the material in the fictional chapters; for example, an early chapter about Mac McCreary portrays his realization that the fine traveling sales in publishing jobs he's found is a scam and his boss is a con artist and a crook. The chapter ends with Mac running for his life from a farmer with a shotgun, followed by a Newsreel that begins "IT TAKES NERVE TO LIVE IN THIS WORLD." After this comes a piece of a story about an anarchist plot and...