of cinematography. Her significance – she was the first English writer who
expressed those tendencies which were the distinctive features of the avant-
garde movement.
John Doss Passos (1896-1970)
He was born in Chicago. He lived a long life but his most productive
period was in the 20-30’s of the XXth century. He reflected the progressive
ideas of the time, produced the epic of American life within the framework
of a literary experiments. He graduated from Harvard. In 1916-17 studied
architecture in Spain & this background can be felt in his works in their
architecture. Participated in the war & after that he began to write. His
first book – “One Man’s Initiation”(1920). It was the first book in
American literature, which treats the war topic. It is a lost generation
book because it was motivated by post-was disillusionment that young people
experienced. The pathos is clearly antiwar. It is autobiographical. The
pacifist motives are very strong here. The style doesn’t differ much from
that of his mature works. Dos Passos chose the fragmentary way of
organization of material, which is to his mind, more expressive. The book
is in the form of interior monologue – to express more precisely the crash
of a young American world in the war.
He continued the same technique in “Three Soldiers”. He attacks the
corruption of the world, socialist motives become more explicit in his
work. Here he experiments with writing technique – plot. The lives of three
young people – Americans – are in the focus of his attention. At first
their lives are connected, they met each other on the same boat but this is
the only point where their fates are close. As they arrive in Europe their
ways diverge. Each one follows his own path. The plot decenters, follows
the life of each of three heroes. All of them are ruined at the war, feel
lost, disillusioned. It is a typical lost generation novel written in the
modernist technique. John Andrews is a painter, he dreams to express his
protest against the war by artistic means. Both J. Andrews in the book & J.
D. Passos fear capitalist tyranny & revolutionary enthusiasm. Antibourgeois
pathos is rather strong.
These tendencies increase in his next works. “Manhattan Transfer”
(novel) is a kaleidoscope of numerous episodes, names, dates where the
reader can hardly find the characters. It consists of independent stories,
which are all mixed. The only similar feature is the place & the time. Dos
Passos considered that such composition will enable him to show the reality
objectively, a stream of New York life. Characters represent different
social layers. The author introduces clips from newspapers, some glimpses
of literature, which are not connected with the novel. It produces
disorder. But it was his intention – city is a chaos; life is a chaos.
Reaction to the novel was contradictory. Some thought that it was a
collectivist novel. Dos Passos was not in the individual lives, troubles or
joys. A collectivist writer was interested in social relations but the
paradox was that social relations were abstract from his work. He didn’t
dispose social. His attitude to the events is not clear. The lack of
objective conclusions was intentional but the writer can’t do that. He
tried to produce such works where the generalization should be.
He was popular in 20-30’s in Soviet Union, unfortunately his popularity
was short-lived for political reasons. As soon as he began to criticize &
warn against totalitarianism he fell out of grace. He lived through the
economic crises of 1929 & this found its expression in the novel “USA”.
Dos Passos wrote “USA” – a big epic where he paid more attention to
generalization. He wrote it for 20 years. It consists of 3 novels: “The 42
Parallel”, “1919”, “The Big Money”. Dos Passos tried to be more precise
with the composition, developed a scheme of it. It is a big panoramic work.
The real hero is American society, the country. It is shown against the
social background of the nation. It is an epic of American life. The
structure is very logical & coherent. Each chapter falls into several
parts, which are made up of for components & the combination of these
components is very different. These four components are:
V novel - the portraits of literary characters
V biographies of historical personalities
V news-reel, i.e. news of the day
V camera obscure (eye) – inner monologue of the author
Each piece has a title & a number. The biographies of historical
personality were intended to create the historical background, dedicated to
famous people of political, social, scientific, artistic activities. It
included the stories about the outstanding people.
News of the day was to documentarize the specific moments in the USA
history to create the historical colouring & objective picture of that
epoch. It included popular songs, headlines from papers. Here they try to
follow the stream of consciousness of the newspaper reader.
Camera obscure were to show the author’s attitude to life, to bring an
individual lyrical touch to the story, personal meditations upon certain
subjects, reminiscences of the things passed, expression of author’s ideas
upon various aspects of life. It gave a picture of the author’s evaluation
for 30 years.
Novels are fictions. The portraits of literary characters were imaginary
literary heroes. There were 11 of them – typical representatives of all the
layers of the American society. The central characters John Wool McHouse.
The author tries to trace his relations with other characters but it
doesn’t mean that he knows all of them.
From the unique combination of these elements the unique picture of
American life springs up. The general mood is that of confusion, tension,
tumult, frustration of hopes, feeling that the present is ugly &
intolerable. People are too fussy about their daily routine. In this work
he showed how life was lived on the national scale.
Dos Passos was concerned with the history of the country primarily. The
writer must be an architect of history. His work was a literary conclusion
– different elements were assembled. The work is considered to be an
achievement in the American literature. The author tried to use
cinematographic principles in writing: close up, precision in details, the
art of assembly. He also used the technique of montage or juxtaposition. In
his later works he perfected this technique & achieved quite a success in
it. Later he became a radical writer. He was a passionate individualist &
individual freedom was most important to him.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
He belongs to the lost generation but he gave his own name to it – “jazz
age”. Jazz was representative of the general atmosphere of the years – the
feeling of instability in life. Age of transition of social values. To his
mind jazz beat ideally expressed that feeling of hopeless despair with
which his young men & women tried to experience the every passing moment of
their lives, their age. There is a recurrent “capre diem”(лови момент)
theme in his novels. His heroes indulge & overindulge. Jazz age expresses
instability & changebility of life present in mind of many people who tried
to flee from the feeling of being lost, for they no longer believed in
life, so they tried to live it to their full. Fitzgerald was not very rich
but was educated in Princeton. He dropped out of it because of poor health
& poor performance, he didn’t get to front though he enlisted. He was
painfully aware of the difference between himself & rich students. He had
hatred for the rich. The main topic of his work – money & its corruptive
influence. For him money & wealth were social categories. He regarded the
rich to be another race, whose habits & moral principles differ very much.
He looked into the phenomenon of being rich. For him a rich person is one
for whom everything is permitted & they lack human qualities, he tried to
penetrate to the very heart of the matter. So, money & wealth for him were
not economic categories but social phenomena. He regarded rich as another
race, alien kind of people whose habits, moral principles, views were not
as the habits of the ordinary people. They are the people to whom
everything is permitted & consequently they lack certain human qualities
that of pity, compassion, and sympathy. In his works Fitzgerald striped
this world of this mysterious veil. He tried to penetrate to the very
depths exploring the ethics of the rich world. Wealth has dehumanizing
impact on human personality. He had a feeling that something awful is
coming. “All the stories that come to my head have touch of disaster”. He
produced the collection of short stories “All the Sad Young Men”, “Tales of
the Jazz Age”. They are permeated with appocaliptical feeling of tragedy
of American life. Fitzgerald was not the only one who treated this topic –
Theodore Dreiser in “American Tragedy” did the same.
His finest achievement is the novel “The Great Gatsby” which showed the
contrast between material wealth & the spiritual poverty of the heroes.
Concerning this work in Soviet criticism the term “поэзия отрицательных
величин” was used. It means that he tried to show people who were real
characters, strong individuals, but this all is directed not to a right
channel – to make one’s life to the top, to get something from life, strive
for the world success. For Gatsby wealth is not the purpose but means to
