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On this day in 1970 John Dos Passos died at the age of seventy-four. He is now one of the more forgotten Lost Generation writers, but the U.S.A. trilogy (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money, published 1930-36) was important reading in the forties and fifties, both for its angry indictment of the "prosperity myth" and its style. Influenced by Joyce, Dos Passos incorporated a 'stream-of-society' technique into his best fiction: "newsreels" (pastiches of headlines, popular songs, etc.), biography (of the economic elite, juxtaposed against the radicals and downtrodden), personal memory, and roving, "camera eye" passages ... FULL STORY »
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