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62 福島大学教育学部論集第19号 1967-11

An Experiment in Realistic Literature;

U S.A. by John Dos Passos(')

Yoshitaro Nishimura Assist.Prof.of Fukushima.Univ

I Overview of the General and Historical Environment of Realistic Literature inAmerica.The optimistic hopefulness of American society disappeared with its frontier: The

increasing pressure of a machine - dominated and monopoly - ridden civ通zation compelled the people to face reality.A realistic attitude in American literature followed Close behjnd.Realjsm is nothing more and nothing less than the truthftll presentatiOn Of materials. The realists responded to the new situation and made it thei「 COnCe「n to represent the materialistic side of life and to treat the aspects of experience in this life as honestly as possible.This is,however,a basic definition of realism and we don't mean that every realistic literary work practices this philosophy fully and exclusively.EXCeP- tions,for example,are seen in the works of James,Howells,and Garland.

Before getting further into the matter,let us give a short historical 「evieWOf the literary environment at the time when Dos Passos was gathering materials fo「 C「eating the famous trilogy,U.S. A.(''

Dos passes entered Harvard in 1912, in the year that Sister Ca「「ie was finally published,although it had been written almost ten years before.He paid a high 「eSPeCt to Dreiser as a great predecessor of realistic literature.Let us hear What DOS Passes says in the fly_leaf of the autographed copy of U.S.A.which he gave te D「else「 in 1938.

‘'Dear Dreiser_Just wanted you to know that I st通1 feel that if ithadn't been for your pioneer work none of us would have gotten Ou「stuff written or published.”

In the year Dos Passes left Harvard,1916,Sherwood Anderson's portrayals Of 「eat

(1) This paper was originally reported to the audience at the 21st Tohoku Eigo Eibungakukaiheld jn 1966. The style therefore is colloquial. The lecture has simply been Supplementedhere by appropriate quotations and foot - notes.

(2) The text used here is the Penguin Edition of 1966 of U S.A.All the subsequent rete「enCeSare to that edition.

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An Experiment in Realistc Literature 63

colloquial American speech began to expand the dimensions of the American nove1.In the same year Jack London s death left a big gap ia American realistic fiction.James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a youg Mart in i928 also encouraged Dos Passes by raising the portray of the conflicts of the sensitive yloung man to the leve1of art We will speak some more about the influence from Joyce on Dos Passos later.This is just a glance at the literary background which Dos Passes had experienced.As society became increasingly complicated,realists in the world found that,especially

after World War I,it was impossible to grasp the entirety of their modern society unless they took some modified phi1osophical view of literature or some device by which they could-present lt. Realists in America found their country larger and more complex than those in Europe and consequently felt similar but much keener necessity for some devices which could catch the full movement of their society in its entirety.

II John Dos Passes'Modification of Realistic Literary TheoryDos Passos, therefore, in order to grasp a tremendous panoramic view of modern

American civilization,broadened and modified his use of realism in his trilogy.('Technically,.the tr通ogy novel,U.S.A.has twelve main threads,which are dealt with

successively and which are interwoven in the separate flash-like instalments with twenty_six biographical studies of American leaders in various fields, the sixty-eight ''Newsreels''and with fifty-one sections entitled the '℃amera Eye.”

The focus of the novel is upon the twenty-six actual persons engaged in the struggle of the changing society during the first thirty years of the new century and also upon twelve principal fictional persons also engaged in it and affected by lt. The former represent the various patterns of the social struggle and the latter represent average men and women molded by the complex of forces around them.

m The First Device,・Biographical SketchesAs I have mentioned before, the novel has twenty-six actual persons' biographical

sketches.(2).These brief biographies are prominent Americans'condensed life-sketches of those who are outsainding, rather than typical. They are balanced by the prir,icipa1 characters in the narratives,for while the former are the leaders or rebels of their age, the latter are fairly typical citizens who might have been chosen from a crowd.Toward the biographies we share the burning indignation or sympathetic excitement more directly than toward the fictional people's vicissitudes in which they are crushed or

(1) It is consisted of The 42nd Parallel Nineteen N加eteen,and The Big Mmey They werepublished in 1930,1932,and 1936 as separate editions respectively.

(2) Their names are Eugene Debs,Luther Burbank, William Haywood,William Bryan,MinorKeith,Andrew Carnegie,Thomas Edison,Charles Steinmetz,.Robert La Follette,Jack Reed,Randolph Bourne, Theodore Roosevelt, Paxtorl Hibben, Woodrow W通son,The House of

Morgan,Joseph Hillstrom,Wesley Everest,Frederick Taylor,Henry Ford,.Thorstein Veblen,Isadora Duncan,Rudolph Valentino,The Wright Brothers,Frank Wright,William Hearst,and Samuel Insult.

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(1) (2)

(3) (4)

64 福島大学教育学部論集第19号 1967-11

sometimes are ki11d.Let us give you a couple of mustrations.The biography of Andrew Carnegie is a perfect example of the period which incarnated

the young men's dream in the land of youth and the future.His upshooting comet-like conquest over society suggests deliberately the similar progress of J.W.Moorehouse in the narrative portion,who is an upshooting star exploiting the society,too.Alsonobody can fail to understand indignantly what the wealthy leader is when he reads the fonow- ing fragments:

(Wars and panics on the stock exchange,machinegunfire and arson,bankruptcies,warloans,starvation,lice,cholera and typhus;good growing weather for the House of Morgan,)(')

IV Narrative PortionThe narrative portion has thirteen sections entitled by the personal names,six male

and seven female ones.(21 These persons are tied together by love or hatred,politics or business under the basic factors of envy,discontent and suspicion.They are also under the mercy of the fateful wheel of fortune as in the classical tragedy.They are spread almost all over the American continent,from Los Angeles to New York,fてom Mexico city to Vancouver, Canada.In 19'19 some of the main characters establish a decadent group in Paris and in Rome.

The chronological stories of the principal characters are brought forward,sometimes spasmodically and sometimes successively. They are told in bare and straightforward prose and enable us to participate convincingly in the characters' attitudes toward events.The stories are abundant in the use of diao1ogue and even of direct narration phrased in the colloquial language appropriate to the speakers.Irish flavor in swearings or phraseology of the e'Hara family,the relatives of Mac,is a typical example.

'don't you mind 'em,old sport,they're a bunch o'bums and hypocrytes,stewed to the ears most of 'em already. Look at fees.But don't youmind 'em,remember you're an 0'Hara on your mother?s side.I don'tmind 'em,old sport,and she was my own sister by birth and blood'.(3)

or 'Well,I declare,'cried Fainy's sister Milly.'If I haven't slaved and workedmy fingers to the bone for every piece of bread I've eaten in thishouse'(')

From The 42nd Parallel to 1919, gradually the characters' careers draw closer

p_217.The former are Fainy McCreary, J. Ward Moorehouse, Charley Anderson, Joe Williams, Richard Savage,and Ben Compton.Thelatter are Janey,Eleanor Stoddard,Eveline Hutchins, Daughter,Mary French,and Margo Dowling_p.25.p.33.

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An Experiment in Realistc Literature; 65

together and finally all ot them are caught up in the war,from which everybody in the novel suffers more or less. The stories flow from threatening war atmosphere to suspicious resistance to the war.Rumor,confusion or the lack of foresight which are so much predominant at that time are typically shown in the next speech:

''I have reliable information that Lenin and Trotsky have split and themonarchy w加be restored in Russia inside of three months.”(''

With a cold and lonely feeling after the hot excitement of the war,the rising proletarian movement has also taken its shape in this atmosphere.0ne minor character begins to address his hostess:

“Eveline,we're on the edge of gigantic events_.the working classes ofthe world won't stand for this nonsense any longer ... damn it,a newsocialistic civilization is coming out of it,”(2)

And the final mood,apparently hopeful but with no solid expectation of happiness, foretells that those persons are going to let themselves be caught in the race for easy money and tangible power,losing their personal dignity.

Throughout this portion we get an extraordinarily diversified and chaotic social picture of contemporary life full of hatred and hostility between male and female from many angles. Genera11y the characters are philistines and victims of a vile society.It is true that we find sparklingly here or there the will to struggle ahead, the comradeship in struggle,the consciousness of new men and new forces continually rising.Mary French and her father and Joe Askew are those rare exceptions,because they know they are beaten yet still grit their teeth and try to hold on_

So far as the narrative portion is concerned the trilogy has been getting better as it goes along.The last,The Big Moyiey,is certainly the best one.It is the most unified in mood and story. We don't have to refer to the earlier books in order to understand what is happening in this one_But after turning back to The 42nd Para11eZ and 19.19 we tect a new admiration for the author as an architect of plots and an interweaver of destinies.

V The Second Device,NewsreelConcerning the ''Newsreel,” we don't think Dos Passes invented this documentary

device.As a modern art form it was being developed in the motion pictures and further more as a method of reporting and informing events has had a long history.We can say that by means of the interpolations of headlines,stock market reports and sometimes scattered fragments of popular songs,we obtain a first-hand impression of reality and a better perspective on the events of the century in relation to the progress of the characters in the story.Here are some quotations exemplifying how they are of variety_

at the annual meeting of the stockholders of the Colt Patent FirearmsManufacturing Campany a $ 2,500,000 melon was cut. The present

(1) p.587 (2) p.521

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66 福島大学教育学部論集第19号 1967- 11

capital stock was increased.The profits for the year were 259 per cent(Oand the next quotation makes us enable to visualize the real aspects of the public at the time.

AUDIENCE AT HIPPODROME TESTIMONIALSMOVED TO CHEERS AND TFARS

several different stories have come tome well authenticated concerningthe depth of Hindenburg's brutality;the details are too horrible for print,They.relate to outraged womanhood and girlhood,suicides and blood ofthe innocent that wet the feet of Hindenburg ・WAR DECREASES MARRIAGES AND BIRTHSOh ashes to ashes

Artd dust to dust

if the shr apnel do,2't get yellThen the etghtyetghts mttst (2)

It is clear enough that wh通e the principal persons in the narrative pursue their personal aim shortsightedly,this device has been adopted with the purpose of gaining a definite effect and of supplying objectivity absent from the simple narrative portion. The purpose of the “Newsreel” is,thus,to fulfill our capacity as an objective audience. The reader is denied entertainment or escape.He has to witness that the author adapts materials not to entertain us but to communicate and inform us- in brief to educate us

through the continuous incidents supported by objective reality.Thus,through his use of the “Newsreel” technique,the author so ably integrated the

movement of historic events with his narrative portions that we are intensely aware of the restless energy of a great country.He gives the impression of shouting the whole history of United States since 1900 through a megaphone.

VI The Third Device,“Camera Eye''The last technical device,the Camera Eye is somewhat different from the other two.

The author offers to the reader images which rise up in his own memory. The autobiographical passages are tut] of a warm, soft and impressionistic touch, lacking even capitalization and punctuation. This last fact shows that the “Camera Eye”represents the author's stream of consciousness.

A first glance tel]s us that these passages are completely out of tone and form a strong contrast to the hard and behavioristic style of the main narrative. They are sometimes even in conflict with it。But this clear contrast is the very thing that Dos Passes attempts to introduce.The oversimplified,hard and behavioristic treatment of the characters in the narrative tends to suggest that they are being approached from the outside,and the author tries to counterbalance this weakness by inserting passages that are written from the inside as an observer as we11as a commentator.

Next passage signifies probably an American young man's dream who existed at that

(:1)

(2) 301

399

P

P'

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An Experiment in Realistc Literature 67

difficult periodAmerican shouldn't cry he should look kind and grave and very sorry

when they wrapped me in the stars and stripes and brought me homeon a frigate to be buried I was so sorry I never remembered whetherthey brought me home or bureied me at sea but any way I was wrappedin Old GloryｫO ,

No one can doubt here that this has been influenced by Joyce's stream of consciousness or rather “stream of memory narration,''using Mr.Wrenn's term.(2)The author tries to transfer to the page not his thoughts but his mood,both of satire and lyrical sensuality: hence his type of realism might be termed psych1ogical and social.

VII Integration of all Devices So much for the analysis of each technical device. We must go on to consider the

relationship among them and conclude that they worked as organic elements. The relationship is found quite frequently in the nove1.Especia11y in The Big Mony,all the technical devices are used to enforce the same mood and the same leading ideas.0ne example will be sufficient to show a strong tightening of narrative and the other elements, that is,、how biographies, Camera Eye and Newsreel are effectively amalgamated.

Near the end of The Big Money,Camera Eyes forty-nine and fifty include the indirect biographies of Sacco and Vanzetti ; and in between those two sequences Dos Passes' story merges with the fictional story of Mary French in her work for the Sacco - Vanzetti defense and with the history of the time as outlined in this demonstration is the most beautiful and successful materials into a perfect documentation.

Newsreel sixty-six, Perhaps of Dos Passes' integrating

Vm Conclusion ・We should like to end this paper by saying that throuh the novel which covers about

thirty years,all ot the author's kaleidoscopic methods are unquestionably fascinating and achieve brmiant effects.While we sing lt's a long ωay tof f? erar:y or listen to Morgan bet'mg hissed,(5)read the dramatic life of La Fo11et,respond subjectively to the images of the Camera Eye and objectively to the narrative 加ustrations,we can catch the dynamic movement of the whole society of America and realize the truer feelings of the people facing impending war,the people confused in the period right after the war, and the people degenerating into kissing the almighty dollar.

No reader has but a final impression that this extreme diversity or lack of direction in the novel is nothing less than life in America itself through three decades,ranging from coast to coast,from top to bottom of the economical scale,and from the sublime to the ridiculous in emotions of social movements and individual lives These physical and

(1) (2) (3)

p.132.John Dos Passes,Chap.9 p.290.

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68 福島大学教育学部論集第19号 1967-11

spiritual experience of the whole society are remarkably presented us at the Ve「y beginning of the novel and the last chapter.The novel begins,

The young man walks fast by himself through the crowd that thinsinto the night streets ; feet are tired from hours of walking ; eyesgreedy for warm curve of faces,answering flicker of eyes,the set of ahead, the lift of a shoulder,the way hands spread and clench; bloodtingles with wants ; mind is a beehive of hopes buzzing and stinging ;muscles ache for the knowledge of jobs,for the roadmender's pick andshovel work, the fisherman's knack with a hook when he hauls on theslithery net from the rail of the lurching trawler, the swing of thebrjdgemen's arm as he slings down the whitehot rivet, the engineer'sslow grip wise on the throttle,the dirtfarmer's use of his whole bodywhen, whoaing the mules, he yanks the plow from the furrow. Theyoung man walks by himself searching through the crowd with greedyeyes,greedy ears taut to hear,by himself,alone.(')

and ends with the following passage:The young man waits on the side of the road; the plane has gone;

thumb moves in a small arc when a car tears hissing past.Eyes seekthe driver's eyes A hundred miles down the road。 Head swims, bellytightens,wants crawl over his skin like ants :

went to school, books said opportunity,ads promised speed,own you「home,shine bigger than your neighbor,the radiocrooner whispered girls,ghosts of platinum girls coaxed from the screen,miltions in Winningswere chalked up on the boards in the offices paychecks were fo「 handswilling to work,the cleared desk of an executive with three telephoneson it ;

waits with swimming head, needs knot the belly,idle hands numb,beside the speeding traffic.

A hundred miles down the road.(2)These two young men,or perhaps a generic one person symbolizes the reality Of the

country U.S.A.The novel U.s A.mjght be called a synthesis of time,class,geog「aPhy and Social

theory.

(1) p.5.(2) p.1183-84

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An Experiment in Realistc Literature;

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69

Allen,Walter. Trad統o;a and Dream : The English and America? N,o?el f rom theTttfenties to Ou,r :「lme Dent,1964

Dos Passes,John.U S.A.Penguin Books,1966EiSinger,Chester E. Fictio? of theForties.Univ.of Chicago press,1965KaZin,Alfred. Oft Natioe Grounds New York :Reynal and H通1cock,1942.Potter,Jack. A Bibliograj'hy of John D.Passos.Chicago:Normandje House,1950.Sa「t「e,Jean P. ''John Dos Passes and '1919.” L船erary arid philosophical Essays.

London:Rider,1955.W「enn,John H. J?ohn Dos Passos.New York ;Twayne,1961.