John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos, son of John Randolph Dos Passos, was an American novelist and artist.
He received a first-class education at The Choate School, in Connecticut, in 1907, under the name John Roderigo Madison. Later, he traveled with his tutor on a tour through France, England, Italy, Greece and the Middle East to study classical art, architecture and literature.
In 1912 he attended Harvard University and, after graduating in 1916, he traveled to Spain to continue his studies. In 1917 he volunteered for the Sanitary Squad Unit 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with Edward Estlin Cummings and Robert Hillyer.
By the late summer of 1918, he had completed a draft of his first novel and, at the same time, he had to report for duty in the United States Army Medical Corps, in Pennsylvania.
When the war was over, he stayed in Paris, where the United States Army Overseas Education Commission allowed him to study anthropology at the Sorbonne.
Considered one of the Lost Generation writers, Dos Passos published his first novel in 1920, titled One Man's Initiation: 1917, followed by an antiwar story, Three Soldiers, which brought him considerable recognition. His 1925 novel about life in New York City, titled Manhattan Transfer was a success.
In 1937 he returned to Spain with Hemingway, but the views he had on the Communist movement had already begun to change, which sentenced the end of his friendship with Hemingway and Herbert Matthews.
In 1930 he published the first book of the U.S.A. trilogy, considered one of the most important of his works.
Only thirty years later would John Dos Passos be recognized for his significant contribution in the literary field when, in 1967, he was invited to Rome to accept the prestigious Antonio Feltrinelli Prize.
Between 1942 and 1945, Dos Passos worked as a journalist covering World War II and, in 1947, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Tragedy struck when an automobile accident killed his wife, Katharine Smith, and cost him the sight in one eye. He remarried to Elizabeth Hamlyn Holdridge in 1949, with whom he had an only daughter, Lucy Dos Passos, born in 1950.
Over his long and successful carreer, Dos Passos wrote forty-two novels, as well as poems, essays and plays, and created more than four hundred pieces of art.
The John Dos Passos Prize is a literary award given annually by the Department of English and Modern Languages at Longwood University. The prize seeks to recognize "American creative writers who have produced a substantial body of significant publication that displays characteristics of John Dos Passos' writing: an intense and original exploration of specifically American themes, an experimental approach to form, and an interest in a wide range of human experiences."
As an artist, Dos Passos created his own cover art for his books, influenced by modernism in 1920s Paris. He died in Baltimore, Maryland. Spence's Point, his Virginia estate, was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1971.
“Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass,he walked through the woods one wintercrunching through the shinycrusted snowstumbling into a little dell where a warm spring wasand found the grass green and weeds sproutingand skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,He went home and sat by the stove and read DarwinStruggle for Existence Origin of Species NaturalSelection that wasn't what they taught in church,so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg,found a seedball in a potato plantsowed the seed and cashed in on Darwin’s Natural Selectionon Spencer and Huxleywith the Burbank potato.Young man go west;Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosafull of his dream of green grass in winter ever-blooming flowers ever-bearing berries; Luther Burbankcould cash in on Natural Selection Luther Burbankcarried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winterand seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus—winters were bleak in that bleakbrick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts—out to sunny Santa Rosa;and he was a sunny old manwhere roses bloomed all yeareverblooming everbearinghybrids.America was hybridAmerica could cash in on Natural Selection.He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and NaturalSelection and the influence of the mighty deadand a good firm shipper’s fruitsuitable for canning.He was one of the grand old men until the churchesand the congregationsgot wind that he was an infidel and believedin Darwin.Luther Burbank had never a thought of evil,selected improved hybrids for Americathose sunny years in Santa Rosa.But he brushed down a wasp’s nest that time;he wouldn’t give up Darwin and Natural Selectionand they stung him and he diedpuzzled.They buried him under a cedartree.His favorite photographwas of a little totstanding beside a bed of hybrideverblooming double Shasta daisieswith never a thought of evilAnd Mount Shastain the background, used to be a volcanobut they don’t have volcanosany more.”
“In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.”
“Weißt du, Jimmy, ich glaube, es wird ganz lustig sein, ein Weilchen in einer Redaktion zu sitzen.""Ich fände es schon sehr lustig, wenn ich _irgendwo_ sitzen dürfte... Na ja, da bleibe ich eben zu Haus und passe auf das Baby auf.""Sei nicht so verbittert, Jimmy, es ist ja nur vorübergehend.""Das ganze Leben ist nur vorübergehend." (S. 250)”
“But you’re out of another world old kid … You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms.”
“The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough. At night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself alone.”
“If any man has a ghostBourne has a ghosta tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak hopping along the grimy old brick and brownstone streets still left in downtown New York,crying out in a shrill soundless giggle:War is the health of the State.”
“Why, lies are like a sticky juice overspreading the world, a living, growing flypaper to catch and gum the wings of every human soul. . . And the little helpless buzzings of honest, liberal, kindly people, aren't they like the thin little noise flies make when they're caught?”
“self respect. self reliance. self control.”
“... life is to be used, not just held in the hand like a box of bonbons that nobody eats.”
“...and the Sunday the bishop came you couldn't see Halley's Comet any more and you saw the others being confirmed and it lasted for hours because there were a lot of little girls being confirmed too and all you could hear was mumble mumble this thy child mumble mumble this thy child and you wondered if you'd be alive next time Halley's Comet came round”
“When they were all up playing in the nursery George caught something again and had monia on account of getting cold on his chest and Yourfather was very solemn and said not to grieve if God called little brother away. But God brought little George back to them only he was delicate after that and had to wear glasses, and when Dearmother let Eveline help bathe him because Miss Mathilda was having the measles too Eveline noticed he had something funny there where she didn't have anything. She asked Dearmother if it was a mump, but Dearmother scolded her and said she was a vulgar little girl to have looked. "Hush, child, don't ask questions. Evaline got red all over and cried and Adelaide and Margaret wouldn't speak to her for days on account of her being a vulgar little girl.”
“If there is a special Hades for writers is would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.”
“A novel is a commodity that fulfills a certain need; people need to buy daydreams like they need to buy ice cream or aspirin or gin. They even need to buy a pinch of intellectual catnip now and then to liven up their thoughts...”
“The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armour of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error." -John Dos Passos”
“They have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspapereditors the old judges the small men with reputations the collegepresidents the wardheelers (listen businessmen collegepresidents judges America will not forget her betrayers) they hire the men with guns the uniforms the policecars the patrolwagons all right you have won you will kill the brave men our friends tonight (author's punctuation)”
“We work to eat to get the strength to work to eat to get the strength to work.”
“If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works, with all the misconceptions, the omissions, the failures that any finished work of art implies.”
“I never see the dawn that I don't say to myself perhaps.”