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John Dos Passos

John Dos Passos Books

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“Ellen got off the bus at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fiftythird Street. Rosy twilight was gushing out of the brilliant west, glittered in brass and nickel, on buttons, in people's eyes. All the windows on the east side of the avenue were aflame. As she stood with set teeth on the curb waiting to cross, a frail tendril of fragrance brushed her face. A skinny lad with towhair stringy under a foreignlooking cap was offering her arbutus in a basket. She bought a bunch and pressed her nose in it. May woods melted like sugar against her palate. The whistle blew, gears ground as cars started to pour out of the side streets, the crossing thronged with people. Ellen felt the lad brush against her as he crossed at her side. She shrank away. Through the smell of the arbutus she caught for a second the unwashed smell of his body, the smell of immigrants, of Ellis Island, of crowded tenements. Under all the nickelplated, goldplated streets enameled with May, uneasily she could feel the huddling smell, spreading in dark slow crouching masses like corruption oozing from broken sewers, like a mob. She walked briskly down the cross-street. She went in a door beside a small immaculately polished brass plate.”

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Book:Manhattan Transfer
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“Aloof, as if looking through thick glass into an aquarium, she watched faces, fruit in storewindows, cans of vegetables, jars of olives, redhotpokerplants in a florist's, newspapers, electric signs drifting by. When they passed cross-streets a puff of air came in her face off the river. Sudden jetbright glances of eyes under straw hats, attitudes of chins, thick lips, pouting lips, Cupid's bows, hungry shadow under cheekbones, faces of girls and young men nuzzled fluttering against her like moths as she walked with her stride even to his through the tingling yellow night.”

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Book:Manhattan Transfer
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“Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass, he walked through the woods one winter crunching through the shinycrusted snow stumbling into a little dell where a warm spring was and found the grass green and weeds sprouting and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb, He went home and sat by the stove and read Darwin Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural Selection that wasn't what they taught in church, so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg, found a seedball in a potato plant sowed the seed and cashed in on Darwin’s Natural Selection on Spencer and Huxley with the Burbank potato. Young man go west; Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosa full of his dream of green grass in winter ever- blooming flowers ever- bearing berries; Luther Burbank could cash in on Natural Selection Luther Burbank carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winter and seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus— winters were bleak in that bleak brick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts— out to sunny Santa Rosa; and he was a sunny old man where roses bloomed all year everblooming everbearing hybrids. America was hybrid America could cash in on Natural Selection. He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and Natural Selection and the influence of the mighty dead and a good firm shipper’s fruit suitable for canning. He was one of the grand old men until the churches and the congregations got wind that he was an infidel and believed in Darwin. Luther Burbank had never a thought of evil, selected improved hybrids for America those sunny years in Santa Rosa. But he brushed down a wasp’s nest that time; he wouldn’t give up Darwin and Natural Selection and they stung him and he died puzzled. They buried him under a cedartree. His favorite photograph was of a little tot standing beside a bed of hybrid everblooming double Shasta daisies with never a thought of evil And Mount Shasta in the background, used to be a volcano but they don’t have volcanos any more.”

DarwinHuxleyCharles DarwinSpencerHerbert SpencerLuther BurbankBurbankThomas Henry HuxleyThomas HuxleyT H HuxleyThomas H Huxley
Book:The 42nd Parallel
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“Then all at once he´d hear his own voice enunciating clearly and firmly, feel its reverberance along the walls and ceiling, feel ears growing tense, men and women leaning forward in their chairs, see the rows of faces quite clearly, the groups of people who couldn´t find seats crowding at the doors. Phrases like `protest, massaction, united working-class of this country and the world, revolution´, would light up the eyes and faces under him like the glare of a bonfire.”

ActivismSocialism1919
Book:1919
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“The chilly December day! two shivering bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio first felt their homemade contraption whittled out of hickory sticks, gummed together with Arnstein's bicycle cement, stretched with muslin they'd sewn on their sister's sewing machine in their own backyard on Hawthorn Street in Dayton, Ohio, soar into the air above the dunes and the wide beach at Kitty Hawk.”

FirstsTwoTogetherFeltAirStreetsMachinesSticksWideBeachSoarMechanicBicycleSisterDecemberOhioBackyardsHawksCementSewingKittiesHomemadeChilly
Book:The Big Money: Volume Three of the U.S.A. Trilogy
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“Men who have lost their conviction of what is good and what is bad find themselves without a sextant to check their position by. We are in the position of a man with an elaborate camping kit who finds himself lost in the woods without his matches; to kindle a fire he has to resort to the stratagems of the caveman. We fall back through generations into the oldest terrors and confusions of the race.”

MenFallLostRaceFireGenerationsPositionTerrorConvictionWoodsChecksConfusionResortsFall BackKindlesCampingStratagemLost In The Woods
Author:John Dos Passos
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“Humanity has a strange fondness for following processions. Get four men following a banner down the street, and, if that banner is inscribed with rhymes of pleasant optimism, in an hour, all the town will be afoot, ready to march to whatever tune the leaders care to play.”

IfsMenPlayCareHumanityHoursLeaderFourStreetsStrangeReadyOptimismTownsFollowingPleasantTunesMarchRhymeBannerFondnessProcession
Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“The only excuse for a novelist, aside from the entertainment and vicarious living his books give the people who read them, is as a sort of second-class historian of the age he lives in. The "reality" he missed by writing about imaginary people, he gains by being able to build a reality more nearly out of his own factual experience than a plain historian or biographer can.”

PeopleGivingWritingBookRealityAgeAbleClassGainsEntertainmentExcuseNovelistsHistorianImaginaryFactualBiographersVicarious
Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“One of the most extraordinary things about industrial society of the present day is its idiot lack of memory. Tabloids and movies take the place of mental processes and revolts, crimes, despairs pass off in a dribble of vague words and rubber stamp phrases without leaving a scratch on the mind of the driven instalment-paying, subway-packing mass.”

MindProcessMemoriesCrimeDespairMassExtraordinaryLeavingDrivenIdiotPhrasesVagueStampsScratchesRevoltSubwayPresent DayRubberTabloidsExtraordinary ThingsPackingDribble
Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“There are too many "creative writing" courses and seminars, in which young wirters are constantly being taught to rewrite the previous generation. They should be experimenting on their own. Every writer faces different problems which he must solve for himself.”

ShouldWritingDifferentProblemFacesYoungCoursesCreativeGenerationsTaughtSolveCreative WritingSeminarsPrevious Generations
Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“The mind of a generation is its speech. A writer makes aspects of that speech enduring by putting them in print. He whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation. That's history. A writer who writes straight is the architect of history.”

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Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“The man who invented Eskimo Pie made a million dollars, so one is told, but E.E. Cummings, whose verse has been appearing off andon for three years now, and whose experiments should not be more appalling to those interested in poetry than the experiment of surrounding ice-cream with a layer of chocolate was to those interested in soda fountains, has hardly made a dent in the doughy minds of our so-called poetry lovers.”

MenShouldYearsMindHas BeensMadePoetryThreeMillionsHe ManPoetLoversDollarsExperimentsIceChocolateThree YearsLayersVersesCreamPieFountainIce CreamMillion DollarsLove PoetryAppearingExperimentationSoda
Author:John Dos Passos
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“To fight oppression, and to work as best we can for a sane organization of society, we do not have to abandon the state of mind offreedom. If we do that we are letting the same thuggery in by the back door that we are fighting off in front of the house.”

IfsThinkingMindStatesFightingHouseDoorsFrontsOrganizationOppressionThoughtfulAbandonState Of MindSaneFreedom Of SpeechBack Doors
Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”

ThinkingMenNeedsArtTodayPastEasyAnswersHistoryGoneRecordsWrittenGenerationsDangerScaryDrivenBlockIdiotReasoningDelusionExceptionalContinuityRiddleQuicksandLifelinesGood Thinking
Book:Occasions and protests
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“Man seems to be an animal whose capacity for lies is only equalled by his credulity; it does no good to let battalions of cats outof bags, to produce whole harems of naked facts, people eat the same three meals daily deception, and are always ready to turn with fury upon the purveyors of bagless cats and facts undraped. Probably their instinct is wise. Who knows?”

PeopleKnowsMenDoeWholeFactsSeemsTruthLyingTurnsThreeAnimalWiseProduceReadyCapacityCatInstinctNakedDeceptionMealsBagsFuryCredulityHarem
Book:The Fourteenth Chronicle: Letters and Diaries of John Dos Passos
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“Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention.The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper.”

ThinkingWorldWayWritingStillsThreeSpeechPaperDiscoveryAspectOriginalsInventionProseOriginalityThree WordsProfessional Writing
Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“A set of ideas, a point of view, a frame of reference is in space only an intersection, the state of affairs at some given momentin the consciousness of one man or many men, but in time it has evolving form, virtually organic extension. In time ideas can be thought of as sprouting, growing, maturing, bringing forth seed and dying like plants.”

MenIdeasStatesFormGivenSpaceViewsConsciousnessKnowledgeGrowingDyingEvolutionPlantAffairSeedsPoint Of ViewEvolveMatureOne ManExtensionsIntersectionsFrame Of Reference
Book:The Ground We Stand on: The History of a Political Creed
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“Women hock their jewels and their husbands' insurance policies to acquire an unaccustomed shade in hair or crêpe de chine. Why then is it that when anyone commits anything novel in the arts he should be always greeted by this same peevish howl of pain and surprise? One is led to suspect that the interest people show in these much talked of commodities, painting, music, and writing, cannot be very deep or very genuine when they so wince under an unexpected impact.”

PeopleShouldWritingArtShowsPainArtistInterestNovelPolicyPaintingHairHusbandImpactSurpriseGenuineCommitAcquireUnexpectedSuspectsShadeCommodityJewelsNoveltyVery DeepHowlInsurance PolicyWince
Author:John Dos Passos
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“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.”

MenWritingArtMatterStatesWholeMomentsShowsLawArtistCertainUnitedUnited StatesVirtuePaintingCriticismIndependenceSpreadTheatreEvery ManMercuryRitz
Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“It's not the possibility of Stalinism in the U.S. that's worrying me, it's the fact that the Stalinist C.P. seems doomed to fail and to bring down with it all the humanitarian tendencies I personally believe in--all the while acting as a mould on which its obverse the fascist mentality is made--and this recent massacre is certainly a sign of Stalinism's weakness not of its strength. None of that has anything to do with Marx's work--but it certainly does influence one's attitude towards a given political party.”

BelieveDoeMadeFactsSeemsPoliticalPoliticsGivenPartyActingAttitudeWorryFailingInfluencePossibilityWeaknessHumanitarianTendenciesCommunismMentalityDoomedPolitical PartiesFascistsMassacresMouldStalinism
Author:John Dos Passos
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“The fascinating thing to a dispassionate observer about the structure of life in the Soviet Union is that in their efforts to produce an unknown that we may let its ideologists call Socialism the Communist dictators have produced a brutal approximation of monopoly Capitalism, a system that has all the disadvantages of our own, with none of the palliatives which come to us from surviving competition and from the essential division of economic and political power which has so far made it possible for the humane traditions of the Western world to continue.”

WorldMayMadePoliticalPoliticsEffortEconomicProduceEssentialsCapitalismTraditionStructureCompetitionUnionsWesternSocialismMade ItCommunismFascinatingDivisionCommunistSovietBrutalDictatorSoviet UnionObserversMonopolySurvivingHumaneDisadvantagesPolitical PowerWestern WorldApproximationDispassionate
Author:John Dos Passos
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“I never understood exactly why people get engaged--The only time I ever did the most disastrous things happened--but I feel that there's a great deal to be said for immediate matrimony always. If I once got started I'd probably have to become a mormon to cover my confusion. What I mean is that if he and she are crazy about each other it is sheer tempting God to stay apart, come what may. And if people arent crazy about each other being engaged wont help them.”

PeopleIfsMenFeelsMayMeanSaidHelpingDealsMarriageHappenedCrazyUnderstoodMen And WomenThings HappenConfusionEngagedSheerOnly TimeMatrimonyTemptingCourtship
Book:The Fourteenth Chronicle: Letters and Diaries of John Dos Passos
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