Manhattan Transfer: John Dos Passos (Penguin Modern Classics)

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They arrive and immediately get caught up in the crushing and jostling, and some make it big while others fail spectacularly.

Try "Look Inside", don't consider the introduction in italics to each chapter, instead focus on the text i regular type. Stipati sull’isola angusta, gli edifici dalle migliaia di finestre si drizzeranno splendenti, piramidi su piramidi, simili a cime di nuvole bianche al disopra degli uragani. While in the shelter, Bud shares with another man that he killed his father before he left the farm.A modernist masterwork that has more in common with films than traditional novels, John Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer includes an introduction by Jay McInerney in Penguin Modern Classics. Another intriguing aspect is the encounters between earthlings and others and how they must learn to communicate.

Manhattan Transfer is Dos Passos's earlier novel in which he very successfully experimented with most of the techniques later used in the USA trilogy.Although the city of New York always dominates over the humans I found the characterisation very satisfying. Li ho letti in clandestinità ai tempi del fascismo, e come tutte le cose proibite hanno assunto un significato anche superiore alla loro importanza effettiva. Et je remercie malgré tout Bernard pour m’avoir conseillé cet achat (je le dis avec d’autant moins de gêne que c’est un échange fait chez une bouquiniste : ce bouquin contre les héraults de Valdemar. However,in the same section, the time lapse for Max, a wanderer hoping to find a job in the city, is only a few days.

Consequently, the book seems to plod along until about the two thirds way point when it picks up speed and begins to move along with some excitement.

She resents George, but in keeping with her tendency to plan ahead, she marries him because she is getting older and is running out of options if she wants to stay relevant in a materialistic New York. Their stories illustrate that what is most important in New York City are shallow qualities, such as wealth, youth, and material possessions. Third, there’s that wonderful image of the emerging ferry passengers “crushed and jostling like apples fed down a chute into a press”. On y suit pendant une quinzaine d'années l'actrice, le politicien, l'homme d'affaire, le journaliste, le truand, le bouseux etc.

The dialogues are combined with lengthy lyrical passages in which the narrator's voice describes people, places, and moods. I often was reminded of film noir with its shadows, modernistic city settings, and portrayals of gritty city life. Another problem (although I’m sure it’s deliberate on the part of Dos Passos) is that a lot of the dramatic action happens off-stage. Using experimental montage techniques borrowed from the cinema, vivid descriptions and bursts of overheard conversation, and the jumbled case histories of a picaresque cast of characters from dockside crapshooters to high-society flappers, Dos Passos constructs a brilliant impressionistic portrait of New York City as a great futuristic machine filled with motion, drama and human tragedy. I enjoyed reading each character’s story but I wasn’t attached to any of them (including NYC) and I found that I had to muddle through and fight back some yawns.The way he interweaves multiple characters and their stories into a magnificent snapshot of America between WW1 and The Great Depression. I don’t have the skills to live in a world where there are no moralities, rules, or structure to guide all of us in our daily lives. Using short prose-poems to begin each chapter, vignettes of people's lives, quotations from popular songs of the day, overheard conversations, newspaper headlines and more, we get a powerful portrait of the city.