U.S.A. Trilogy / by John Dos Passos

Born in Chicago in 1896, John Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of his father John Dos Passos Sr., a prominent attorney of Portuguese ancestry. Following the death of John Sr.'s wife in 1910, he married John Jr's mother Agnes and acknowledged the younger Dos Passos as his biological son. Despite his somewhat irregular family situation, Dos Passos received a first rate education, boarding first at the Choate School then Harvard and ultimately studying abroad at the Sorbonne institute. Traveling extensively over the next few years, he met up and mingled with people all over the world including several widely-known American ex-pat writers living in Europe. His 1938 novel U.S.A., a trilogy describing the three decades between 1900 and 1930, is by far his most famous work and one of the most endearing descriptions of American history to be put into fictional form.

A new century dawns on the United States of America and with it a conflux of new people with new ideas, better machines and bigger buildings, different dynamics and deeper conflicts that are all configured together inside this "slice of a continent". For people like Fainy "Mac" McCreary, the first generation American son of Irish immigrants, it's a chance to get out and see the country apart from the east coast. For J. Ward Morehouse, the new century brings a wave of new business opportunities and the promise of prosperity. Excitement also finds Charlie Anderson of Fargo, North Dakota as he hops the rail and begins a nomadic life toward anywhere and everywhere, seeking for a job where he can work with his hands and a woman who'll love him. All the while, as individual lives come and go, America steadily creeps toward its destiny.

U.S.A. is unique among American novels, both for it's length, three full-size novels in all; its subject, three decades of history; and its depth of personal encounter where individual lives are illuminated to the reader. The novels which make up the trilogy--The 42nd Parallel, 1919 & The Big Money--create an unforgettable depiction of a still young country. Represented through a collective experience which spans all places, races, classes and backgrounds is a story about a place and a people who form a nation. Crucial to the plot are events, small and large, indirectly affecting the central characters (a cast of about 12 individuals in all) like the lingering presence World War I, job shortages and unionization as well as, in some cases like that of J.Ward Morehouse, the overwhelming surplus of opportunity and enterprise.

But one shouldn't think that because of its length and range of characters that U.S.A. requires a deep investment. Dos Passos masterpiece isn't a prudently serious novel; nor is it a conventional work where a diluted backstory must be trudged through to realize the plot. It's a funny book with sardonic humor and intermediary "updates" never far from the central narrative. The author uses several startlingly clever literary devices to capture the aura of early twentieth century life. With his "newsreels", he broadcasts the headlines and impressions upon the public conscience; in his "camera eye", he subtly incorporates a vague autobiographical soliloquy inside a stream-of-consciousness arrangement. Within the sweeping scope of the story are major historical figures like Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Ford and Dale Carnegie as well as lesser known names now all but forgotten. To be sure there's a lot to the book. And it may take a reader some time to get through. But the point is never to vigilantly keep track of every detail. For as Dos Passos himself summarized, the book is "many things . . . but mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people". (FIC DOSPASSO)

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit / by Sloan Wilson

In post-World War II America, Tom Rath is just another New York City businessman. His life revolves his job to which he commutes by train every morning, his wife Betsy and their three young children. As modest middle-class Americans, Tom and his family are just trying to make ends meet. So when an offer for a riskier but higher paying job comes his way, he takes it. The gamble pays off. Before long Tom catches the eye of his new boss Ralph Hopkins who wishes him to be his personal assistant, a prestigious but far more rigorous position meaning Tom will now have to choose between becoming a workaholic businessman or be just another 9-to-5-er who at least has time for his family. As he mulls his options, his homelife becomes more complicated. His only living relative, a grandmother, has died and left her estate home to Tom who now has to decide if he and his family should live on the property or accept the offer to sell the land as a potential housing project.

There's something else too. Even ten years later, the war is never far from Tom's thoughts. On his way to and from work, he reminisces about his harrowing combat experience as an Army paratrooper, the violence involved in killing enemy soldiers at close range and the loss of his best friend (partly of his own error). There's also a girl he knew in Rome, an Italian refugee named Maria, whom he'd had an affair with while on leave. When by chance he meets an old Army buddy and learns that Maria gave birth to his son after he left Italy, he must decide between keeping the love child a secret, hoping he can somehow forget about it, or letting his wife know and hope she'll understand. For Tom Rath, just another man on the street in a gray flannel suit, it seems like the entire world is held in the balance.

Penned in 1955, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is the quintissential 1950's story, one which entails the baby boom of the post war years, the suburbanization of American families, expanding American enterprise and the still lingering after effects of the war itself. Rath is a great character (Gregory Peck as Tom in the 1956 film version gave a sound performance). A man of admirable qualities, he's also plagued by many problems. Reading about Tom, the time and place he inhabits and the life which pulls him in so many different directions, creates intrigue about every aspect of the book right down to the peculiarly sad life of mega-mogul Ralph Hopkins. Here we see an individual feeling the grind of the corporate sinkhole, the decentralization of home and work, the burden of an ambitious wife and, not to be sold short, the first real problems confronting American veterans in quite some time. The book is a solid snapshot of an American decade more associated with conformity and standardization than indecision and uncertainty. Touching on the kind of America Updike would depict a decade later, it is one which brilliantly concentrates all of the trials and inadequacies, the ambiguity and suspicion inherent in post-war life into one identifiable character and condition. (FIC WILSON)