Written in the decade before the publication of his famous U.S.A.
trilogy, the three early novels collected in this Library of America
volume record the emergence of John Dos Passos as a bold and
accomplished chronicler of the upheavals of the early 20th century.
Dos Passos drew upon his experiences as a volunteer ambulance driver
serving near Verdun in writing One Man's Initiation: 1917 (1920), in
which an idealistic young American learns of the fear, uncertainty, and
camaraderie of war through his encounters with French soldiers and
civilians. The unexpurgated text presented in this edition restores
passages censored by the novel's original publisher.
In Three Soldiers (1921) Dos Passos engaged in a deeper exploration of
World War I and its psychological impact upon an increasingly fractured
civilization. The novel depicts the experiences of Fuselli, a store
clerk from San Francisco pathetically eager to win promotion;
Chrisfield, an Indiana farmer who comes to hate army discipline; and
Andrews, an introspective aspiring composer from New York, as they fight
in the final battles of the war and then confront a world in which an
illusory peace offers little respite from the dehumanizing servility and
regimentation of militarized life.
Dos Passos described Manhattan Transfer (1925), a kaleidoscopic
portrait of New York City in the first two decades of the 20th century,
as "utterly fantastic and New Yorkish." Drawing on the naturalism of
Theodore Dreiser and the modernism of James Joyce, the novel follows the
rising and falling fortunes of more than a dozen characters as they move
through a bewildering maze of tenements and skyscrapers in which Wall
Street speculators, theatrical celebrities, impoverished immigrants, and
anarchist rebels all strive to make sense out of the chaos of modern
urban existence.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization
founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by
publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most
significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than
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