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ABSTRACT JOHN DOS PASSOS and the INDIVIDUAL Michael K ABSTRACT JOHN DOS PASSOS AND THE INDIVIDUAL Michael K. Yetter, Ph.D. Department of English Northern Illinois University, 2016 Mark Van Wienen, Director The career of John Dos Passos, twentieth-century modernist, American fiction writer, can be separated into two distinct phases: the early liberal political writer and the late-in-life conservative Republican political writer. The entirety of Dos Passos’s fiction is devoted to two topics: America and the individual. Due to the author’s dramatic change in political philosophy, critics are troubled when reconciling these two phases; however, the critical consensus is that the one constant between early and later novels is his devotion to the plight of the individual. Dos Passos himself echoes this assessment. Closer examination of Dos Passos’s fiction reflects that this judgment is too simplistic. The author’s point of view on the individual should be divided into two categories: the individual citizen and what has been termed the Dos Passosian individual, a significant figure who stands out in society, challenging existing American economic and political structures in an effort to improve the social order for all. Further analysis indicates that the author’s thinking about this Dos Passosian individual evolves over the course of his career. First, this representative individual shares characteristics with the early German Romantic poet, a figure who separates him- or herself from the collective, communes with nature, seeking enlightenment, and seeks to educate and inspire individual citizens to seek their own enlightenment. Next, the Dos Passosian individual becomes a modern American Romantic, who shares traits with the early German Romantic poet in seeking inspiration in Nature but is also able to find some degree of enlightenment within the collective. This person then matures into a Democratic Individual, inspired by Walt Whitman, who fully embraces enlightenment within the collective and tries to inspire citizens to take steps in order to improve economic instability. Finally, Dos Passos’s character becomes what this work terms a modern Democratic Individual, a figure who eschews Whitmanian distance from politics to become an economic and political operative and thereby acts upon a civic responsibility to the country and to fellow individual citizens while struggling in the postwar American political landscape. NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY DEKALB, ILLINOIS DECEMBER 2016 JOHN DOS PASSOS AND THE INDIVIDUAL BY MICHAEL K. YETTER ©2016 Michael K. Yetter A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH Doctoral Director: Mark Van Wienen ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been completed without the guidance and patience of my dissertation director, Dr. Mark Van Wienen. Additionally, I must thank my other committee members, Dr. Diana Swanson and Dr. James Giles. I am indebted to their mentorship, their encouragement, and most important of all, their friendship. I could not have asked for better instructors or a better committee. Also, I have to mention my family. My mother prayed for me, my sisters believed in me, and my daughters took care of me. Do not think that I did not notice. When I needed you, each of you was there. Without your unconditional love and constant hectoring me about when I was going to finish this dissertation, I would have been lost. Finally, thank you to Carolyn Law. You offered me a job, time to work on this project, and your friendship. I hope the finished product does you proud. DEDICATION For my father. You inspired this. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page AUTHOR’S NOTE ............................................................................................................. v Chapter 1.DOS PASSOS AND THE HISTORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL, INDIVIDUALITY AND INDIVIDUALISM ..................................................1 2. ONE MAN’S INITIATION: 1917, THREE SOLDIERS, AND THE ROMANTIC INDIVIDUAL ........................................................30 3. MANHATTAN TRANSFER, THE INDIVIDUAL, AND BILDUNG ..............................................................................................52 4. U.S.A AND THE SEARCH FOR A NEW INDIVIDUAL .......................................... 74 5. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: THE DEMOCRATIC INDIVIDUAL AND THE POLITICAL NATIONS ............................................................. 107 6. THE MODERN DEMOCRATIC INDIVIDUAL OF POSTWAR AMERICA .......................................................................... 143 WORKS CITED .............................................................................................................170 AUTHOR’S NOTE John Dos Passos’s reputation as a gifted writer is due in part to his unusual aesthetic. Desirous of challenging the stereotypical structure and appearance of the American novel, his more modern style and voice were influenced by a number of early twentieth-century artistic movements, especially Cubism and Futurism; advancements in film techniques by prominent directors at the time; and by the author’s experiences with artist Gerald Murphy, who in 1923 was commissioned to design a more modern American ballet, Within the Quota. Part of Dos Passos’s aesthetic decisions at the sentence level include blending words together and an excessive use of ellipses. Also, it should be noted that on occasion the author favors European spelling. I have not Americanized the author’s spelling nor altered his tendency to merge words together. To do so would distort the author’s aesthetic and corrupt the work’s impact on the reader. It is important to highlight that throughout the entirety of this text I have had to incorporate the ellipsis for my own purposes. In order to distinguish my own use of the punctuation from Dos Passos’s, I enclose my ellipses in brackets. I have employed the following abbreviations for select sources: PRIMARY SOURCES: Novels DOC: AYM District of Columbia: Adventures of a Young Man vi DOC: NO District of Columbia: Number One DOC: GD District of Columbia: The Grand Design Novels Novels 1920 – 1925: One Man’s Initiation: 1917, Three Soldiers, Manhattan Transfer. U.S.A. U.S.A.: The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money Non-fiction Travel Books Travel Books and Other Writings: 1916 – 1941: Rosinante to the Road Again, Orient Express, In All Countries, A Pushcart at the Curb, Essays, Letters, and Diaries FC The Fourteenth Chronicle: Letters and Diaries of John Dos Passos edited by Townsend Ludington SECONDARY SOURCES: Biography TCO John Dos Passos: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey by Townsend Ludington CHAPTER ONE DOS PASSOS AND THE HISTORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL, INDIVIDUALITY, AND INDIVIDUALISM After graduating from Harvard in the spring of 1916, John Dos Passos had to make a decision regarding his future. He could continue with his studies, focusing on a developing interest in architecture; he could cross the ocean, enlist, and fight in the Great War; or he could pursue his interest in literature. This third option was the most appealing. He had been a member of Harvard’s literary circle, published several essays on art and culture in the Harvard Monthly, and he was busy compiling a collection of original poetry written by himself and several of his classmates (the collection would be published in 1917 under the title 8 Harvard Poets). The one obstacle to this third choice was his father. John Roderigo Dos Passos, a well-respected lawyer, wished his son to pursue a career in law, or at least to choose a trade that was as well respected as the legal profession and would further the family legacy. In her biography, Virginia Spencer Carr describes the father as someone “who continued his egocentric pursuits at will, convinced that he was in control of his destiny as well as the destinies of those around him” (18). In his memoir The Best Times (1968), Dos Passos recalls this period of his life and writes of his father’s concerns from a more diplomatic perspective: “He was delighted to have me write my head off, but with patient humor he kept insisting that literature wasn’t any way to make a living” (36). 2 Eventually, Dos Passos, Jr., had the idea of taking a year off and spending his free time reading, writing, and traveling. His father, however, was not thrilled with the prospect of his son going on the bum. Therefore, he proposed an alternative: Dos Passos, Sr., would finance a trip to Spain for one year so that his son could learn something of his heritage and pursue his interest in architecture. It was the father’s hope that his son would return home after twelve months, become apprenticed at a reputable architectural firm, and take up the responsibility of monitoring the family’s affairs. What the father could not anticipate was that the trip to Spain would only further his son’s zeal for the life of an artist. Witnessing the grueling life and rugged independence of the Spanish granjero (farmer) helped the blossoming writer develop his views regarding a topic about which he would write for the whole of his literary career: the individual. Townsend Ludington makes a passing reference to Dos Passos as “an individualist very much in the North American grain” (“John Dos Passos in the 1930s” 32). As a young man who was rather conventional in appearance and ideas, individualism was regarded as an act of rebellion (TCO 121). In an evaluation of Dos Passos’s early attempts at fiction, which he successfully published in the Harvard Monthly, Virginia Spencer Carr writes, “More
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