DOS PASSOS: SYMPATHETIC SPECTATOR
IN
ALL
COUNTRIES,
by John Dos Passos. Harcourt, Brace
&
Company.
$2.50.
THREE PLAYS,
by John Dos Passos. Harcourt, Brace
&
Company. $2.50.
These two books demonstrate over again Dos Passos' remarkable
talents as a writer. He knows the value of the American idiom for
American writing. He knows how to make musical and dramatic use of
language. And he knows how to arrange events so that an effective
rhetoric of action supports the vel'bal rhetoric. Sometimes, as in a few of
the sketches in
In
A II
Countries,
his subjects are too slight for the weight
of literary effects he puts upon them; and sometimes, as in
The Garbage
ll-fan,
he attempts a symbolism which turns out clumsily. But his writing
never fails to give pleasure.
However, I am not concerned here with discussing the qualities of
Dos Passos' work as literature, but as revolutionary literature. I find
certain qualities of mind revealed in his writing which keep him outside
the revolution and his writing outside revolutionary literature, though it
has important indirect revolutionary value and will always be, technically
and psychologically, of the greatest interest to all writers, revolutionists
included.
In the first place, Dos Passos does not consider himself a revolution–
ist; and a revolutionary writer is one to whom writing is a lcvolutionary
act. He remains an impressionable and sympathetic observer, but still,
an observer only. There is perhaps, from the evidence of recent travel
literature, no more sensitive and intelligent sight-seer roaming the world
today; and his books offer valuable and absorbing impressions. But rev-.
olution is much more than a spectacle, and in its most important aspects
is m:lccessible to the mere observer.
In another sense, Dos Passos' psychological orientation is not revolu–
tionary. He does not have a strong faith in the power of man to change
himself or the world. Probably he believes so intellectually; but in the
way he sees his characters, and in the way he sets them in their destinies,
I feel another philosophy, the old philosophy of chance.
This is characteristic of American life and is the product of American
history.
It
could not help but influence American writing and thinking
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