Declare Based On Books Manhattan Transfer
| Title | : | Manhattan Transfer |
| Author | : | John Dos Passos |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 342 pages |
| Published | : | September 2nd 2003 by Mariner Books (first published 1925) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Literature. American. New York. 20th Century. The United States Of America. Novels |
John Dos Passos
Paperback | Pages: 342 pages Rating: 3.68 | 4547 Users | 391 Reviews
Chronicle To Books Manhattan Transfer
Considered by many to be John Dos Passos's greatest work, Manhattan Transfer is an "expressionistic picture of New York" (New York Times) in the 1920s that reveals the lives of wealthy power brokers and struggling immigrants alike. From Fourteenth Street to the Bowery, Delmonico's to the underbelly of the city waterfront, Dos Passos chronicles the lives of characters struggling to become a part of modernity before they are destroyed by it. More than seventy-five years after its first publication, Manhattan Transfer still stands as "a novel of the very first importance" (Sinclair Lewis). It is a masterpiece of modern fiction and a lasting tribute to the dual-edged nature of the American dream.Itemize Books Concering Manhattan Transfer
| Original Title: | Manhattan Transfer |
| ISBN: | 0618381864 (ISBN13: 9780618381869) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | New York City, New York(United States) |
Rating Based On Books Manhattan Transfer
Ratings: 3.68 From 4547 Users | 391 ReviewsJudgment Based On Books Manhattan Transfer
It might be difficult to understand this novel if you've never lived in a large city. Dos Passos captures the chaos and disorientation of trying to survive in an urban battlefield, with all its violence, interruptions, temptations, anonymity, stimuli, and speed by writing in a still experimental modern style of cut-ups, fragments, and stream of consciousness. Manhattan Transfer's ferociously exciting to read, not only because it so accurately represents the physical sensations of modernity inHopeless MigrationNew York City was, perhaps still is, defined not so much geographically as spiritually by the unfulfilled aspirations of the people who migrate to it. And those migrants historically have come as much from the American hinterland as they have from across the ocean. Manhattan Tranfer was a stop on the Pennsylvania Railroad in Newark, New Jersey before the tunnel under the Hudson connecting the mainline to Manhattan was completed. Once you arrived there, you had nowhere else to
Bustling, jumpy and intense. For me, Manhattan Transfer was a different reading experience than I'm used to, but in a good way! Looking deep into New York life, you never get a sense that you're standing still, in the moment. There's always things going on around the single bit of narrative you're reading. Dos Passos' writing directly places you there, with fleeting looks at characters and detailed descriptions of the busy city. I, surprisingly, liked the complexity of this novel. It's not every
Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos may be highly acclaimed, but I do not like it. It pulsates the down-side and only the down-side of New York City. It draws the lifestyle of the the Roaring Twenties and the disillusionment characteristic of authors of the Lost Generation. I dislike the book's excessive fragmentation and the multitude of characters that flash by in a blur.The characters are a large group of people, from struggling immigrants to the well-established and secure, inhabitants of
A Babel of voices. The reality of a whole made from a myriad of parts. Using the many stories of a wide assortment of characters to make a portrait of New York City in the early years of the 20th century, its device of character snapshots to tell the story reminded me most of Camilo Jose Cela's novel The Hive, which does the same thing for Madrid. Not as ambitious as the USA Trilogy, but it is considered by some to be Dos Passos's greatest work.
"There are lives to be lived if only you didn't care."I have to stop comparing books and authors (or at least stop doing it as superficially as I do) but I can't help it with this 1925 expressionist montage of many lives clinging to Manhattan, sinking or swimming, giving up, going on, changing their names, caring for all the wrong things (apparently), battered by luck and buffeted by economics, war and desire. The bottom line is (I think) the randomness of our lives, and how little New York
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