Customer Reviews
All right, we are two nations - By: Leonard Fleisig, 29 May 2006 
So says John Dos Passosin `The Big Money", Volume III of his USA Trilogy. Just as Benjamin Disraeli saw two nationsin mid-19th century Britain ("who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, & are not governed by the same laws...the rich & the poor"), John Dos Passos saw two nationsin the United Statesin the roaring 1920s.
Dos Passos is one of the U.S.'s (sadly) lesser known literary giants of the 20th-century. At the height of his famein the 1930s he found himself on the same pedestal as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, & Faulkner. The first two volumes of the USA Trilogy (42nd Parallel & 1919) were enormous successes. By the time "The Big Money" was releasedin 1936, Jean-Paul Sartre hailed him as "the greatest writer of our time". Edmund Wilson's review went so far as to claim that Dos Passos was "the first of our writers, with the possible exception of Mark Twain, who has successfully used colloquial American for a novel of the highest artistic seriousness." Dos Passos' literary reputation began to change during the Spanish Civil War. Dos Passos, along with Hemingway & many other literary figures including George Orwell made his way to Spain to assistin the Republican cause. Like Orwell, Dos Passos was deeply affected by the brutal infighting amongst Republican supporters. In the case of Dos Passos he was deeply distressed by murder of a friend (anarchist & Johns Hopkins Professor Jose Robles) apparently executed by Stalinist cadres for his nonconforming radicalism. Hemingway mocked Dos Passos for his unmanly concern for his friend. Hemingway's friends & most of the hard left literary community joined in. It is no surprise that Dos Passos' next book was criticized severely. The New Masses magazine referred to it as a "crude piece of Trotskyist agit-prop". Dos Passos never reclaimed the popularity he had achieved with the USA Trilogy. Unlike Orwell, whose fame & reputation survived & grew after his Spanish Civil War experience, Dos Passos slowly fell out of the public eye. That fate is a shame when one considers the enormous energy & creativity that went into the USA Trilogy.
The idea of two paralel nations, one for the rich & their minions & one for the huddled masses, provides substance to Dos Passos' unique multi-media structure. In addition to the stories of these fictional characters, The Big Money is interspersed with mini-biographies of real people, newsreel clippings that place the storyin a social a political context, & a series of autobiographical sketches (The Camera Eye)in which Dos Passos steps out from the story & provides his own personal context to the times.
The key fictional charactersin "The Big Money" are Charley Anderson, Mary French, Margo Dowling, & Richard Ellsworth Savage. The "Great War" is over & the USA has,in the words of Warren G. Harding, returned to normalcy. The roaring 20s isin full swing". In one America the characters experience the world of prohibition & speakeasies; stock speculation by millions of Americans are buy & selling shares on profit & margins that are as ephemeral as they are risky. In the `other' America the characters see labor at war with management. Union busting & red baiting is the rule not the exception & urban workers; particularly immigrants are seen as Bolshevik threats. Charley Anderson crashes & burns after a meteoric rise. Mary French is absorbedin the workers' battles of the 1920s & Margo Dowling sleeps her way to fame & fortunein Hollywood.
The biographies cover the same two nation ground with min-biographies of Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, Thorstein Veblen, Isadora Duncan, Rudolf Valentino, & William Randolph Hearst amongst them. Dos Passos' personal Camera Eye observations reach their emotional climax as the story reaches the execution of anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti. It is here where Dos Passos makes his two nations observation.
The Big Money is a worthy finale to The USA Trilogy. After re-reading the entire trilogy, thirty years or so after my first exposure to itin High School, I think it safe to say that it has still holds up under perhaps more mature observation.
The USA Trilogy remains one of the major literary works of the (U.S.) twentieth century & remains a work that should be read & read again. Highly recommended.
