Year of the Black Sox

The second part of John Dos Passos, U.S.A. trilogy, 1919, is better than the first part. Even still, I am not sure whether I really like it or not. There is no doubt that Dos Passos can write well. This book, like the first part, consists of the stories of a few different people, some of whom meet, some of whom never meet. Some of the characters in this book meet some of the characters from the first part. In other words, this feels like a sprawling epic of intersecting stories. What makes the book so hard to love is that just about the time you have settled down into enjoying the story of a particular character, there is a break in the action and we are off to some other character's story. Sometimes we return to the character we just left, sometimes not. Joe Williams--did he died or was he just knocked out in that bar fight? Maybe we'll find out in the third part of the trilogy, maybe not. That's the sort of book it is--people wander in and out, and there is no way to tell who is going to be relevant later on. That resembles life, of course, which is presumably the point.

This part of the trilogy mostly takes pace during World War I. But, oddly for a book taking place during a war, there are remarkably few parts involving actual fighting. I am not sure why not--it would seem to have been a simple matter to have introduced a character who died in the trenches.

The Socialists-are-good angle is getting more pronounced in the second part of the trilogy--I suspect that it will be the grand conclusion of the trilogy. But, I'll find out next month.

A story that amuses me more than it should: One of the Chinese students in my tutorial was telling her friends back home that she was reading this book, and now there are a whole bunch of Chinese students reading the Chinese translation of Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy. I think I am surprised that there is a Chinese translation of this book, but I know I am amused that this book, of all the great American books, is one that Chinese students would pick to read.