John Dos Passos was born in Chicago to unmarried Portuguese-American parents and was educated at Choate School and Harvard. He followed his father's wishes to study architecture in Spain but joined the Norton-Harjes ambulance corps during WWI. After the war, he spent a decade as a freelance journalist traveling in Europe and writing fiction on the side. Politically, Dos Passos started as a social radical in the 1930s but became more conservative in the 1950s. His novel USA, published between 1930-1936, was a trilogy comprised of The 42nd Parallel, Nineteen Nineteen, and The Big Money that used a collection of newspaper clippings, biographies and autobiographies to portray a

1. John Dos Passos By: Hannah Marks Rachel Mauzey

2. Where was John Dos Passos born? He was born in Chicago of well-to-do Portuguese-American Parents who were unmarried. And he lived mostly with his mother!

3. What schools did he attend? He went to the exclusive Choate School and then to Harvard which he graduated in 1916. After that he followed his father’s wishes and studied architecture in Spain, then decided to join the famous Norton-Harjes volunteer ambulance corps when WW1 came.

4. What did John doafter the war ended? He got married and spent a decade as a freelance journalist, traveling in Spain and Europe, and writing poetry, travel essays, plays, and fiction on the side. Some examples of his works at this time were Three Soldiers and Manhattan Transfer.

5. John Dos Passos political interests played a major part in his writing, what are his political views? Well he started as a social radicalism in the 1930s then became a social conservatism in the 1950s. In the 1930 he joined the executive board of the Communist journal called The New Masses. But that was all messed up because took part in communist activities but never joined the party itself. He rejected the Communist demand that all writers in the party express on the party line. The communist broke up a Socialist rally in Madison Square Garden and this event persuaded John that Communist were more interested in power than social justice.

6. In the story From USA, the “Old Ninetyseven” was mentioned…what was the “Old Ninetyseven?” That was the train that traveled between Washington DC and Atlanta Georgia. That train wrecked and gave rise to several popular railroad ballads.

7. In his trilogy USA, what were the names of the three pieces of work included in that novel? The 42nd Parallel (1930), Nineteen Nineteen or 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936). These pieces were a collection of newspaper clippings and biographies and autobiographies.

8. In the Novel, USA trilogy was Passos pessimistic or optimistic about the political and economic direction of the United States? Passos was very pessimistic.

9. Between what years did Passos’s USA appear? Between 1930 and 1936.

10. How many main characters appear in the novel U.S.A? Eleven, there were eleven main characters in his novel.

11. What were the little sections called in the novel USA? Isn’t that the “newsreel”…excerpts and headlines, clippings, songs and parts of speeches?

12. What is the “Camera Eye?” The Camera Eye is a sections of impressionistic, emotional, lyrical fragments, and biographies of American notables like Isadora Duncan, Rudolph Valention and Thomas Edison and even the Wright Brothers.