Radical Responses to the The Great Depression

The Big Money.
John Dos Passos.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936.

John Dos Passos (1896-1970) was the ranking radical prose writer of the 1930s. Already famous for his Three Soldiers (1921), reflecting his disillusionment in World War I, and Manhattan Transfer (1925), an acidulous and powerful portrait of the prospering metropolis, Dos Passos sealed his reputation with the imposing trilogy U.S.A., in which American society is the central figure, with interesting devices of newspaper headlines and short character sketches of public figures to establish atmosphere. Some found the labor leader in The 42nd Parallel (1930) too idealized and wooden in a rather slow-moving story, but the breezy heroine of Nineteen Nineteen (1932) is his most appealing creation, in a swift and propelling narrative. The Big Money (1936), of which we show the first edition, portrayed characters resisting or embracing corruption by Coolidge prosperity on Wall Street and in Washington, Hollywood, and academia.

	RADICAL RESPONSES TO THE GREAT DEPRESSION Radical Novels
		The Big Money. John Dos Passos. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936. John Dos Passos (1896-1970) was the ranking radical prose writer of the 1930s. Already famous for his Three Soldiers (1921), reflecting his disillusionment in World War I, and Manhattan Transfer (1925), an acidulous and powerful portrait of the prospering metropolis, Dos Passos sealed his reputation with the imposing trilogy U.S.A., in which American society is the central figure, with interesting devices of newspaper headlines and short character sketches of public figures to establish atmosphere. Some found the labor leader in The 42nd Parallel (1930) too idealized and wooden in a rather slow-moving story, but the breezy heroine of Nineteen Nineteen (1932) is his most appealing creation, in a swift and propelling narrative. The Big Money (1936), of which we show the first edition, portrayed characters resisting or embracing corruption by Coolidge prosperity on Wall Street and in Washington, Hollywood, and academia.