Word: dos
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...meant to be seen acted and not to be read. Obviously the experiment lacks certain dramatic elements, hitherto regarded as indispensable--plot, idea, and hero and heroine in the accepted sense of the words. Yet in just the same manner these alleged necessities are completely missing in John dos Passos' new novel, "Manhattan Transfer,' an innovation which has been critically as well as financially unusually successful. Indeed, the absence of these features constitute no grounds for objection, but rather for interest and speculation; and when one has adjusted his set of standards and expectations, he can not fail to admit...
...Moon Is a Gong. John Dos Passos wrote this. As usual, he was annoyed at the time-annoyed because no matter how high a steeple you climb you never can strike the moon like a gong. Mr. Dos Passos' hero was not able to climb above convention either. The play is loud, violent, incoherent, with a character called "Third Young Man with a Cold-Cream Face...
...contemporary writers are taking. The evident appreciation of background by the younger men who have persisted in recording their contempt for American verse, civilization in the western world, is tending toward a social literature out of which that he no said quoi of greatness can only come. Dreisers and dos Passos, Lewises and their compeers are throwing the shafts of their wit into the obscurity of apparent dullness, are really, in short, lighting the stage of American letters...
...American life, he created no definite characters. He was interested alone in showing his own revolt at the existence with which his characters were faced. But with "Arrow-Smith" came force, and he had made a living being. Dreiser's characters fade before the gloom of their background dos Passos' get lost in the subway jams of Times Square. But each has an occasional flicker of reality, of being, like mannikins in a show window they sometimes seem alive...
Harvard occasionally produces a courageous soul who dares to be exotic--I can no longer use "original" honestly--and such a soul is Dos Passos. Having shocked America with "The Three Soldiers", helped the Dramatic Club with lunar and spectacular fantasy in three acts and Battle Hall, now puts all of New York in a single novel. Anybody--anybody who would dare to put all of New York into anything but a telephone book is a hero and a genius. To do it takes courage,--but not necessarily a sense of humor. If you think so, read the book...