The Literary Canon refers to a body of books, narratives, and other texts considered to be the most influential or important of a particular period of time in history. Often reflecting the American experience of the era, certain works in literature would either solidify their place in the ever-changing Literary Canon or they would appear and disappear within the time it took to decide on the next list. As far as I could research, 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos was not part of the Literary Canon in the 1910’s or 1920’s, around the time in which it was written. However, the novel has surpassed the ideals of the Literary Canon from those two decades and has ended up on a few lists of the best novels of the twenty-first century. According to goodreads.com, John Dos Passos first novel in the U.S.A Trilogy peaked at 96 out of 580 “Great American Novels.” Though trying to pin point the great American novel seems almost pointless, 96 out of 580 isn’t a bad result. So, if modern day readers are so infatuated with 42nd Parallel, why didn’t it end up on the Literary Canon of its time, especially when Dos Passos alluded to so many other famous writers and artists throughout history? With inspiration and admiration from F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, both colleagues and Literary Canonites of the 1920’s, Dos Passos radical writing style should have landed him a spot on the Canon as well.
Some would argue that it was exactly his radical writing style in the U.S.A Trilogy that kept him out of the literary spotlight in the early twentieth century, while others were intrigued by his modernity. The collages of “Newsreels”, biographies, and camera eyes dazzled early readers, according to E.L. Doctorow who wrote the forward in 42nd Parallel and didn’t lack the relatable historical references that the American Citizens of the early twentieth century while simultaneously juxtaposing those references with the “lives of the fictional characters, which flow incessantly” (Doctorow) throughout the novel.
E.L. Doctorow and goodreads weren’t the only ones commenting on 42nd Parallel, as the entire U.S.A Trilogy was deemed as “the important American novel of the decade” in an essay entitled “The America of John Dos Passos” featured on The New York Times webpage. However, in opposition to those aforementioned “fangirls”, if you will, this essay claims that the trilogy is not as “all-embracing as its admirers claim. In the year 2000, the writer of this piece, Lionel Trilling, tore apart the very characteristics of the novel that has been previously praised by saying that Dos Passos does not embody the entirety of “Americanness” but only “represents a great national scene” and “the cultural tradition of the intellectual Left,” (Trilling). Though Doctorow raved about how inclusive Dos Passos made his characters, camera views, and biographies were, this writer takes a different approach by stating his beliefs that Dos Passos consciously selected “his America” and how his cultural tradition from which he stemmed, affected his exclusiveness of his all-encompassing America represented in 42nd Parallel.
Taking these three respects into consideration, do you believe that 42nd Parallel should have a higher rating in our ‘Great American Novel’ list, or do you believe that the Literary Canon was right to reserve their spots for those like Hemingway and Fitzgerald?
I think it’s important to note that 42p was published in 1930–so there’s wouldn’t be any trace of its emerging canonical status earlier than that. In some ways, I think this post would have worked best as a “novelworlds” post, specifically focusing more closely on Trilling’s essay, which was published in 1938 as a contemporary reflection on all the claims that, in fact, were being made for Dos Passos’s work. That essay makes the status of the trilogy clear: “U.S.A. is far more impressive than even its three impressive parts—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money—might have led one to expect,” he writes. “It stands as the important American novel of the decade, on the whole more satisfying than anything else we have.
As you note, he goes on to note its limitations: it “tells” rather than “is.” It doesn’t seem generative–in the sense that not one would “go to school” in Dos Passos. Do we think that Trilling’s sense of Dos Passos accomplishment (and what diminishes it) still holds? Is it generative in way now that it might not have been for writers working immediately in its wake?