Manhattan Transfer

by John Dos Passos

Book Overview

Considered by many to be John Dos Passos's greatest work, Manhattan Transfer is an expressionistic picture of New York (New York Times) in the 1920s that reveals the lives of wealthy power brokers and struggling immigrants alike.

From Fourteenth Street to the Bowery, Delmonico's to the underbelly of the city waterfront, Dos Passos chronicles the lives of characters struggling to become a part of modernity before they...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618381864
• ISBN13: 9780618381869
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Mariner Books Classics
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

"I dunno...pretty far."

The prose style presented in Manhattan Transfer is fresh and unorthodox, two characteristics that all great literature must contain.The narrator of the novel is an eavesdropper who chooses his subjects at will. You are able to spend three pages with a subject, then not hear from the subject until scores of pages later, if at all. Manhattan Transfer serves as a history book, but not the standard type. You actually get to feel, hear, taste and smell what it was like to be in NYC during the early half of the 20th century. Most history books cite landmark events, but Manhattan Transfer records the life of the people living rather than the events the people were involved in.John Dos Passos is one of the most overlooked, underappreciated American writers of the 20th century. I highly recommend this book to everyone. You must visit NYC to fully appreciate the book, though.

One of the best American books

This book is really one of the best American novels. Its style is unique. You will not "read" this book, but you are going tosmell New York, hear New York, see New York, walk around Manhattan on your own sore feet. It is also a fascinating work because different stories run in parallel in it. It may take you a while to find your way through the book, but then, it will give you a panoramic impression about NY at Dos Passos' time. This book is also a somewhat sceptical, even resigned or pessimistic book. Certainly, it reflects some of Dos Passos' own experiences, and life is not always happy-ended. Don't blame that on the book. This book is inimitable. Even Dos Passos himself did not succeed to create another work which is as uniform in style, compelling, impressive and impressionistic as this one. The USA trilogy is far more diconnected, harder to read, and the unique stlye of Manhattan Transfer turns into mere mannerism in the later trilogy. However, in "Manhattan Transfer", everything is perfectly at balance, the style fits the objective perfectly, and there is no arbitrariness. Be patient when reading this book. It does not "tell a story" in straightforward way, so the fun of reading this book is not following a well-knit plot, but the fun lies rather in the process of reading itself, enjoying the style, cherishing every single line. A must read.

A Milestone in American Fiction

The power of this book is only a fraction less than that of Dos Passos' USA Trilogy. Manhattan Transfer is a lesser-known epic, an intermingling of separate and not-so-separate lives during Jazz Age America. Different people weave in and out of each others' existences, and as readers, it is our job to travel vicariously with them. The end result, as with Dos Passos' other great works, is a massive, verbal slap in the face. We are faced with undying social issues, colossal questions, and the vague aching end-of-book feeling of How Could This Be the End. Because Dos Passos, with his perfect imagery and word usage, draws us into his books and brings so close to his characters that we feel we could reach out and touch them.Manhattan Transfer is a beautiful example of American Fiction, and John Dos Passos ought to make patriots proud and a little bit ashamed of ourselves. That, in my opinion, is the hallmark of a great nation-oriented writer.

A Masterpiece of the Jazz Age

It is tragic that he isn't more celebrated. This is one of the best books I have ever read, because it works on so many levels: it is a wonderful pot-pourri of character portraits, it's a revealing examination of sociological values at work, and it is a marvelous literary work of a million subtle influences in harmony. It is, in short, a reflection of the motion-pictures that made their appearance at the time, and beyond that, is ripe with biblical allusions wonderfully entwined with the storyline. Dos Passos requires the reader to work, and he should be given more credit for making us do so with so much satisfaction.

a gem of a novel on life in New York

Manhattan Transfer presents the good, the bad and the ugly side of life in New York. Money seems to be the driving force behind everybody's lives and love is hard to come by. However, even the failure to realise one's goals does not deter one from hanging on in New York, as Bud does. It is, after all, the 'center of things.' It is in the end Jimmy, who emerges as the man who dares to rebel aganst the 'getting and spending' life that the city promises. The various vignettes that Dos Passos offers somehow tie up, as they all have common concerns, concerns that centre around the great American Dream. What Dos Passos really wants to reveal is the hollowness of this dream.