USA by John Dos Passos
This reminded me frequently of how much I hated the Studs Lonigan trilogy. Like Studs, USA was far too long and the characters seemed far too uninvolved with their own lives. Unlike in Studs Lonigan, there were different main characters and they weren’t all hateful.
USA was broken into many chapters of four different types:
Narrative chapters focusing on a specific character who would appear again (though how soon and how often seemed random).
Chapters about a real person that summarized, in somewhat poetical form, that person’s life.
Camera Eye – a first person, punctuationless, disjointed narrative that often couldn’t be followed and that didn’t continue from one segment to the next.
Newsreel – fragments of news reports from the time period jumbled together and incomplete.
Needless to say, it was hard to follow in spots.
For whatever reason, Dos Passos focused on fewer characters for longer in each subsequent book of the trilogy. I therefore enjoyed the third part much more than the first.
One thing I can say about all the historical reading I’ve done recently is that, as badly as our liberties may be being infringed upon under the current administration, it’s nothing compared to how things were at the turn of the century. Freedom of speech? Bah. Nothing like. You wanted to speak against the establishment you could expect to be beaten and jailed. And working conditions and life for the poor were miserable and not many people cared. The country has made progress for all that it will never be perfect.