Author: Re Passos

1Three Soldiers

By John Dos Passos

Three Soldiers is a 1920 novel by the American writer and critic John Dos Passos. It is one of the key American war novels of the First World War, and remains a classic of the realist war novel genre. H.L. Mencken, then practicing primarily as an American literary critic, praised the book in the pages of the Smart Set. "Until Three Soldiers is forgotten and fancy achieves its inevitable victory over fact, no war story can be written in the United States without challenging comparison with it--and no story that is less meticulously true will stand up to it. At one blast it disposed of oceans of romance and blather. It changed the whole tone of American opinion about the war; it even changed the recollections of actual veterans of the war. They saw, no doubt, substantially what Dos Passos saw, but it took his bold realism to disentangle their recollections from the prevailing buncombe and sentimentality." (Summary from Wikipedia)

2Eight Harvard Poets

By E. E. Cummings, S. Foster Damon, Robert Hillyer, R. S. Mitchell, William A. Norris, John Dos Passos, Dudley Poore and Cuthbert Wright

<I>"I will wade out<BR> till my thighs are steeped in burn-<BR> ing flowers<BR> I will take the sun in my mouth<BR> and leap into the ripe air<BR> Alive<BR> with closed eyes<BR> to dash against darkness<BR> in the sleeping curves of my<BR> body<BR> Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery<BR> with chasteness of sea-girls<BR> Will I complete the mystery<BR> of my flesh<BR> I will rise<BR> After a thousand years<BR> lipping<BR> flowers<BR> And set my teeth in the silver of the moon."<BR></I> -- E. Estlin Cummings in Crepuscule<BR><BR> Eight Harvard Poets is a anthology of poetry by E. Estlin Cummings, S. Foster Damon, J. R. Dos Passos, Robert Hillyer, R. S. Mitchell, William A. Norris, Dudley Poole, and Cuthbert Wright. These older poems remain inspiring and timeless. (Summary by Woolly Bee and Wikipedia)

3Manhattan Transfer

By John Dos Passos

Manhattan Transfer is novel that follows several individuals and their overlapping stories in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age. The narrative jumps from one vignette to the next with little warning, adding to the impression of a Manhattan teeming with energy and restlessness. The book attacks the consumerism, mercilessness, and social indifference of contemporary urban life. (Summary by TriciaG, with help from Wikipedia)

4One Man's Initiation--1917

By John Dos Passos

In this semi-autobiographical work, his first novel, John Dos Passos describes the experiences of young Martin Howe as an ambulance driver, on the French front, during the First World War. - Summary by Mark Leder