How can be explained the complicated and fascinating relationship between the city and the narrator in all major Modernist works whose theme is urbanity? Think of James Joyce’s Dublin, dull and suffocating, with its Evelyns forever clued on the shore they dare not leave. Think of Henry Miller’s Paris, with its siren song that entangles the artists to better devour them. Think of Virginia Woolf’s London, collecting thoughts and fates in the glimpse of a park, the rush of a street, the passing of a tram. Think of John Dos Passos’s New York glowing with promises that it never keeps.For every one of them and many others, the City is much more than a place, a conventional setting for the narrative, it is truly and fully a character, maybe the most important of all, for it determines the fate of the other characters, making them dependent, helpless, tragic. Furthermore, it has a second role, no less important: to embody History, merciless History that feeds on people and events to show that only the masks change, the stage and the plot remain the same. That there is no real progress, no real escape for the fly under the bell jar, only an incessant return to origins, a despondent circle motion where Dublin is forever full of minor epiphanies, London is haunted by suicide thoughts, Paris is incurably diseased and New York is a Hotel California. However, where Henry Miller used the full stream of consciousness, Virginia Woolf combined it with free indirect speech and Joyce with interior monologue and objective speech, Dos Passos chooses the collage technique with a subtle care for symmetry and a flagrant indifference for timeline. The cinematic quality of his narrative was often pointed out, for it is made of apparently chaotically arranged snapshots and vignettes, with interchangeable or mirrored characters that create a collective hero even when they seem to focus on a single character. I often, during my lecture, felt like looking at a huge fresco swept by a restless spotlight whose conic light temporarily captures a destiny, then leaves it, takes another, to resume with the first choice at another point in time. Some characters, like Helen are spotted since birth, or, like Bud, for a shorter period, while others are only shadows without names, only a color, a smile, a dress that leaves however a lasting impression on mind even though they are not followed. The narrative is thus full of red herrings that appear to contradict Chekov’s gun principle – until the reader realizes that this is the point, really, to show the unity in diversity, the tragic condition of humankind, be them rich or poor (Stan and Bud), successful or failures (James and Joe), educated or ignorant (Jimmy and Jake). Actors on a grim stage (all of them, not only Helen), their individual destiny may fleetingly interest some gossip column of a newspaper, but it is not important per se, a mere drop in the whirlpool of history. Some read Manhattan Transfer as a fervent critique of the American capitalism, for it is known that, at the time of its creation, Doss Passos was a leftist. Maybe the novel can be interpreted like this also, but it is neither tendentious nor “engagé”. The capitalism is only another way of destruction of the humankind, together with war, time and personal emotions. Above suicides, lost loves, lost jobs, minor thefts and big larcenies, strikes, war, prohibition, the city blankly contemplates the struggle of generations, knowing so well that no one can truly leave. The last image of the novel, with Jimmy Herf, apparently free of love and society, keen to go “pretty far” is maybe the most tragic of all, for what is the river he travelled down by ferry but Styx?
I’m going to pull a GJ (Ginnie Jones) here and state: ”Manhattan Transfer is a kaleidoscopic portrait of New York City in the first two decades of the 20th century that follows the changing fortunes of more than a dozen characters as they strive to make sense out of the chaos of modern urban existence.”Yeah, so that’s really what you need to know if you, you know, want the breakdown. Of course, I need to add my own two cents. ( Of course)Reading this was an act of love. My husband has tried for almost 20 years to get me to read Dos Passos. I usually give it a few pages and then find some excuse (The library asked for it back, I left it on the bus, I’m menstrual…) to drop it and hope that he’d forget… but yeah…he’s stubborn. I’ve tried The USA Trilogy and those Camera Eyes just got to be too much. Dos Passos is often associated with Joyce and some other writers that I’ve never really had much interest in and it’s always sort of daunted me.. made me feel stupid. I began to resent him just for this reason. So, I picked up Manhattan Transfer with great reluctance. I counted the pages. I did status updates… I soldiered on. Did I hate it? Not really. Would I consider reading more? Not really. I’m extremely lukewarm here. First of all, ‘more than a dozen characters’ may sound like an okay thing, but try following plot lines for more (and I stress this) than 12 personalities. Not so easy. It’s like sitting on a park bench at a playground and making up stories for each person there and then going back in two weeks and trying to remember each scenario and continue on… You may only follow them around for a page or two because they, you know, die or disappear (Where’d you go, Emile?) or they may be absent for like oh… 100 pages and you’ve ‘met’ so many new people in between that only the name sounds familiar and you’re either too exhausted to recall or you don’t care enough anyway… Which… I suppose… isn’t all that unlike living in a city… trying to remember who that person who is smiling at you in the corner market and do you really know them or is it someone that you might have seen at a friend’s apartment and it turns out that they’re actually your neighbor down the hall… Yeah, not unlike that. So, I guess I’d have to say that the main character here IS the city… and how each character deals with it and how their ‘luck’ determines their ‘lot’ in life. This is when unions were being formed and the market was young. This is WWI with a big chunk of immigration. This is not the New York City that I knew… so, again… I wasn’t all that invested in the book. I enjoyed reading each character’s story but I wasn’t attached to any of them (including NYC) and I found that I had to muddle through and fight back some yawns. It took a good third of the book before I found a groove and could resist putting it down. I also felt that none of the characters were particularly fond of New York either and I had to laugh at this phrase: The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there’s nowhere else to go. It’s the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.Indeed. So… I guess I could use the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ excuse… but I’m not so sure. I feel like I shouldn’t really discount myself on this one. Sometimes I just need more to work with. And it's really about 2.8 stars... because it was more than OK, but I didn't like it...
What do You think about Manhattan Transfer (2003)?
Avendo avuto la fortuna di visitare New York, percepisco alla perfezione come ogni pagina di questo libro riveli ancor oggi gli “splendori e miserie” di una città così multiforme e straordinaria che non si può non idolatrare, ma nemmeno non rimanerne inorriditi. Parole che si fanno odori, calore, luce, vetro, rumori…, trascinando con sé le esistenze umane più disparate, accomunate dall’accalcarsi febbrile nella “città che sale” (per dirla con Boccioni).New York è l’inferno e il paradiso, è la terra promessa e l’infrangersi dell’ultima speranza, è madre e amante. E Manhattan, il suo cuore steampunk, ogni giorno e ogni notte pulsa all’unisono della vita e della morte, dell’amore e dell’odio di tutti i suoi concittadini, di tutti i suoi devoti.Tutto questo vale tanto oggi quanto un secolo fa, e Dos Passos sa graffiarne un’immagine perfetta, affascinante e terribile.
—Francesca
It is amazing how so many different voices are followed, threaded together through the narrative, to tell a story about what it was to be a person alive at that time and at that place as opposed to just the story of a single person or even any of the particular characters. There are so many hops and jumps it can be a bit difficult to remember who is who and when, especially since characters can change sometimes fairly drastically between their portions, but overall the effect is well handled. I do have to say that some of the dialects seem a bit hokey, but maybe that was just the best way to represent how they sound.
—David
Here's someone I wanted to read for ages and finally got around to--happy that I did. Dos Passos falls into the semi-classic lefty bind of making what he's ostensibly critiquing also seem awesome: his descriptions of the interiors of the wealthy make them seem amazing, even with the smart set throwing up in wastepaper baskets in the midst of these interiors. The novel sort of makes you spit out cliches in describing it, as it is in fact big, sprawling, Joycean, less about characters than about the setting, New York drunk, etc. etc. Let a thousand vaguely Benjaminian papers be born!
—Michael Meeuwis
