John dos Passos

John Dos Passos (1896-1970) is an American novelist. He was born into a wealthy family of lawyers in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard University in 1916, went to Spain to study architecture, and soon participated in the First World War. He served in the French field medical team and then the American medical team. "Three Soldiers" (1921), written based on personal experience, is his first influential novel and the first work to reflect the war-weariness and confusion of the young American generation. "Manhattan Transit Station", published in 1925, is set in New York society before and after the war. It features journalists, lawyers, actors, sailors, union cadres and other characters. They are all frustrated people in capitalist society, living a miserable life and feeling empty.

Although Dos Passos reflected the confusion of the post-war generation in his works, his thoughts were not negative. At that time, he was very dissatisfied with capitalist society and claimed to have "given up hope for it" and "yearned for revolution." In 1926, he joined the editorial board of "New Mass" magazine. As a supporter of the Communist Party of the United States, he covered the strike struggle and wrote for Communist Party publications. In 1927, he was arrested and imprisoned for participating in the rescue of Saco and Fancetti. In 1932, he supported the Communist Party's presidential candidate but did not join the Communist Party.

Dos Passos's masterpiece is the "America" trilogy, including "Forty-Two Degrees North Latitude" (1930), "1919" (1932) and "Making Big Money" (1936). This work is on a grand scale, from the beginning of the century until the outbreak of the economic crisis in 1929. It describes 12 characters. Their stories are self-contained and occasionally connected in plot.

After the mid-1930s, Dos Passos began to disagree with the American Communist Party and the progressive camp in his political views. These differences deepened after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Most of his later works promoted bourgeois democracy and freedom, and criticized the United States, Republic and Communist Party of the Soviet Union.