John Dos Passos

John Dos Passos was once mentioned in the same sentences as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Just before I was arrested I started reading his USA Trilogy. I was starting to again get interested in books and writing. My copy disappeared after my arrest and I was never able to get a copy in prison through the interlibrary loan program. When the college courses began and there was a creative writing class offered one of the teachers was able to get me some excerpts. I remain perplexed by the book.

I found Dos Passos on The Paris Review site after my release from prison. The following bits hit home regarding my own writing but may be they will interest you, too.

INTERVIEWER

Have you become the social historian at the expense of the artist?

DOS PASSOS

There’s just no way that I can tell. I have to do what I’m interested in at the time, and I don’t think there’s anything necessarily inartistic about being the historian. I have great admiration for good history. All of my work has some certain historical connotation. Take Three Soldiers. I was trying to record something that was going on. I always felt that it might not be any good as a novel, but that it would at least be useful to add to the record. I had that idea when I began writing—with One Man’s Initiation—and I’ve had it right along.