Born in Chicago, the grandson of a Portuguese immigrant he was educated at Choate and Harvard. Intending to study Architecture in Spain, he was caught up in World War I, first serving with French and subsequently in the US medical corps.
His war time experience gave him the inspiration for his first two novels: One Man’s Initiation (1920) and Three Soldiers (1921) the latter his first success.
He then abandoned the topic of war and wrote two novels about New York: Streets of Night (1923) and Manhattan Transfer (1925).
In Manhattan Transfer (1925) Dos Passos first attempted a panoramic rendering of social life and problems by depicting a large number of unrelated New York characters in numerous episodes.
This approach was fully developed in his major work, the trilogy U.S.A (collected 1938) which consists of 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936).
During the 1930s he became increasingly political, writing attract against the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial on 1927 in Facing the Chair (1927).
He wrote several plays with an acute political consciousness, some of which are in Three Plays (1934).
Dos Passos’s work after U.S.A became increasingly conservative. A second trilogy, District of Columbia (collected 1952), is concerned with political disillusionment, and conservation of his essays, The Theme is Freedom (1956), and his historical writings Men Who Made the Nation (1957), is even more pronounced.
Travel writing of Dos Passos appeared in Orient Express (1927) and In All Countries (1934) and selection of letters and diaries has been published as The Fourteenth Chronicle (1973).
Mr. Wilson’s War (1963), he returned, but with a thoroughly conservative point of view, to the era covered in U.S.A. Dos Passos’s plays, The Garbage Man (1926), Airways, Inc (1929), and Fortune Heights (1933), were collected in Three Plays (1934).
The Best Times (1966) his last book, was a reminiscence of his youth. Dos Passos died in Baltimore in September 28, 1970.
Dos Passos, John Roderigo (1896-1970) US novelist, playwright and journalist
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