Manhattan Transfer

"Opportunity knocks but once at a young man's door."

What a pessimistic quote, you would say. And you would be right 'cause I just past three horrible weeks reading Manhattan Transfer, a novel by the famous American writer John Dos Passos. I thought I have to write something down to get it set up in my mind, because my student life is so awful right now, I can't even think fully and wholly of one goddamn subject without immediately thinking of something else. And this book doesn't help me to get my mind fixed up! Oh no!

Completely glaucous, the book tries to embody to much things at the same time with an experimental genre where Dos Passos uses a narrative collage technique. My university teacher says it is inspire by cubism. I thought cubism was much more profound then that... In literature, it seems that all perspectives are mixed up, sometimes carefully too much exaggerated and others, not enough as it should be.

The novel, published in 1925, focuses on the life in New York city between an age of prosperity (the Gilded Age) and one of economic decadence after the WWI (the Jazz Age). There's many characters, many plots, a succession of events, and sometimes simultaneously. The problem with that nonlinear narrative is that if you love, as a reader, to associate with one character, it's quite impossible. I just almost succeed to love two of them, which are Ellen and Jimmy. And you will have to read the book to understand why I didn't succeed to be totally fond of them 'cause I don't want to give away to much punches.

When we first met Ellen, she's a little baby. Even if her mother is crazy, her father is a successful businessman who takes care of them. What is truly amazing about her is her ability, as a young woman, to define herself by her art (she's an actress) and not through out the eyes of men.
Jimmy is completely is opposite, I think. Fatherless, his mother dies of a stroke when he is an adolescent. He's raised by his aunt and uncle, but he rebels against the system of financial success in place and turns to journalism to denounce capitalism. He's completely in love with Ellen, but like none of us he can't compete with a "perfect" dead lover.

In the major themes addressed, you have all sense the one of the mean American capitalism. John Dos Passos, in 1925, was a fervent leftist. However, like all (or almost) any human being who becomes successful, he completely changed his rifle edge in his last years. Well, here is some quotes I thought that were really beautiful about his view of the American society at this time:

"But I don't think a flourishing businessman is the highest ideal of human endeavor."

"The more educated a feller is the more use he is to his class." 

"Well perhaps you can tell me why in this country nobody ever does anything. Nobody ever writes any music or starts any revolutions or falls in love. All anybody ever does is to get drunk and tell smutty stories. I think it's disgusting. . . ."

Most of the characters presents in the interminable list of this book have also another goal than financial success, which is to be love and love in return. My favorite part of the book is when Jimmy encounters a guy named Bullock. They are walking outside, both drunk, when Bullock says to Jimmy how badly he wants to die 'cause he can't like women. Jimmy will clear the subject, obviously uncomfortable, by giving him the advice to go to a psychoanalyst. This part touches me by the way it embodies, in 1925 (don't we dare forget it) the horrible situation in which LGBT peoples cannot named themselves and were considered mentally ill. 

So, that was a dreadful everlasting novel, but how inspiring it is, now that I took the time to set it straight up in my mind. I will let you with another quote:

"There are lives to be lived if only you didn't care. Care for what, for what; the opinion of mankind, money, success, hotel lobbies, health, umbrellas, Uneeda biscuits . . . ? It's like a busted mechanical toy the way my mind goes brrr all the time."

Food for thought, uh? What are you caring about that is not as important as you sometimes think it is?