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January 04, 2009
Writing That Hits Home: U.S.A. by John Dos Passos
I read the U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos over 25 years ago. The trilogy's introduction hit me like an anvil dropped on my head. It still does, although I'm no longer 25 years old and living the freelance writer life in a tin-roofed top-floor studio apartment in Brooklyn:
The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough. At night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself alone.No job, no woman, no house, no city.
Van | 01/04/09 at 04:20 PM | Categories: Life and how to live it
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