Transfer Points: Artistic Intersections and Cultural

Transitions in John Dos Passos’s Fiction of the 1920s

Abstract

John Dos Passos conveyed multiple intersections of art and culture and the spirit of the
1920s in his prose. His novel Manhattan Transfer is characterized by intermediality: a
combination of theatre, film, and visual art. With this novel, Dos Passos became a
chronicler of American life. A passionate critique of modern society runs through
Manhattan Transfer. The city is presented in this novel as a site of cultural intersections
and transition and this focus is matched by the fragmentary qualities of the text. From his
war novel Three Soldiers through his city novel Manhattan Transfer, Dos Passos places his
readers in the swirl of the human currents of his time and argues for the human spirit
against the forces of a mechanistic world that would crush them. The harshness of the
vibrant city is illustrated through the strivings and affairs of these immigrants, Broadway
stage performers, journalists, and business aspirants. The relationships between Dos
Passos’ experimental fiction and modern art and film are explored, along with the cultural
transition of the American 1920s.