The 42nd Parallel
New York: Harper and Brothers, 1930. First Edition. The first novel of the U.S.A. Trilogy, 8vo, pp. 426. Original handmade paper covered boards in orange, gold and blue, backed in burgundy cloth with a printed spine label, outer page edges uncut, orange endpapers, some light soiling and rubbing to the extremities, near fine in an unrestored dust jacket with toning and wear to the extremities, very good. Item #1392
The opening volume of what some consider the greatest American novel of the twentieth century, The 42nd Parallel introduces the formal innovations that make the U.S.A. Trilogy one of the most ambitious structural experiments in the history of the novel: the Newsreel, assembling fragments of newspaper headlines and popular song to evoke the texture of public life; the Camera Eye, a stream of consciousness autobiography; and the biographical sketches of real historical figures interwoven with fictional narratives. Dos Passos was a committed leftist writing at the moment American capitalism was about to collapse, and the novel's sprawling cast of working class characters traces the human cost of a system built on the exploitation of labor. You should read this because Dos Passos invented a new way for the novel to tell the truth about how society actually works, and it has never been done better.
Price: $750.00