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One Man's Initiation-1917 "the greatest writer of our time" Jean-Paul Sartre John Dos Passos' first novel, a barely disguised autobiography of his withering experiences in France in 1917, was written from diaries he kept when a volunteer in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, the Red Cross and finally the American Army. A series of sharp, vivid, disconnected impressions written with beautiful, powerful simplicity, conveying the urgency and immediacy of a flowing stream of events. Powerful descriptions of suffering, broken bodies squalor and disintegration are juxtaposed with extraordinarily acute descriptions of beauty. It was published in 1920 by Allen & Unwin with Dos Passos contributing to publication costs. In the first six months it sold only 63 copies. Were it not for the success of his next novel Three Soldiers it may never have been republished.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
John Roderigo Dos Passos (1896 - 1970) was an American novelist and artist active in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He was well-traveled, visiting Europe and the Middle East, where he learned about literature, art and architecture. During World War I, he was a member of the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in Paris and in Italy, later joining the U.S. Army Medical Corps. In 1920 Dos Passos' first novel, One Man's Initiation: 1917 was published and in 1925 his novel, Manhattan Transfer, became a commercial success. In 1928, he went to the Soviet Union to study socialism and later became a leading participant in the 1935 First American Writers Congress sponsored by the communist-leaning League of American Writers. He was in Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, when the murder of his friend José Robles soured his attitude toward communism and led to severing his relationship with fellow writer Ernest Hemingway.
