Before even starting my trek through Dos Passos’ tour de force, I was faced with the lack of understanding as to what the story was about. I tried using my google skills to bring something up, but nowhere, not Wikipedia nor Sparknotes had anything more than the title itself. It struck me, while reading the book into the wee hours, that this book was strikingly similar to Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider” and the American “road film.”
It’s easy to see the connections between the representation of the Wobblies in 42nd Parallel and the counterculture leads in “Easy Rider.” While not necessarily of the same viewpoints, the concept of the groups is the same. Both the Wobblies and the motorcyclists go against the established norm. Dos Passos’ novel and Hopper’s film also go against the norm of their mediums.
The American road film’s plot usually revolves on just that, the road, and nothing more. The characters are the important piece of the story, and the development along the way is what matters. Dos Passos’ book is a bit more focused than a road film, however, it comes decades earlier. If Dos Passos had hit his literary peak during the 70’s then there is no telling what would have been written.
I would like to focus, for a moment, on the series of progression for our lead in 42nd, Fainey. Fainey’s story begins with an almost immediate upheaval. Dos Passos hardly gives the reader time to take in the setting before it is wholly revoked and then renewed elsewhere. This dynamic is clever and possibly reflective of a greater concept of America. It is no coincidence that Dos Passos includes a prologue before his trilogy rambling on about what the USA is. Dos Passos was setting up his true setting, and thus every movement made by Mac, every travel Fainey takes, is part of being an American. Yes, even when he lives in Canada, Mac (Fainey, whatever you will) is experiencing the USA.
Dos Passos puts forth that although, “USA is the slice of a continent,” it applies to a much wider area indeed. USA is “the speech of the people,” for Dos Passos. And for Dos Passos that speech extends beyond mere borders, states, countries. That speech applies to all Americans and all people. For all people who come to the USA could find themselves being American.
Dos Passos reflects this open-ended thinking with the structure of the book itself. Using the freedom found in burgeoning art forms, Dos Passos successfully puts a modern twist to an ancient medium. Dos Passos has the freedom to create with his book, and he does so with all the newsreels, camera eyes, and separate characters within the novel that don’t always get a second glance. “Easy Rider” finds the two hippies moving on with their travels from town to town and leaving behind countless memorable characters. I think 42nd parallel presents Americans with one of their first real “road movies” in the form of a new-age modernist novel. 42nd Parallel is about freedom, both within the novel and with breaking conventions. Dennis Hopper asks, “What the hell is wrong with freedom? That’s what it’s all about,” and I think he surmised Dos Passos’ mentality well.
I think the most interesting thing about this post is not the connection of Easy Rider to Dos Passos’s book, but the broader relationship that both have to the genre of the “road movie” or “road novel.” Here’s a brief synopsis:
“The road novel is the automotive version of the journey narrative, borrowing elements from its two major variants: the romance or noble quest and the picaresque with its chance encounters and roguish characters. American automobilists recall pioneer figures like Leatherstocking and Huck Finn who seek to escape civilization by “lighting out for the Territory”; they also follow in the footsteps of the peripatetic speaker in Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” who finds freedom, companionship, and insight on the highway. Sinclair Lewis’s Free Air ( 1919 ), the first road novel, draws on these traditions in establishing the defining theme of the genre: the technologized escape from the constraints of civilization to the freedom of the open road. This flight is also the central paradox of the genre since drivers, in their dependence on automotive technology, bring with them the civilization they flee. The road novel became a popular genre in the 1950s, when growing affluence made it possible for the majority of Americans to own automobiles and President Eisenhower backed the largest freewaybuilding project in history. The most famous example is Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957), which adapts Huck’s “lighting out” to the Beat philosophy of “dropping out.”
Mac’s story does sort of function as an embedded road novel/story, as does Charley Anderson’s at the novel’s end. In both of these instances, we see the classic story of growth and travel subverted (perhaps this happens in easy rider as well) as the emphasis seems to be less on motivated, meaningful movement, and something more like a wandering in a capitalist wasteland where rapid movement limits the ability of anything–ideas, relationships, etc.–to really sink in. I think to better understand the connection you draw between the novel and film, we’d have to understand how they both cast the “hero’s journey” in a specific modernist / post-modernist light.