Manhattan Transfer

Dos Passos, John

ISBN 10 : 0141184485 ISBN 13 : 9780141184487

Editeur : Penguin Classics, 2000

Synopsis

A modernist masterwork that has more in common with films than traditional novels, John Dos Passos' "Manhattan Transfer" includes an introduction by Jay McInerney in "Penguin Modern Classics". A colourful, multi-faceted chronicle of New York in the early 1920s, "Manhattan Transfer" ranks with James Joyce's "Ulysses" as a powerful and often lyrical meditation on the modern city. Using experimental montage techniques borrowed from the cinema, vivid descriptions and bursts of overheard conversation, and the jumbled case histories of a picaresque cast of characters from dockside crapshooters to high-society flappers, Dos Passos constructs a brilliant impressionistic portrait of New York City as a great futuristic machine filled with motion, drama and human tragedy. John Dos Passos (1896-1970) was born in Chicago, the son of an eminent lawyer. After graduating from Harvard he served in the US Army Medical Corps during the First World War, and dabbled in journalism before embarking on life as a writer. In 1925 he published "Manhattan Transfer", his first experimental novel in what was to become his peculiar style - a mixture of fact and fiction.His began a series of panoramic epics of American life with the "USA" trilogy, using the same technique and tracing, through interwoven biographies, the story of America from the early twentieth century to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. If you enjoyed "Manhattan Transfer", you might like Dos Passos' "U.S.A.", also available in "Penguin Modern Classics". "A modernist masterpiece, capturing ...the fragmented lives it sketches, in a dazzling kaleidoscope of New York City in the 1920s". (Christopher Hudson, "Evening Standard"). "Dos Passos has invented only one thing, an art of story-telling. But that is enough to create a universe". (Jean-Paul Sartre). "The best modern book about New York". (D.H. Lawrence).

A propos du livre

Quatrième de couverture :

«Ils durent changer de train à Manhattan Transfer. Ellen avait un gant neuf, en chevreau, dont le pouce avait craqué, et elle ne cessait de le frotter nerveusement avec l'index. John portait un imperméable à martingale et un chapeau mou gris rosâtre. Quand il se tourna vers elle, en souriant, elle ne put s'empêcher de détourner les yeux et de fixer la pluie qui miroitait sur les rails.- Voilà, chère Elaine. Oh, fille de prince, voyez, nous prenons le train qui vient de la gare de Penn... C'est drôle d'attendre ainsi dans la brousse de New Jersey.»

Biographie de l'auteur :

Né en 1896, à Chicago, John Dos Passos y commença ses études qu'il poursuivit tant aux États-Unis qu'à l'étranger et termina à l'Université de Harvard, en 1917, avec «mention honorable». En 1926, avec Manhattan Transfer, Dos Passos atteint à la maturité tant au point de vue de la technique littéraire qu'en ce qui concerne sa conception du monde. Il est mort à Baltimore en 1970.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Penguin Classics
• Date d'édition: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0141184485
• ISBN 13: 9780141184487
• Reliure: Livre broché
• Nombre de pages: 368