Thursday, August 17, 2006

John Dos Passos





The top photo is a passport photo for John Dos Passos. Then a photo portrait from the 1920s.
In the winter photo from Vorarlberg, March, 1926, left to right: Frau Lent, Ernest Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Gerald Murphy.
The bottom photo is a book jacket of "Three Soldiers," a book published in 1921 about the First World War.
John Dos Passos was another American of "The Lost Generation." He was an ambulance driver in Italy like Hemingway in World War I. They actually met and chatted in the Piave campaign, but they didn't keep in touch.
He spent time in Paris where he met Hemingway again and the other American expat writers and artists. He was always travelling, looking for adventurous situations to observe and write about. He is believed to be "the pilot fish" that hemingway mentions in "A Moveable Feast." The person that showed up before "the rich" came & spoiled a relatively unknown place. Dos Passos was a pilot fish for the Murphys.
He is said to have travelled more to seek out adventure in conflicts and in social situations than even Hemingway. He wrote 42 books and was quite a painter with over 400 works of art to his credit.
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3 comments:

Carlos said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Carlos said...

Hi Paul,
Finally back after a 2 week vacations. I'm glad you have new content.
I didn't know about John Dos Passos until my friend Stewart's post in Lisbon Looks.
And did you know that he was of Portuguese descent (from Madeira)?

Regards

Icarus said...

I don't like the word 'hero', or the concept as it peddled & cheapened, like so much else at the end of a marketing/mass media process.
But I HAD TO name one, JDP would be up there, ahead of H. And not on literary/artistic merit, as that doesn't make a hero.In that department, both were undoubtedly great.