The 42nd Parallel

On the heels of reading, "Bound for Glory" John Dos Passos' novel "42nd Parallel comes off as a bit stale, and left me feeling a bit like I was studying up on the labor movement and jumping trains. This might be one area where memoir--handled deftly-- has an edge over fiction. Because Woody took himself for granted he spent more time thinking about the people/characters he encountered and they seemed more provocative. Dos Passos writes in a removed 3rd person about 5 or 6 main characters but the people they encounter are unimpressive. When D.P. is the story of one of his main characters the book moves along well and interestingly. When he is writing a "Newsreel" or "Camera Eye" They drag and for me ultimately seem unimportant.
"The 42nd Parallel" is the first book in a trilogy encapsulating the rise of market capitalism over the turn of the last century and ending in the great fall of the 1927 crash and entrance into the great depression. It is a topic I am interested in, and Dos Passos has a populist viewpoint, but I am not sure if I will run out and buy books two and three. I think ultimately his detachment from his characters left me feeling alienated from them.
The second novel I read this week, the short novel, "The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Leo Tolstoy does not suffer from authorial detachment. In fact Tolstoy takes you right to the center of his protagonists head and heart as he suffers a mysterious ailment that accompanies him down the road to death.
I read this novella in high school and I think again in college, and the scene that had stayed with me was how he at one point rolled over faced the wall in a gesture of giving up hope. I thought of him twenty or thirty times this summer as I rolled over myself. I had thought that gesture was his final one but really it was a middle gesture from which their was no actual hope of recovery.
Not knowing any other languages and being unable unable really to master my own, I am leery of translation. Especially of Russian translations of the Great Masters. I have no way of measuring how much they add or subtract from the texts in front of me and so I feel kind of like a November voter, "I am predisposed to like this guy. But what the hell do I know about it." That not-withstanding I was impressed by Tolstoy's ability to negotiate multiple viewpoints or perspectives in a line or two.