When it comes to “The Great American Novel” there are perhaps only three serious considerations among those works of literature already vying for the title: Moby-Dick, The Grapes of Wrath, and U.S.A. The problem with Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is that while superior to U.S.A. in in nearly every other way, it is, alas, not a distinctly “American” “novel. Thus, in a strange paradox Moby-Dick may be a more substantive contender for the title of greatest novel ever written, but must inevitably be placed behind the trilogy which constitutes U.S.A. written by John Dos Passos. (That this technically disqualifies it because it is actually not a single book is easily dismissed with the use of four simple words for the sake of mainstream comparison: Lord of the Rings.)
The facts are these: U.S.A. tells a much greater story than that of the Gatsby guy. Ernest Hemingway is to John Dos Passos what a television advertising copywriter is to Billy Wilder. Faulkner is just too difficult for too many people. Which leaves just Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath. Which is at it should be. What Moby-Dick, The Grapes of Wrath, and U.S.A. all have in common (aside from literary quality) is a complexity of structure that moves their narrative tales beyond the construct of fiction and into the real world. Versions of Moby-Dick exist which excise all the non-narrative chapters about whaling which only serves to raise the question: what’s the point? One might as well remove the “The Camera Eye” and “Newsreel” sections from U.S.A. or purely symbolic chapters of The Grapes of Wrath. It is precisely this movement beyond the simple craft of storytelling which makes Fitzgerald and Hemingway superfluous in the conversation.
Unfortunately for Steinbeck—whom it must also be admitted is technically a superior storyteller to Dos Passos—also must be removed from consideration because while The Grapes of Wrath is distinctly “American” it is also distinctly “regional.” Or, at least, limited in scope. It tells a particular story about a particular America at a particular time, but falls well short of the immense panoramic scope which Dos Passos takes on.
While it is true that the narrative of U.S.A. is primarily about the America following World War I, the driving thematic engine humming beneath is one that suggests it was that event which ended the hopes forever of what America might be. Thus, the story of American following that war is by definition also a story of the America that existed before. Had Dos Passos been content merely to tell a fiction that commented upon and analyzed this, he would not have needed a trilogy. At most a sequel, perhaps, but more likely it could have been easily contained in one long, but still hardly massive tome.
The passion of Dos Passos for what he viewed as a dream deferred perhaps forever was too large for such constriction and containment. Just as whaling in Moby-Dick is not just about whaling and just as the story of the Joads are not just about the Joads, the story of U.S.A. is not just about a hero of the working class named Mac, a hollow man in a gray flannel suit named Moorehouse, shallow artistic sellout named Eleanor, and poor Dick Savage, the iconic example of juicy prey for the voracious eater of souls called capitalism. U.S.A. engages historical figures and the techniques of pop culture pastiche (in this sense its influence far outweighs its current fame) to tell not just the story of America as it stood on the precipice of becoming the dominant superpower in the world, but also the tragic story of how it got there by sacrificing all its potential for being something much better that it became.
