In responding to the toast, "The Twentieth Century," Senator Albert J. Beveridge said in part: The twentieth century will be American. American thought will dominate it. American progress will give it color and direction. American deeds will make it illustrious.
The trilogy of novels which comprise U.S.A. do, in fact, tell a fictional narrative with fictional characters interacting in fictional settings. But that is less than half the story. What makes the novel such a landmark in American history is not the story line so much as the structure and experimental aspects. This is one of those examples. Beveridge is an actual historical personage and over the course of the hundreds of pages to follow his name is mentioned less than half a dozen times. This particular passage is found in the very first “Newsreel” section of the novel. Many will follow and to the reader unfamiliar with what newsreels were in the history of cinema, the technique is kind of difficult to describe. Suffice to say these snapshots of American history provide a layer of meaning and context to the overall narrative, but not in a way that would be considered direct commentary upon the immediate action.
the little girl in pink is a classical dancer with panpipes but the henriahaired ladyphotographer dances the Song of Songs in rhythms with winking bellybutton and clash of breastplates in more oriental style
Another experimental technique are a series of sections lable “The Camera Eye.” This quote is a typical example of how these sections are differentiated from all others. The form is freestyle, stream-of-consciousness that attempts to capture the essence of a thought in action. The lack of conventional word spacing and punctuation is an exercise in impressionism using words rather images. The eye of this camera belongs to an unidentified entity who grows into adolescence while providing a subjective portrait of American history through person recollections that take the shape of the subconscious in action.
LOVER OF MANKIND
Debs was a railroad man, born in a weatherboarded shack at Terre Haute.
He was one of ten children.
His father had come to America in a sailingship in '49
Also scattered throughout the trilogy are mini-biographical sketches of various figures from American history. Some of them are well-known—like J.P. Morgan. Others should be more famous—like Thorstein Veblen. “The Lover of Mankind” fits somewhere in the middle; not exactly obscure, but not nearly as prominent in American history textbooks as he should. Eugene V. Debs actually was a Socialist rather than conveniently being mislabeled as such and he did much to help the working man. Nevertheless, he is probably most famous today for drawing nearly a million votes in the 1920 Presidential election despite not just being a Socialist, but being in prison at the time.
J. WARD MOOREHOUSE
He was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on the Fourth of July. Poor Mrs. Moorehouse could hear the firecrackers popping and crackling outside the hospital all through her labor pains.
Things can at first get a little confusing for readers since the author’s introduction of his fictional character is not completely removed from the mini-biographies. This confusion should not be long-lasting, however, since the divergence will quickly become apparent. The sections on real life figures are more composed with a bit for flair; they are more experimental in construction. The straightforward narrative sections which form the fictional story line are by contrast the least challenging writing in the novel, relying almost exclusively on simple declarative prose, proper use of punctuation and a more tightly controlled discipline relative to metaphor and imagery. J. Ward Moorehouse is the central characters of the trilogy.
