About this title: Dos Passos makes use of vignettes and complex impressionistic episodes to trace the desperate lives of a dozen or more New Yorkers in the 1920s. This is the first of his novels in which he makes a radical stylistic statement as well as a political-social one. MANHATTAN TRANSFER is also a profoundly perceptive portrait of the teeming metropolis in all its complexity.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Edition: No Edition Stated
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam, New York
Date Published: 1959
Description: Fair. No Jacket. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Tears and wear to jacket. Covers feel a little brittle. Solid reading copy with clean pages. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Bantam; Transworld
Date Published: 1959
Description: Fair. No dust jacket. Front cover was bent but book is totally intact. Pages are dirty on edges. 314p., 18 cm. When first published in 1925, Manhattan Transfer caused a sensation by its frankness and modernity, and immediately established its author as the foremost celebrator of the Big City and the prophet of an entire era. Composed of many episodes in the lives of man characters. the plot...is unusually rich and complex. read more
Edition: Re-issue
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780395083758ISBN:0395083753
Description: Very Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. A very good paperback copy, lightly used and perhaps unread. The binding is solid, and there are no reading creases in the spine. The cover shows only very mild wear, namely a little light rubbing. The text is clean and unmarked. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This edition has no date, but it is a newer reissue of a novel originally published in 1925. It is a brilliant portrait of New York City in ... read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books, New York
Date Published: 1959
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. (090806) Mass Market Paperback is in VG+/Fine condition with slightly age darkened spine, wrinkle crease in spine, very light overall wear. 314p., 18 cm. ppbk Originally published Harper, 1925. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Mariner Books
Date Published: 1991
ISBN-13:9780395574232ISBN:0395574234
Description: New. Good overall condition GoodwillnyBooks is committed to providing each customer with the highest standard of customer service. You may return new items within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. read more
"I'm going to pull a GJ (Ginnie Jones) here and state:
"Manhattan Transfer is a kaleidoscopic portrait of New York City in the first two decades of the 20th century that follows the changing fortunes of more than a dozen characters as they strive to make sense out of the chaos of modern urban existence."
Yeah, so that's really what you need to know if you, you know, want the breakdown. Of course, I need to add my own two cents. ( Of course)
Reading this was an act of love. My husband has tried for almost 20 years to get me to read Dos Passos. I usually give it a few pages and then find some excuse (The library asked for it back, I left it on the bus, I'm menstrual...) to drop it and hope that he'd forget... but yeah...he's stubborn. I've tried The USA Trilogy and those Camera Eyes just got to be too much. Dos Passos is often associated with Joyce and some other writers that I've never really had much interest in and it's always sort of daunted me.. made me feel stupid. I began to resent him just for this reason.
So, I picked up Manhattan Transfer with great reluctance. I counted the pages. I did status updates... I soldiered on. Did I hate it? Not really. Would I consider reading more? Not really. I'm extremely lukewarm here.
First of all, 'more than a dozen characters' may sound like an okay thing, but try following plot lines for more (and I stress this) than 12 personalities. Not so easy. It's like sitting on a park bench at a playground and making up stories for each person there and then going back in two weeks and trying to remember each scenario and continue on... You may only follow them around for a page or two because they, you know, die or disappear (Where'd you go, Emile?) or they may be absent for like oh... 100 pages and you've 'met' so many new people in between that only the name sounds familiar and you're either too exhausted to recall or you don't care enough anyway...
Which... I suppose... isn't all that unlike living in a city... trying to remember who that person who is smiling at you in the corner market and do you really know them or is it someone that you might have seen at a friend's apartment and it turns out that they're actually your neighbor down the hall... Yeah, not unlike that.
So, I guess I'd have to say that the main character here IS the city... and how each character deals with it and how their 'luck' determines their 'lot' in life. This is when unions were being formed and the market was young. This is WWI with a big chunk of immigration. This is not the New York City that I knew... so, again... I wasn't all that invested in the book. I enjoyed reading each character's story but I wasn't attached to any of them (including NYC) and I found that I had to muddle through and fight back some yawns. It took a good third of the book before I found a groove and could resist putting it down. I also felt that none of the characters were particularly fond of New York either and I had to laugh at this phrase:
The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there's nowhere else to go. It's the top of the world. All we can do is go round and round in a squirrel cage.
Indeed.
So... I guess I could use the 'It's not you, it's me' excuse... but I'm not so sure. I feel like I shouldn't really discount myself on this one. Sometimes I just need more to work with.
And it's really about 2.8 stars... because it was more than OK, but I didn't like it..."
"Manhattan Transfer is the first I've read from Dos Passos and after this, I'd really like to read more. This reminded me a lot of Virginia Woolf, in that there are extremely vivid snippets of modern urban life from a cross-section of individuals. Yet, Dos Passos is able to translate the experiences of individuals from all walks of life, whereas Woolf seems relegated to upper class Londoners. Even more impressive is that he's able to make the lives and internal thoughts of all of these people very realistic. Seriously, there are episodes early in the book that revolve around the thoughts of a young boy which reminded me of how I used to view the world at the same age. This book is certainly fiction, but everything in it, from the people to early-20th century New York itself, are so strongly portrayed that it becomes easy to imagine every detail."
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