Hemingway Served the Champagne. Dos Passos Sent the Bill. 
Concept by Thomas Shess, PillartoPost.org--Two American literary classics turn 100. One offered readers Paris, romance, and bullfights. The other delivered the tenements of Manhattan.
Why are we still reading both?
A century ago, two young American novelists took one look at their country and concluded that something had gone terribly wrong.
John Dos Passos published Manhattan Transfer in 1925. Ernest Hemingway followed with The Sun Also Rises in October 1926. Many critics and literary historians point out both novels challenged the literary establishment and helped define the restless, disillusioned generation emerging from World War I.
But these two Americans writers couldn't have been more different in their invitations to readers.
--Hemingway offered Parisian cafés, attractive expatriates, expensive drinks, sexual intrigue, Spanish bullfighters, and a romantic adventure that nobody quite knew how to finish.
--Dos Passos offered New York City, overcrowded tenements, unemployment, broken marriages, corrupt businessmen, failed dreams, and the unmistakable smell of a city that hadn't discovered air-conditioning.
With Hemingway, there was a little spice.
With Dos Passos, it sometimes felt like living in a tenement.
Yet both novels remain important a hundred years later.
Why?
Two Writers, One Disillusioned Generation
The First World War had shaken the foundations of Western civilization. Millions were dead, old empires had collapsed, and an entire generation had reason to question the values it had inherited.
American literature was changing as well. The social realism and naturalism associated with Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, and other earlier writers likw Upton Sinclair had already exposed the brutality beneath America's promise of prosperity.
The new generation of writers inherited that skepticism but wanted new ways to express it.
Dos Passos responded by making an entire city the subject of his novel.
Hemingway concentrated on a small group of Americans and Europeans who were attempting to drink, travel, and love their way out of disillusionment. Neither offered much comfort.
But Hemingway understood something about readers that Dos Passos sometimes seemed determined to ignore: even unhappy people appreciate good company, a change of scenery, and an occasional decent bottle of wine.
Manhattan Transfer: No Easy Way Out
Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer takes readers through New York from the late nineteenth century into the Jazz Age. Characters appear, disappear, succeed, fail, marry, betray one another, and sometimes die without leaving much impression on the city around them.
Among the more memorable are Ellen Thatcher, an actress whose growing success comes at considerable emotional cost, and Jimmy Herf, a journalist increasingly disgusted by the commercial society in which he finds himself. Bud Korpenning arrives in New York hoping to escape his past and find work. Instead, the city crushes him.
There is considerable literary brilliance in the way Dos Passos assembles these lives. Headlines, street conversations, advertisements, and quick cinematic changes of scene create a remarkably modern impression of metropolitan life.
But the cumulative effect can be exhausting. There is little opportunity to sit down, order another drink, and enjoy the company. One senses that Dos Passos would consider such relaxation an evasion of the serious business of portraying American society. And perhaps that was his point. He didn't want readers to escape New York. He wanted them to experience what it meant to be trapped there.
The Sun Also Rises: Despair With a Better View
Hemingway approached much the same disillusionment from another direction. His principal character, Jake Barnes, is an American journalist living in Paris. A war wound has left him sexually impotent, complicating his love for the beautiful, restless Lady Brett Ashley. They belong to a circle of expatriates who drink too much, quarrel constantly, drift between romantic attachments, and eventually travel to Spain for the running of the bulls.
These are hardly admirable people. They can be selfish, jealous, cruel, and spectacularly irresponsible. But Hemingway makes them fascinating company. His dialogue snaps. His descriptions are spare but vivid. The cafés seem inviting, the Spanish countryside beautiful, the bullfights dangerous, and the possibilities of romance irresistible even when failure seems inevitable.
The novel offers the pleasures of travel and companionship while quietly revealing the despair beneath them. That is Hemingway's great trick. His characters may be lost, but they know some wonderful places to get lost in.
Why Hemingway Became the Bigger Attraction
The Sun Also Rises helped make Hemingway a literary celebrity, and its reputation soon extended beyond literature. Readers were fascinated by the expatriate lifestyle, the Paris cafés, and the rituals of Spanish bullfighting.
Dos Passos attracted serious critical attention as well. His experiments with structure and language helped change the possibilities of American fiction. But there was an important difference in accessibility. Hemingway gave readers a recognizable story, compelling personalities, romantic tension, and a narrator whose disappointments invited sympathy. Dos Passos scattered his attention across a metropolis. Just as Dos Passos readers began to care about one character, another demanded attention.
Brilliantly, one writer created an intimate experience. The other created a panorama. One invited readers into a café. The other pushed them onto a crowded subway. It would be an exaggeration to suggest that Hemingway succeeded simply because his novel was more entertaining. His lean prose, extraordinary ear for dialogue, and ability to suggest powerful emotions without explaining them were revolutionary achievements.
Still, entertainment matters. A reader can admire the architecture of a novel without particularly enjoying the experience of living inside it.
A Break From Bleak?
Were Americans simply tired of the grim realism of the previous literary generation? Possibly, but the answer requires a distinction. Hemingway did not abandon realism. He reinvented it. In fact, The Sun Also Rises is a profoundly sad novel. Its central romance cannot be fulfilled, its friendships are fragile, and its pleasures offer only temporary relief from emotional damage.
The book's famous closing exchange between Jake and Brett leaves readers confronting the painful difference between what people want and what life permits.
That is scarcely a happy ending. Yet Hemingway allows humor, sensual pleasure, sporting excitement, and companionship to coexist with despair.
Dos Passos, by comparison, seems more interested in explaining the forces that make people miserable. Both men wrote about disappointment. Hemingway understood that disappointment could arrive at a sidewalk café with a remarkably attractive woman. Dos Passos generally made it arrive with the landlord.
Why We Still Read Them
A century later, the similarities between these two novels and contemporary America are difficult to overlook. The Manhattan of Dos Passos remains a city of tremendous wealth and unforgiving inequality. Housing is expensive, ambition is relentless, and individuals still struggle to preserve their identities against enormous economic pressures. Hemingway's expatriates also seem curiously modern. Their restless travel, unstable relationships, indulgence, and search for meaning would hardly surprise readers accustomed to today's celebrity culture and social media. Both novels ask whether prosperity, mobility, and pleasure have actually made people happier. Neither author seems particularly convinced. Their literary techniques also survive. Dos Passos anticipated the rapid cuts, multiple storylines, and overlapping voices that have become familiar in film, television, and contemporary fiction. Hemingway demonstrated how much emotion could be conveyed through restraint, silence, and dialogue that leaves the most important things unsaid. Modern storytellers remain indebted to both. The Last Word Perhaps the remarkable thing about these two novels is that their authors approached the same American disappointment from opposite directions. Dos Passos believed the city itself could tell the story of a civilization losing its way. Hemingway believed a handful of damaged people could accomplish much the same thing over drinks. Neither man found a cure for loneliness, ambition, failed romance, or the human tendency to make a mess of perfectly good opportunities. But they changed how American writers could describe those failings. One hundred years later, both novels deserve another look. Just be prepared for two very different evenings. With Hemingway, you'll probably spend the night in a café wondering whether Brett Ashley will ever get her life together. With Dos Passos, you'll be wondering whether the fellow upstairs has paid his rent. Both writers knew the American dream had its cracks. Hemingway poured another drink. Dos Passos inspected the foundation.
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