Ready Reference Treatise: Manhattan Transfer

By Raja Sharma

“Manhattan Transfer” by John Dos Passos was first published in 1925. There are several separate stories that overlap one another. With these stories, the novel describes the development of urban life that took place in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age.

This book is believed to be one of the most important works of Dos Passos. The novel presents Manhattan as a place that is quite merciless, but it teems with activity and energy.

The author very clearly criticizes the consumerism and social indifference of contemporary urban life. It also shows that there is a lot of restlessness in Manhattan.

Ready Reference Treatise: Manhattan Transfer
Copyright
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Plot Overview
Chapter Three: Characters
Chapter Four: Complete Summary
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Chapter Five: Critical Analysis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: Sep 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310649622

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

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Ready Reference Treatise: Manhattan Transfer

Copyright

Ready Reference Treatise: Manhattan Transfer

Raja Sharma

Copyright@2015 Raja Sharma

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Chapter One: Introduction

Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos was first published in 1925. There are several separate stories that overlap one another. With these stories, the novel describes the development of urban life that took place in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age.

This book is believed to be one of the most important works of Dos Passos. The novel presents Manhattan as a place that is quite merciless, but it teems with activity and energy.

The author very clearly criticizes the consumerism and social indifference of contemporary urban life. It also shows that there is a lot of restlessness in Manhattan.

The writer has used some of his experimental techniques in this novel, along with narrative collages which later on became very obvious in the author’s book U. S. A. trilogy and some other books.

The author is said to have been highly inspired by Ulysses written by James Joyce. He was also inspired by The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot.

In the words of Sinclair Lewis Manhattan Transfer is a novel of very first importance…The dawn of a whole new school of writing.

In the same way, admiring the novel, D. H. Lawrence said that it was the best modern book about New York he had ever read. He described the book as a very complete film of the vast loose gang of strivers and winner and losers which seems to be the very pep of New York.

The book was highly admired by most of the scholars and critics of the time. Even Ernest Hemingway said that alone among American writers, Dos Passos had been able to show to Europeans the America they really found when they came there.

There is no doubt that Manhattan Transfer is one of the most important contributions to the modern literature by Dos Passos.

Chapter Two: Plot Overview

Ed Thatcher and Susie have a daughter named Ellen Thatcher. Ed Thatcher is an accountant. Meanwhile Bud Korpenning reaches New York. He happens to have come by a boat. He has come there to work and earn his livelihood.

George Baldwin is a frustrated young lawyer. He gets the news that a train car has hit a milkman. He takes on that case. Gus McNeil is that milkman. The milkman’s wife Nellie starts an affair with Baldwin.

Jimmy Herf is a young boy. He and his mother Lily arrive in New York City. His mother suffers a stroke and dies in New York soon after their arrival. After her death, Jimmy is left in the care of his aunt and uncle.

They want Jimmy to go to either Princeton or Yale. They want to see him financially successful. Jimmy has his own plans. He wants to become a journalist.

Bud is a desperate man. In his desperation he throws himself off Brooklyn Bridge. Ellen becomes an actress on the New York stage. She proves to be a sensation. She begins to have a number of suitors.

Joe Harland happens to be an older cousin of Jimmy’s. He used to be a highly successful man in the stock market. It transpires that he is now an impoverished drunkard.

Stan Emery is a new character. He is also a drunkard. He happens to have been a Harvard student who was thrown out of his school. He is prone to raising Cain about town.

Ellen is married to John Oglethorpe. Stan and Ellen start a heated affair. Jimmy, a friend of Stan’s, merely looks on.

Baldwin also falls in love with Ellen. Gus McNeil has now become a rich man. He is a rising politico. Gus persuades Baldwin to run for office, but Baldwin does not agree. He is more concentrated on other works.

He has his practice and then there is his difficult situation with his wife Cecily. Then there is