Steamroller: Reading the Cubist Portrait in Manhattan Transfer
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2014
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Haverford College. Department of English
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
A reliance on psychological modes of reading and interpretation has led many critics to label Dos Passos' characters as flat, considering them secondary concerns compared to the formal innovations for which Dos Passos is known. However, these characters and their flatness are fundamental to Dos Passos' social concerns, aesthetic experimentation, and wider structuring. Using Paula Geyh's reading of the Danderine Lady, we can progress the discourse on Dos Passos' characters and gain a greater understanding of their relation to the city. Her notion of "textualized subjectivities" is a crucial step in recognizing how Dos Passos networks his subjects. However, to fully conceptualize these figures we must abandon the traditional hermeneutics that even Geyh relies on. Rather than searching the text for what is hidden and judging the characters for a lack of psychological depth, a surface reading must be employed. Such a reading, in conversation with Roland Barthes' theory of Text, refocuses the critical lens and gives greater clarity to the play operating on the surface of the novel. Finally, returning to the formal methods for which Dos Passos is known, we can reclaim his Cubism as a mode of characterization which brings to the foreground the shifting contingencies of modern life through simultaneous perspectives on the individual. There exists a greater realism in Dos Passos' flattened perspective–-an absence of static certainty. The steamroller of Cubism creates as it deconstructs, expands as it removes depth. His unique techniques construct a single, simultaneous network–containing both individual and institution, real and imagined, empowered and ensnared–-that is the spectrum of modern life.