"Stories Told Sideways Out of the Big Mouth": John Dos Passos's Bazinian Camera Eye
2005; Salisbury University; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0090-4260
Autores Tópico(s)American Sports and Literature
ResumoDonald Pizer opens his article, Camera Eye in U.S.A.: The Sexual Center, by noting, Most of John Dos Passos' U.S.A. have been troubled by Camera Eye portion of trilogy, and he goes on to comment that the Camera Eye in U.S.A. has usually either been read casually-almost as an awkward interruption-or for its occasional reference to events present as well in other portions of (417). In fact, what Pizer writes of general readers could just as easily apply to many of Dos Passos's critics. None of four modes of writing in U.S.A.- biography, narrative, Newsreel, and Camera Eye-has generated as much critical confusion, disagreement, and outright derision as Camera Eye.1 Though in recent years critical treatment of Camera Eye has become more nuanced, Camera Eye has never enjoyed same sort of consistent critical approval that has greeted U.S.A. 's Newsreels as examples of Dos Passos's application of cinematic technique of montage to literature. In contrast to this standard reading of Newsreels in cinematic terms, readings of Camera Eye have, in fact, often ignored relation of Camera Eye to cinema. Moreover, when critics have examined Camera Eye in terms of they have generally identified Camera Eye as simply another instance of Dos Passos's use of montage, an attitude that overlooks specificity of Camera Eye as a mode of writing distinct from Newsreels.2 Indeed, much of criticism of Dos Passos's U.S.A. trilogy recognizes importance of montage as key to understanding not only Newsreels, but also trilogy as a whole. The overall structure of U.S.A., with its stylistically different narratives, biographies, Newsreels, and Camera Eyes juxtaposed to one another, and more specifically Newsreels, with their juxtapositions of fragments of newspaper headlines, songs, and other sorts of texts, has justifiably prompted many critics to recognize montage as an underlying principle governing Dos Passos's work. As Barry Maine comments, the narrative function of montage [is not] a new subject; it is paid lip service in virtually every critical of U.S.A. (76).3 Dos Passos confirmed importance of montage for his writing on numerous occasions. He commented in a 1968 interview at Union College, for instance, that one of reasons he wrote three volumes of U.S.A. in four different modes was that he always had an interest in contrast, in sort of montage Griffith and Eisenstein used in films (283), and explained in his 1967 address, Makes a Novelist: artist must record fleeting world way motion picture film recorded it. By contrast, juxtaposition, montage, he could build drama into his narrative. Somewhere along way I had been impressed by Eisenstein's motion pictures, by his version of old D. W. Griffith's technique. Montage was his key word (272). However, critical view that understands Dos Passos's relation to cinema simply in terms of montage overlooks degree to which Camera Eye, while it does share some qualities with Dos Passos's other modes of writing based on montage of figures such as Eisenstein and Griffith, suggests a concept of cinema that also bears affinities to sort of documentary realism associated with a competing strain of film theory represented by Andre Bazin. Obviously, fact that Dos Passos wrote U.S.A. years before Bazin wrote essays collected in works such as What Is Cinema? precludes any question of Bazin having influenced Dos Passos as did Eisenstein. Indeed, Bazin himself, after rhetorically posing issue of whether or not art of Dos Passos, Caldwell, Hemingway, or Malraux derives from technique of cinema, answers, we do not believe it for a moment, and argues, we should rather reverse usual theory and study influence of modern literature on film-makers (61-62). …
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