Dos Passos in Florida

This article reports that my grandfather visited the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida. I don’t know of any such visit. I can’t confirm.

But I do know that he made a significant walking trek through Florida in 1924–perhaps hist first major trip to the Sunshine State. Dos Passos called Florida “fabulous and movie-like.” He wrote impressions of the state in correspondence to his French pen pal, Germaine Lucas-Championniere. “One arrives on foot, works a year, buys an orange grove from his wages, then in five years travels in a limosine, in ten years is the founder of a city, is a millionaire or a senator–it’s the American Eden.”

Scholar Townsend Ludington compiles this and other biographical information in John Dos Passos: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey.

Dos Passos eventually made his way to Key West, where he relaxed for a while. The Florida trip came after writing a great deal of Manhattan Transfer. Dos Passos ultimately reported on his great diversions in Key West to Hemingway. The two commenced to fishing and imbibing and generally hamming it up in Key West. My grandfather’s memoirs, The Best Times, go into detail on this topic.

My Dos Passos Connection: Lucy Dos Passos Coggin

The Great American Novel: “GAN”