His father, Manoel dos Passos, is an immigrant from the island of Madeira off the Portuguese coast. His mother, Lucy Catell, hails from New Jersey.
John Randolph Dos Passos, noted American lawyer and author. (Photo courtesy Library of Congress)
John Randolph Dos Passos, known as “John R.” or “The Commodore,” serves as a drummer boy in a Union regiment in the Civil War. He studies law and ultimately opens a private practice in New York City with his brother Benjamin, where he gains fame as a criminal defense attorney. Later he practices corporate and brokerage law. He spends money as often as he acquires it, however, and his son John Roderigo Dos Passos does not inherit much wealth. “One of his partners once told me,” John Roderigo Dos Passos writes in his memoirs, The Best Times, “that, though Jack Dos Passos pulled in larger fees than anyone in the firm, every year’s end found him in the red.”
What does transfer to the next generation is love of literature, languages, learning, and the strenuous life. John R. often writes his family in French and enjoys reciting Shakespeare. He reads Dickens’ The Christmas Carol aloud every Christmas. He hates pulp fiction.
John R. becomes a noted author in his own right, writing Treatise on the Law of Stockbrokers and Stock Exchanges (1882) and The American Lawyer (1907) and The Anglo-Saxon Century and the Unification of the English-Speaking People (1903).
Image Credit: Nabu Press
John R. earns enough as a lawyer to acquire several thousand acres of farm property along the banks of the Potomac in the Northern Neck of Virginia—the northernmost peninsula in the state, jutting into the Chesapeake Bay. “He loved to play the lavish host,” Dos Passos writes of his father in his memoirs, The Best Times. “Westmoreland County, where he had bought what turned out to be the family farm, was a remote and rural area then. One of his delights was to invite all the neighbors, white and colored alike, to a Christmas barbecue at Sandy Point, or to a foxhunt on his land. Sometimes a steer was roasted whole in a pit. There was an endless supply of oysters shucked out of the barrel or roasted on an iron sheet. Kegs of beer had come down on the boat from Washington or Baltimore.”
Regional map courtesy Westmoreland County, Virginia, Westmoreland highlighted in white.
(Dos Passos family collection) The historic maritime culture of the Northern Neck. 2007.
John R. loves the sea. He relishes every opportunity take his wife and son for a sail along the Potomac River aboard his steam yacht named the Gaivota. After dinner, John R. may entertain by singing a tune from Pinafore or Larboard Watch Ahoy. This maritime lifestyle makes an impression on his son, who briefly considers entering the Naval Academy.
(Dos Passos family collection) John R. Dos Passos aboard the Gaivota.
”
— 1844
“
John Roderigo Dos Passos is born on January 14th in a hotel in Chicago, the son of John Randolph Dos Passos and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison.
(Dos Passos family collection) John Roderigo Dos Passos.
In July, Democratic Party champion orator Williams Jennings Bryan delivers his famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Dos Passos later profiles Bryan in his historical fiction trilogy U.S.A.
(Public Domain) Caption: William Jennings Bryan, 1896 Democratic presidential candidate. At 36, he is the youngest presidential nominee in American history.
”
— 1896
“
Responding to a toast to the twentieth century, U.S. Senator Albert J. Beveridge (R-IN) delivers an ode to American imperialism excerpted by Dos Passos in the first book of his U.S.A. trilogy, The 42nd Parallel:
The twentieth century will be American. American thought will dominate it. American progress will give it color and direction. American deeds will make it illustrious. Since Dos Passos is a boy of four at the turn of the century, the progress of the 20th century roughly corresponds to his own maturity. Since his childhood mostly occurs abroad, he develops a skill for observing America dispassionately and in full.
(Public domain) The Philippine-American War influences Dos Passos’ politics. Here, the U.S. infantry drills in 1902, Philippine Islands.
”
— 1900
“
In January, Dos Passos begins boarding school at The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut.
He is literary editor of the school paper and a member of the Dramatic Club, acting in several plays. He is voted the best student in his senior class.
Walkway in autumn at Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford, CT. 2007. (Public Domain)
”
— 1907
“
In the spring, Halley’s Comet appears while Dos Passos attends Choate.
“I remember gazing at the great comet,” Dos writes in his memoirs, The Best Times, “which looked like a bright segment of the Milky Way and filled a huge stretch of sky, with some awe through the attic skylight in the house I roomed in.”
(Public Domain) Halley’s Comet, 1910.
An older boy at Choate named Skinny Nordhoff takes Dos under his wing. They practice taxidermy and canoe in the Quinnipiac River. Dos is allowed to keep a pet raccoon in a chicken wire pen at school. “I hope you are making good progress with Homer,” his father writes him, “and that you feed the coon a little Greek for a change of diet now and then.”
(Dos Passos family collection) Dos Passos returns to Choate as an older man. A local otter looks on.
(Dos Passos family collection) Dos Passos at Annisquam, Massachusetts, summer 1910.
”
— 1910
“
At the age of fifteen, Dos Passos embarks on a grand tour of Europe to study art, architecture, and other Old World culture.
As he relates in his memoirs, The Best Times, Dos “quoted Gibbons in the Roman Forum, read Thucydides (from the trot) in Athens and evoked Julius Caesar and Napoleon while brushing off the baksheeshseekers in front of the Sphinx.” He visits England, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt with a tutor nicknamed “Uncle Virgil” Jones.
Dos Passos visits the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France during his European tour. Around the same time as his tour, American artist James Carroll Beckwith paints “The Palace of the Popes and Pont d’Avignon 1911.” ”
— 1911
“
Dos Passos enrolls in Harvard University.
He writes for the Harvard Monthly and becomes its editor during his senior year. He befriends E.E. Cummings, Robert Hillyer, Dudley Poore, and Stewart Mitchell.
(Public Domain) Harvard University campus in 1906. Watercolor by Richard Rummell. Courtesy of Arader Galleries.
Dos comments on all his readings in a literary diary. In his September 1914 entry, he critiques Fielding, Stendhal’s La Chartreuse de Parme, Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield, de Quincey’s “Reminiscences of the Lake Poets,” and writing by O. Henry, Lafcadio Hearn, Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Sand, Turgenev, William Morris, Anton Chekhov, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. He later quotes Stendhal in the epigraph to his novel, Three Soldiers. In his November 1st, 1914 entry, Dos responds to his first reading of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair: The more often I read it the more delightful it seems. It is certainly one of the great books of the world—the inimitable characters, the satire, the wit, the humorous descriptions, the universality of the book is overwhelming! I am anxious to start reading it all over again!
(Public domain) Dos Passos re-reads and admires the book for the rest of his life, eventually writing his own society-wide portrait in U.S.A.
”
— 1912
“
World War I begins on July 28th.
Dos Passos, like many of his Harvard classmates, watches wartime events in Europe with great interest—hoping one day to observe firsthand.
French reservists arriving in Paris in 1914. Courtesy of Great War Primary Document Archive: Photos of the Great War.
American troops in a French village, World War I. Courtesy of Great War Primary Document Archive: Photos of the Great War.
”
— 1914
“
Dos Passos’ mother Lucy dies on May 15.
He becomes closer to his father during the remaining time they have together. “I miss you a great deal,” John R. writes while to his son in Spain. He sends his son a saying simply, “Haha.” “That was what the Commodore and the crows said to each other,” explains John Roderigo Dos Passos in his memoirs, The Best Times. “Haha between us was a whole full dictionary.”
(Dos Passos family collection) John Dos Passos (center), his father (left), and his half-brother James Madison (left), circa 1914.
In the summer, Dos Passos meets Walter Rumsey “Rummy” Marvin in San Francisco and begins a lifelong friendship. Dos commences a regular correspondence: Food, first & foremost, is a splendid subject for letters; next to that literature, reading is useful; then there is always travel—I think we both have the disease. At the outset of their friendship, Dos often acts as a cheerleader and editor for Rummy’s creative writing. ”
— 1915
“
In June, Dos Passos graduates Harvard.
He wants to join the Norton-Harjes volunteer ambulance unit but his father disapproves. In October, Dos Passos sails to Spain to learn Spanish and study art and architecture. In a letter to friend Rumsey Marvin, Dos Passos describes his experience: The wonderful thing about Spain, speaking of togas, is that it is a sort of temple of anachronisms. I’ve never been anywhere where you so felt the strata of civilization—Celt-Iberians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Moors and French have each passed through Spain and left something there-alive. Roman Italy is a sepulcher—Roman Spain is living—actually—in the way a peasant wears his manta, in the queer wooden plows they use, in the way they sacrifice to the dead—not consciously of course, but with a thin veil of Catholicism.
John Dos Passos, Palma de Majorca, Spain. Circa 1920. Watercolor. Photograph by Katherine Wetzel.
On October 14, the New Republic publishes his article, “Against American Literature,” the first creative writing for which he receives payment. ”
— 1916
“
On January 14th, John Dos Passos celebrates his 21st birthday.
His father writes him a letter: “The great day has come. My Jack is his own master. He is free. He is free from enslavement to his father. He’s free to climb a tree and to do anything, even to pay his own bills. I salute you. When will you come home?” On January 27, his father John Randolph Dos Passos dies of pneumonia.
(Dos Passos family collection) John Randolph Dos Passos (1844-1917)
On April 6, the United States enters World War I. In June, Dos Passos sails to France to join the Norton-Harjes Ambulance corps and see World War I firsthand. During the sea passage, he befriends John Howard Lawson, a fellow ambulance service volunteer. Once in Paris, Dos reunites with college classmate Robert Hillyer, another Norton-Harjes volunteer. August 16, Dos’ ambulance section is sent to the front. He witnesses the Battle of Verdun.
(Public Domain) French soldiers northwest of Verdun, 1916.
(Dos Passos collection) Dos Passos at the wheel of his ambulance.
”
— 1917
“
November 11, the Allies sign an armistice with Germany.
After the war, Dos Passos yearns to publish his thoughts on militarization and institutionalization. “A false idea, a false system, and a set of tyrants, conscious or unconscious,” he writes his friend Rumsey Marvin, “is sitting on the world’s neck at present and has so far succeeded in destroying a good half of the worthwhile things in the world. Do you realize what it means to have half a continent in ashes and starving?”
(Dos Passos family collection) John Dos Passos during wartime service.
”
— 1918
“
In October, Dos Passos’ first book, One Man’s Initiation—1917 publishes.
It is a memoir of his World War I experience. It sells 63 copies in the first six months—a huge disappointment to the author.
Image Credit: Lorne Bair Rare Books
”
— 1920
“
Dos Passos’ second novel, Three Soldiers, publishes after many rejections from publishers and censorship squabbles.
It is a critical success. The Atlantic calls it “a work of marked distinction. It is aesthetically honest and quite fearless.” F. Scott Fitzgerald calls it the “first war book by an American which is worthy of serious notice. Bookman states, “Nothing which has come out of the school of American realists has seemed to us so entirely honest…It represents deep convictions and impressions eloquently expressed.”
Image Credit: Penguin Books
Chosen Country: John Dos Passos and the Northern Neck, a Phoenix Learning Group production released on DVD in 2008, describes the anti-authoritarian, pro-freedom mindset that animates young Dos Passos as he writes Three Soldiers. A clip from the video can be seen here.
This link provides an online audio book recording of Three Soldiers. It’s about eight hours in duration.
In December, Dos Passos boards the Orient Express in Paris and explores Iran, Iraq, and Turkey to satisfy a lifelong fascination with the Middle East. He travels across the Syrian Desert, from Baghdad to Damascus, with a camel caravan. He collects material for a forthcoming travel book, Orient Express.
(Dos Passos family collection) John Dos Passos, dressed for a desert trek.
”
— 1921
“
Dos Passos publishes Rosinante to the Road Again, a log of his travels in Spain.
He also publishes a collection of poetry, A Pushcart at the Curb. This early work demonstrates his affection for aesthetics and his powers of description with color, sound, and smell.
Original cover for A Pushcart at the Curb. Image Courtesy University of Virginia Library, Special Collections.
(Dos Passos family collection) John Dos Passos, master observer and reporter.
”
— 1922
“
In March, Dos Passos begins a seven-day walking trip through the middle of Florida, ending at Venice on the Gulf Coast.
He finds the state “fabulous and movie-like.”He later travels to Key West to satisfy his chronic “islomania.” The “faintly New England” town ensorcels him. Over the course of his life, he returns for many rejuvenating stays, and invites friends to join him for fishing and other tropical adventures. “It’s a swell little jumping off place—the one spot in America desperately unprosperous,” Dos Passos tells Edmund Wilson. Life in the Keys is “agreeable calm and gently colored with Bacardi.”
Cuban Navy parade in Key West, 1924. Image courtesy Florida Memory Project.
In the summer, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway meet in Paris and begin a friendship. In August, Dos, the Hemingways, and friends go to Pamplona, Spain for the Fiesta of San Fermín. According to Dos Passos biographer Townsend Ludington, “Dos admired Hemingway’s brashness, his plain talk, his zest for life, and his sense of humor while it lasted, while Ernest admired Dos’ learning and his modesty.”
(Hemingway collection at JFK presidential library) Hemingway fights a bull at the 1925 Fiesta San Fermín.
Of the Fiesta, Dos Passos writes in his memoirs, “It was fun and we ate well and drank well but there were too many exhibitionistic personalities in the group to suit me.” ”
— 1924
“
Dos Passos publishes Manhattan Transfer in November, to massive critical acclaim.
The New York Times calls the novel “a powerful and sustained piece of work.” American author Sinclair Lewis, a future Nobel laureate, calls Manhattan Transfer “a novel of the very first importance” which could be “the foundation of a whole new school of novel-writing.” Lewis continues, “I regard Manhattan Transfer as more important in every way than anything by Gertrude Stein or Marcel Proust or even the great white boar, Mr. Joyce’s Ulysses.”
(Dos Passos family collection) John Dos Passos.
”
— 1925
“
In early March, Dos Passos goes skiing with Ernest Hemingway and friends in Schruns, Austria.
(Hemingway collection at JFK presidential library) Hemingway (second from left) and Dos Passos (second from right) in Austria, 1926.
In late March or early April, Dos Passos’ first play, The Garbage Man, aka The Moon is a Gong, is performed in New York City at the Cherry Lane Playhouse. A flop, it runs for only eighteen performances. In the summer, Dos Passos and friends walk the length of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. In December, Dos Passos travels to Mexico, where he explores the capital and the countryside. He meets artists and thinkers who leave him with deep impressions later exploited for his U.S.A. trilogy.
(Dos Passos family collection) John Dos Passos in Mexico.
”
— 1926
“
Dos Passos publishes Orient Express, a distillation of his travels in the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. It includes some of his artwork.
In April, many writers including Dos Passos protest the death sentence of Massachusetts anarchists Ferdinando Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The Italians are convicted for murder in 1921, only to see their cause spread worldwide. Dos Passos and others believe the accused have received a mistrial rife with prejudice and short on evidence.
In the spring, Dos Passos publishes a protest pamphlet called Facing the Chair. When the president of Harvard University, A. Lawrence Lowell, is appointed by the Massachusetts governor to serve on an advisory committee reviewing the case, Dos Passos publishes “An Open Letter to President Lowell” in the New York Times. Dos Passos also joins writers and artists—Katherine Anne Porter, Lola Ridge, Paxton Hibben, Mike Gold, Helen O’Lochlain Crowe, James Rorty, Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Gropper, and Grace Lumpkin—on a picket line in Boston. He is arrested and briefly jailed.
(Dos Passos family collection) Dos Passos is arrested in August 1927 for protesting the Sacco and Vanzetti death sentence.
Sacco and Vanzetti are executed on August 23rd. According to biographer Townsend Ludington, Dos “moved as far to the left as he ever would” in consequence. “I had seceded privately the night Sacco and Vanzetti were executed,” Dos Passos writes in The Theme is Freedom. “I wasn’t joining anybody. I had seceded into my private conscience like Thoreau in Concord jail.””
— 1927
“
In April, Ernest Hemingway visits Key West, Florida at Dos Passos’ advisement.
“It’s the best place for Ole Hem to dry out his bones,” says Dos. Hemingway falls in love with the island and begins mining its waters for the biggest fish.
In the summer, Dos Passos arrives in Russia. His visit’s purpose is to study their socialist society and test its claim on justice. He stays in the country through the fall, meeting Dr. Horsely Gantt, among others. Gantt is an American studying under famous Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Gantt and Dos become fast friends. ”
— 1928
“
In February, Dos Passos’ play, Airways, Inc., opens.
In March and April, Dos Passos visits Ernest Hemingway in Key West. “The swimming is magnificent,” writes Dos Passos, “and you catch all sorts of iris colored finnies on the adjacent reefs, you broil them, basting them with a substance known as Old Sour and eat mightily well. Apart from that there’s absolutely nothing to do, which is a blessing.” He relaxes in paradise, “licking my wounds, fishing, eating wild herons and turtle steak, drinking Spanish wine and Cuban rum and generally remaking the inner man.”
(Dos Passos family collection) Dos Passos and Hemingway in Key West, Florida.
In August, Dos Passos marries Katherine “Katy” Smith, a childhood friend of Ernest Hemingway’s. According to Dos Passos biographer Townsend Ludington, Katy is a “pretty, humorous woman, perhaps wittier than he, certainly just as deeply committed to friendships.” Dos and Katy call each other “Kingfish” and “Possum.” Katy co-write two books and writes articles for women’s magazines.
(Dos Passos family collection) Katy and John Dos Passos settled in Provincetown, Massachusetts. They are joined for lunch at their home by Katy’s brother Bill and the family dog.
(Ernest Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum) John Dos Passos reads aloud to wife Katy.
”
— 1929
“
The 42nd Parallel, the first book of the U.S.A. trilogy, publishes.
Books writes a favorable review, noting Dos Passos’ “stimulating courage that essays a synthesis of time, class, geography and social theory.” The New York Times perceives that the work is a “satire on the tremendous haphazardness of life in the expansionist America we all have known, the American which came into birth with the defeat of Jefferson’s dream of an agricultural democracy…It is an America ‘on the make’ that Mr. Dos Passos satirizes, an America filled with people with vague hopes of success—no matter what success.”
”
— 1930
“
In the fall, Dos Passos joins Theodore Dreiser and other authors on a trip to Harlan County, Kentucky, to report on miners’ working conditions.
Dos Passos organizes the collaborative work into a finished product called Harlan Miners Speak.
(Associated Press) From left to right, American writers John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, and Samuel Ornitz in New York City in November 1931.
”
— 1931
“
1919, the second book of U.S.A., publishes.
Critic Malcolm Cowley calls the book “not only the best of all his novels; it is, I believe, a landmark in American fiction.” Critic Henry Hazlitt finds “no one who is [Dos Passos’] superior in range of awareness of American life.” Hemingway heaps praise on Nineteen Nineteen. He jokingly warns Dos Passos that he is writing so well that he should take extra care of his health—hot streaks never last.
In the spring, John and Katy Dos Passos visit Key West and stay with Ernest Hemingway.
(Ernest Hemingway Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston) Dos Passos and Hemingway with tarpon in Key West, Florida, 1928.
In June and July, Dos Passos visits Chicago to report on the Republican and Democratic national conventions. He witnesses Huey Long on the stump and collects inspiration for a forthcoming book, Number One. ”
— 1932
“
Dos Passos publishes a travel volume, In All Countries.
The book includes impressions of Russia, Mexico, Spain, and America. ”
— 1934
“
In July, the Spanish Civil War breaks out.
Dos Passos, long an aficionado of Spanish culture, watches with alarm as his favorite cities see warfare. The Big Money, the third and final book of U.S.A., publishes. Shortly after its release, French writer and philosopher and future Nobel laureate Jean-Paul Sartre calls John Dos Passos “the greatest writer of our time.”
Image Credit: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
In August, Dos Passos appears on the cover of Time magazine.
Courtesy Time magazine.
”
— 1936
“
Dos Passos receives a letter dated January 6th that informs him of his election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in the Department of Literature.
In March, Dos leaves for Spain with Ernest Hemingway, Archibald MacLeish, and Lillian Hellman to work on a film about the Spanish Civil War called The Spanish Earth. Hemingway and Dos Passos initially argue about the premise of the film. Dos Passos investigates the arrest of Spanish friend Jose Robles; he discovers that Robles was executed by the Communists as a Fascist spy. Dos Passos believes Robles was killed because he had protested Soviet infiltration of the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway, ever the biographer of heroics, trumpets that Dos Passos has lost faith in the Republicans due to cowardice; their friendship is subsequently strained severely.
(Credit: The Granger Collection, NYC—All rights reserved) Dos Passos (far left) and Hemingway (far right) in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War.
(University of South Carolina Ernest Hemingway Speiser and Easterling-Hallman Foundation Collection) Poster for The Spanish Earth.
In July, Dos Passos publishes “Farewell to Europe” in Common Sense. He rejects Western Europe as an incubator for democracy and embraces America as the world’s last hope for a free republic. The Atlantic Ocean, Dos Passos writes, is “broad enough to protect us against air raids, but it can’t protect us against the infectious formulas for slavery that are preparing in Europe on every side.””
— 1937
“
Dos Passos publishes Journeys Between Wars.
It includes a revised version of Orient Express, revised excerpts from Rosinante to the Road Again and In All Countries, as well as five essays previously published in Esquire. For the first time, the three books of U.S.A. are published together in one volume. The trilogy enjoys widespread acclaim. Its prologue states that “mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people.” Critic Edmund Wilson celebrates Dos Passos on the publication of U.S.A. trilogy as “The first of our writers—with the possible exception of Mark Twain—who has successfully used colloquial American for a novel of the highest artistic seriousness.” Novelist Norman Mailer later says of the trilogy, “Those three volumes of U.S.A. make up the idea of a great American novel.”
Random House
”
— 1938
“
In June, Dos Passos publishes Adventures of a Young Man, which expresses his disillusionment from leftist causes—especially socialism and communism—in hindsight of the Spanish Civil War.
Critics dismiss the work as his weakest yet.
(Dos Passos family collection)
”
— 1939
“
Dos Passos begins a course of study into American colonial history.
The first showcase is The Living Thoughts of Tom Paine, which appears in 1940.
(Dos Passos family collection). Dos Passos at his Provincetown home.
”
— 1940
“
In August, Dos Passos publishes The Ground We Stand On, an inquiry into American colonial thought.
On December 7th, Japan attacks the United States at Pearl Harbor. On December 11th, Germany declares war on the United States. ”
— 1941
“
In the spring, Dos Passos begins traveling to report on wartime America.
”
— 1942
“
In March, Dos Passos publishes Number One, a work of historical fiction inspired by the life of colorful Louisiana politician Huey Long.
By June 15, the book sells over seventeen thousand copies. ”
— 1943
“
In July, Dos Passos publishes State of the Nation, a revised compilation of previously published reportage.
In December, he lights out for the Pacific to report on the war for Life magazine. He visits Hawaii, the Marshall Islands, the Marianas, the Caroline Islands, the Philippines, New Caledonia, New Guinea, and Australia.
(Dos Passos family collection) Dos Passos touring the globe, reporting on World War II.
”
— 1944
“
On May 8th, America celebrates Victory in Europe Day, after the Allies formally accept the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.
In October, Dos Passos departs to report on post-war Europe. He hopes that the United States will not comprise too much with the Soviet Union as they broker the peace. “Who sups with the devil,” he writes, “must need a long spoon—it is time Americans got it through their heads that Democracy and Dictatorship can’t cooperate.”
(Dos Passos family collection) John Dos Passos, WWII reporter.
”
— 1945
“
In August, Dos Passos publishes Tour of Duty, a compilation of his World War II reporting around the world.”
— 1946
“
In July, Dos Passos visits England to report on Clement Atlee’s new Labor government. His anti-Atlee piece, “Britain’s Dim Dictatorship,” appears in Life.
In August, Katy and John Dos Passos suffer a car crash in Massachusetts. He is blinded by the afternoon sun and they collide with a truck on the roadside. Katy dies instantly and JDP loses his right eye in the crash. He is fitted soon with a glass eye. He mourns for Katy, experiencing “archipelagos of remorse and boundless continents of grief.” In November, Dos Passos is notified of his election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, nominated by Van Wyck Brooks, Sinclair Lewis, Deems Taylor, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Carl Sandburg, and Eugene O’Neill. He becomes the 5th occupant of Chair 14, following Theodore Roosevelt, Maurice Francis Egan, Henry Hadley, and Willa Cather. ”
— 1947
“
Through friends, Dos Passos meets Elizabeth Holdridge, a witty, energetic, adventurous woman.
They share much in common.
(Dos Passos family collection) John Dos Passos and Elizabeth Holdridge. (second and third from left)
”
— 1948
“
In January, Dos Passos publishes The Grand Design, a critique of the excesses of the New Deal.
In August, he marries Elizabeth “Betty” Holdridge at Ridgecrest Farm in Baltimore County, Maryland. They settle at Dos’ family property in the Northern Neck of Virginia, known as Spence’s Point, on the banks of the Potomac River. “We are planted down here among the weeds with no neighbors but the crows and the wild geese and an occasional swan,” Dos writes Stewart Mitchell at year’s end.
(Dos Passos family collection) John and Betty Dos Passos.
(Dos Passos family collection) Dos Passos sails at Spence’s Point.
”
— 1949
“
John and Elizabeth Dos Passos welcome their first child, a daughter named Lucy born on May 15th.
(Dos Passos family collection) John and Lucy Dos Passos at Spence’s Point.
(Dos Passos family collection) John, Betty, and Lucy Dos Passos at Spence’s Point.
In October, Dos Passos publishes The Prospect Before Us. ”
— 1950
“
Dos Passos publishes Chosen Country.
”
— 1951
“
In January, Dos Passos publishes The Head and Heart of Thomas Jefferson, a labor of love years in the making.
(Dos Passos family collection) Dos Passos working at his study.
In September, he publishes Most Likely to Succeed.”
— 1954
“
In March, Dos Passos publishes The Theme Is Freedom.
”
— 1956
“
In February, Dos Passos publishes The Men Who Made the Nation.
Dos Passos is awarded the Gold Medal for Fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. At the awards presentation, William Faulkner remarks of Dos, “Nobody deserved it more or had to wait for it longer.”
(Dos Passos family collection) John Dos Passos (far right) and William Faulkner (far left) at the National Institute of Arts and Letters awards presentation.
”
— 1957
“
In July and August, Dos, Betty, and Lucy travel to Brazil. Dos collects material for an upcoming book on the country.
(Dos Passos family collection) John and Betty Dos Passos.
(Dos Passos family collection) Dos Passos visiting indigenous Brazilians.
”
— 1958
“
In November, Dos Passos publishes Prospects of a Golden Age.
”
— 1959
“
In February, Dos Passos publishes Midcentury. It becomes a bestseller.
”
— 1961
“
In November, Dos Passos publishes Mr. Wilson’s War.
”
— 1962
“
In February, Dos Passos visits University of Virginia for a three-week stay as writer-in-residence.
In September, Dos Passos publishes Brazil on the Move.
(Dos Passos family collection) Poster advertising “John Dos Passos speaks to the world about Brazil.”
”
— 1963
“
In August, Dos Passos publishes Thomas Jefferson—The Making of a President.
”
— 1964
“
In March, Dos Passos publishes Shackles of Power: Three Jeffersonian Decades.
In November, he publishes a compilation of select writings called World in a Glass: A View of Our Century. His memoirs, The Best Times, also appear.
(Dos Passos family collection) Dos Passos on the Potomac River, near his farm.
”
— 1966
“
Dos Passos travels to Rome, Italy to receive the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize for fiction.
The prize is awarded every five years by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
(Dos Passos family collection) Dos Passos at his study in his Virginia farm house.
”
— 1967
“
In January, Dos Passos and his wife visit Easter Island.
They also travel to Chile and Argentina. Archival footage of the Argentina visit can be found here. Dos Passos speaks in Spanish in this clip; audio begins at about the forty second mark. In April, Dos Passos publishes The Portugal Story.
(Dos Passos family collection) John Dos Passos, his cousins, and the mayor of Ponta del Sol in Madeira, 1960.
In May, Dos Passos travels to Florida to watch the Apollo 10 moonshot from Cape Kennedy. The United States Information Service commissions him to write about it. “Mankind was on the threshold of a new beginning,” he says.
Apollo 10 launch. (NASA, Public Domain)
A French film crew interviews Dos Passos at his farm, Spence’s Point, in the Northern Neck of Virginia. ”
— 1969
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On September 28th, Dos Passos dies of heart failure in Baltimore, Maryland.
After services in Baltimore and Westmoreland County, Virginia, he is buried in the Yeocomico Church cemetery—a short distance from his farm, Spence’s Point.
(Public Domain) John Dos Passos farm, 1971.
(Dos Passos family collection) The beachfront of Dos Passos farm, 2008.
(Dos Passos family collection) The Potomac River from Dos Passos farm, 2012.
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— 1970
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Easter Island: Island of Enigmas, Dos Passos’ final work of non-fiction, publishes.
(public domain) The famous statues of Easter Island—they are called maoi.
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— 1971
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The Fourteenth Chronicle: Letters and Diaries of John Dos Passos, edited by Townsend Ludington, publishes.
The collected letters and diaries reveal the depth of Dos Passos’ friendships, his interests, and his explorations abroad. They also provide snapshots of major 20th century books-in-progress, as ideas undergo revision and peer criticism. John and Katy Dos Passos wrote get-well notes to Patrick Murphy, the son of friends Gerald and Sara Murphy, when he became ill. John did all the artwork.
John and Katy Dos Passos wrote get-well notes to Patrick Murphy, the son of friends Gerald and Sara Murphy, when he became ill. John did all the artwork.
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— 1973
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Century’s Ebb: The Thirteenth Chronicle, Dos Passos’ final novel, publishes.
It is incomplete and unrevised, but unified by commentary on Walt Whitman’s philosophy.
(Public domain) Thomas Eakins portrait of Walt Whitman, oil on canvas, 1887)
(Dos Passos family collection) Corn at Dos Passos farm, 2009. As an elder, Dos Passos increasingly found solace in pastoral life.
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