A Good Story Well Told

According to the dust-jacket (usually an infallible guide to what a book is not about), this is “the story of the great men, the scoundrels and the opportunists who dominated the young Republic during the Jeffersonian era”—and, unusually, that turns out to be a pretty good description. But there are two key words whose meaning ought to be explored. First of all, what kind of a story is this? and, secondly, what exactly is meant by the Jeffersonian era? In answering these two questions, one can find out a great deal about the strengths and weaknesses of the book.

One suspects that the word story is exact and applicable, whereas the word history might not be. That is not to say that Mr. Dos Passos fails to present a considerable amount of the history of the period, only that the inspiration is probably, and the method quite certainly, literary rather than historical. Perhaps this is no bad thing. One likes to read a good story well told, and this is a good story—or rather, it is several good stories. But it represents itself as history, and (in part owing to the format of the Mainstream of America series itself) it may be that one must judge the work more severely as history than one would like.

JL

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Jared C. Lobdell

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John Dos Passos

Thomas Jefferson

Alexis de Tocqueville

American History

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According to the dust-jacket (usually an infallible guide to what a book is not about), this is “the story of the great men, the scoundrels and the opportunists who dominated the young Republic during the Jeffersonian era”—and, unusually, that turns out to be a pretty good description. But there are two key words whose meaning ought to be explored. First of all, what kind of a story is this? and, secondly, what exactly is meant by the Jeffersonian era? In answering these two questions, one can find out a great deal about the strengths and weaknesses of the book.

One suspects that the word story is exact and applicable, whereas the word history might not be. That is not to say that Mr. Dos Passos fails to present a considerable amount of the history of the period, only that the inspiration is probably, and the method quite certainly, literary rather than historical. Perhaps this is no bad thing. One likes to read a good story well told, and this is a good story—or rather, it is several good stories. But it represents itself as history, and (in part owing to the format of the Mainstream of America series itself) it may be that one must judge the work more severely as history than one would like.