"There is no right life in the wrong one": The Dialectic of Drink and Abstinence in John Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer and USA

IF 0.1 0 LITERATURE, AMERICAN

Arizona Quarterly Pub Date : 2021-10-01 DOI:10.1353/arq.2021.0016

Sixta Quassdorf

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract:The pervasiveness of alcohol in John Dos Passos's major works, Manhattan Transfer and USA, has been widely noticed. Yet abstinence, the opposite, is just as conspicuous. This article explores the dialectical implications of drink vs. abstinence, which—together with considerations of the cultural history and contemporaneous political issues connected with alcohol—reveal that drink plays an intricate role in Dos Passos's socio-political critique. While drink symbolizes human life with all its complexities and contradictions, its opposite, abstinence, exemplifies the inhumaneness of a reduced world view that prioritizes the instrumental logic of capitalism and demands unquestioning subjugation to the given conditions.

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本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Arizona Quarterly LITERATURE, AMERICAN-

CiteScore

0.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Arizona Quarterly publishes scholarly essays on American literature, culture, and theory. It is our mission to subject these categories to debate, argument, interpretation, and contestation via critical readings of primary texts. We accept essays that are grounded in textual, formal, cultural, and theoretical examination of texts and situated with respect to current academic conversations whilst extending the boundaries thereof.