Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos

 The beginning of this book was a struggle because I prefer a different style than modernist writing. It feels like it tries too hard. Yet, it was a new and novel expression, so I can respect that. One of my favorite poems is the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a modernist masterpiece. Go figure! I suspect that Dos Passos leaned too hard into the style because even though he's considered one of the greats along with Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker, I can hardly find anyone that's read him. The book is about New York City and its inhabitants from the turn of the 19th Century to the late 1910s or early 1920s. It's a huge place that New York, and Dos Passos decides to insert every resident as a character. It gets a little hard to follow, but the characters are interesting if you stick with it enough. The situations they encounter start to get going by the second third of the book. Ultimately, New York City grinds along regardless of the lives that live in it, and Dos Passos gets that across well. I'm underselling the book - there are fascinating passages: The start of World War 1, prohibition hang-outs, rides on long-forgotten elevated lines (The Ninth Avenue El), and watching the forced deportation of suspected communists by ferry. It is a good to very good, but not a summer read.