When I was reading Brown, I was reminded a bit of John Dos Passos’ USA Trilogy, in which he experiments with narrative forms. Check out his “Newsreel” segments and “Camera Eye” segments. Good example of how machinery and technology was influencing Modernist writing ala Brown.
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Theories of Texts and Tech
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February 18, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Yes, brilliant (I will try to cite your insight Greg in future work on Brown). This is right on target. We tend to separate gritty realism from Brown’s avant-garde antics, but actually at the time they were the same authors.
The author of the great urban novel Studs Lonnigan (who Studs Terkel named himself after), James Farrell, worked on producing a story for Brown’s machine. He said that the experience led him to the kind of simple abbreviated prose we sometimes associate with gritty urban noir-ish fiction …
Dos Passos also was part of that combination of politics and experimental forms that has evaporated.