Course Handout 5 (II)

READING LIST:
John Dos Passos, The Big Money, collected 1938.

Jean Toomer, Cane (1923).

Anzia Yezierska Children of Loneliness (1923).

John Dos Passos, The Big Money

1. NEWSREEL LXVIII
WALL STREET STUNNED
This is not Thirty-eight but it's old Ninety-seven You must put her in Center on time MARKET

SURE TO RECOVER FROM SLUMP

Decline in Contracts
POLICE TURN MACHINE GUNS ON COLORADO MINE STRIKERS KILL 5 WOUND 40
sympathizers appeared on the scene just as thousands of office workers were pouring out of the buildings at the
lunch hour. As they raised their placard high and started an indefinite march from one side to the other, they
were jeered and hooted not only by the office workers but also by workmen on a building under construction
NEW METHODS OF SELLING SEEN
Rescue Crews Try To Upend Ill-fated Craft While Waiting For Pontoons
We looked 'round an' said to his black greasy fireman Jus' shovel in a little more coal
And when we cross that White Oak Mountain You can watch your Ninety-seven roll
I find your column interesting and need advice. I have saved four thousand dollars which I want to invest for a
better income. Do you think I might buy stocks?
2. THE CAMERA EYE (51)
at the head of the valley in the dark of the hills on the broken floor of a lurchedover cabin a man halfsits halflies
propped up by an old woman two wrinkled girls that might be young chunks of coal flare in the hearth flicker in
his face white and sagging as dough blacken the cavedin mouth the taut throat the belly swelled enormous with
the wound he got working on the minetipple the barefoot girl brings him a tincup of water the woman wipes
sweat off his streaming face with a dirty denim sleeve the firelight flares in his eyes stretched big with fever in
the women's scared eyes and in the blanched faces of the foreigners
without help in the valley hemmed by dark strikesilent hills the man will die (my father died, we know what it is
like to see a man die) the women will lay him out on the rickety cot the miners will bury him
in the jail it's light too hot the steamheat hisses we talk through the greenpainted iron bars to a tall white
mustachioed old man some smiling miners in shirtsleeves a boy faces white from mining have already the
tallowy look of jailfaces

3. MARY FRENCH
Mary French had to stay late at the office and couldn't get to the hall until the meeting was almost over. There
were no seats left so she stood in the back. So many people were standing in front of her that she couldn't see
Don, she could only hear his ringing harsh voice and feel the tense attention in the silence during his pauses.
When a roar of applause answered his last words and the hall filled suddenly with voices and the scrape and
shuffle of feet she ran out ahead of the crowd and up the alley to the back door. Don was just coming out of the
black sheetiron door talking over his shoulder as he came to two of the miners' delegates. He stopped a second
to hold the door open for them with a long arm. His face had the flushed smile, there was the shine in his eye he
often had after speaking, the look, Mary used to tell herself, of a man who had just come from a date with his
best girl. It was some time before Don saw her in the group that gathered round him in the alley. Without
looking at her he swept her along with the men he was talking to and walked them fast towards the corner of the
street. Eyes looked after them as they went from the groups of furworkers and garmentworkers that dotted the
pavement in front of the hall. Mary tingled with the feeling of warm ownership in the looks of the workers as
their eyes followed Don Stevens down the street. It wasn't until they were seated in a small lunchroom under
the el that Don turned to Mary and squeezed her hand. "Tired?" She nodded. "Aren't you, Don?" He laughed
and drawled, "No, I'm not tired. I'm hungry."

Jean Toomer, Cane (1923)

1. The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The setting sun, too indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for the flashing gold
Passively darkens for nights barbecue

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds

An orgy for some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

2. Face flowed into her eyes. Flowed in soft cream foam and plaintive ripples, in such a way that wherever
you glance may momentarily have rested, it immediately thereafter wavered in the direction of her eyes.
The soft suggestion of her down slightly darkened, like the shadow of a birds wing might, the creamy
brown color of her upper lip. Why, after noticing it, you sought her eyes, I cannot tell you. Her nose was
aquiline, Semitic. If you have heard a Jewish cantor sing, if he has toughed you and made your own
 sorrow seem trivial when compared to his, you will know my feeling when I follow the curves of her
profile, like mobile rivers, to their common delta. They were strange eyes. In this, that they sought
nothing that is, nothing that was obvious and tangible and that one could see, and they gave the
impression that nothing was to be denied.

Anzia Yezierska Children of Loneliness (1923)

1. Oh, Mother, cant you use a fork? exclaimed Rachel as Mrs. Ravinsky took the shell of the baked
potato in her fingers and raised it to the watering mouth. Here, Teacherin mine, you want to learn me in
my old age how to put the bite in my mouth? The mother dropped the potato back into her plate, too
wounded to eat. Wiping her hands on her blue-checked apron, she turned her glance to her husband, at
the opposite side of the table. Yankev, she said bitterly, stick your bone on a fork. Our teacherin said
you dassnt touch no eatings with the hands. All my teachers died in the old country, retorted the old
man. I aint going to learn nothing new no more from my American daughter. He continued to suck the
marrow out if the bone with that nosy relish that was so exasperating to Rachel.
2. The shelter from the storms of life that the artist finds in his art, Yankev Ravinsky found in his
prescribed communion with God. All the despair cause by his daughters apostasy, the insults and
disappointments he suffered, were in his sobbing voice. But as he entered into the spirit of his prayer, he
felt the man of flesh drop away in the outflow of God around him.
3. God! God! she sobbed as she turned her head away from them, if all this suffering were at least for
something worth while, for something outside myself. But to have to break them and crush them merely
because I have a fastidious soul that cant stomach their table manners, merely because I cant strangle
my aching ambition to rise in the world. She could no longer sustain the conflict which raged within her
higher and higher at every moment. With a sudden tension of all her nerves she pulled herself together
and stumbled blindly downstairs and out of her house. And she felt as if she had torn away from the
flesh and blood of her own body.
4. I have broken away from the old world; Im through with it. Its already behind me. I must face this
loneliness till I get to the new world. Frank Baker cant help me; I must hope for no help from the
outside. Im alone; Im alone till I get there. But am I really alone in my seeking? Im one of the
millions of immigrant children, children of loneliness, wandering between worlds that are at once too
old and too new to live in. (A. Yezierska, Children of Loneliness)