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John Dos Passos's literary response to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, The Grand Design critiques the gargantuan growth of bureaucracy in Washington during the Great Depression and World War II. The satiric novel conveys the author's frustration with federal overreach and the hollow rhetoric that sells it to the people. "War is a time of Caesars," writes Dos Passos as he laments the death of idealistic, intelligent enterprises at the desks of elitist administrators. After witnessing the Spanish Civil War claim so many well-intentioned men, he advises caution for America's New Dealers: "Some things we have learned, but not enough; there is more to learn. Today we must learn to found again in freedom our republic."
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos (1896-1970) was an American novelist, painter, and member of the Lost Generation who came of age during World War I. His books include Manhattan Transfer, U.S.A. (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money), and Mr. Wilson's War. He is considered one of the leading novelists of his day and his pioneering works of nonlinear fiction exerted an enormous influence on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Mary McCarthy, and John Brunner, among others. By the time of his death in 1970 Dos Passos had written forty-two novels and numerous poems, essays, and plays, and created more than four hundred pieces of art.
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