Handout 9

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)