John Doss Passos.doc

John Doss Passos
Ⅰ Background:
John Doss Passos was born in Chicago on January 14, 1896, the illegitimate son of a noted New York lawyer, John Randolph Dos Passos, and a wealthy Virginian, Lucky Addidon Sprigg. His father did not acknowledge paternity until a year before his death when Dos Passos was 20. As a boy, Dos passos lived principally on the Virginian farm of his mother’s family, and he also traveled frequently with his mother to Mexico, Belgium, and England.
Dos Passos attended Choate School under the name John Rederigo Madison. He graduated from Harvard in 1916, meanwhile publishing stories, verse, and reviews in the Harvard Monthly.
In 1917 Dos Passos was in Spain, studying Spanish culture. During World War I he enlisted in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Unit and served in Spain and Italy. In 1918 he became a private in the . Medical crops, serving in France. Demobilized in 1919, he remained in Europe to finish two novels: One Man's Initiation-1917(1920 ) and Three Soldier(1921). During the 1920s Dos Passos worked as a newspaper correspondent and traveled extensively but,
as an increasing essful author, he lived chiefly in New York.
Before ing a leading novelist of his day, John Dos Passos sketched and painted. During the summer of 1922, he studied at Hamilton Easter Field's art colony in Ogunquit,Maine. Many of his books published during the ensuing ten years used jackets and illustrations that Dos Passos created.
While Dos Passos never gained recognition as a great artist, he continued to paint throughout his lifetime and his body of work was well respected. His art most often reflected his travels in Spain, Mexico, North Africa, plus the streets and cafés of the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris that he had frequented with good friends Fernand Leger, Ernest Hemingway, Blaise Cendrars and others. Between 1925 and 1927, Dos Passos wrote plays as well as created posters and set designs for the New Playwrights Theatre in New York City. In his later ye