id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
londonreviewbookshop-co-uk-1663		The Rambunctious Protagonist · London Review Bookshop			.html	text/html	1196	78	74	I came across John Dos Passos' novel Manhattan Transfer, set in New York in the early 1920s, when I was in my own early twenties. I don't think that any of these writers, though, captured the essence of the growing, changing city in quite the way that Dos Passos did. The same has also been said, with more weight I think, of 19th century Paris in the hands of Balzac, whose intent as the self-appointed 'secretary of society' in La Comedie Humaine, seems closer to what Dos Passos aimed for in Manhattan Transfer. Dos Passos's New York also seethes with energy. Dos Passos' New York is a rambunctious protagonist who grows up too fast, assuming a complexity that resists simplistic interpretation. It is also a persona that encompasses many aspects of our species' urban journey, from the kind of bewilderment and loneliness I experienced on my first visit to New York through to the noise and confusion that marks the lives of so many citizens in the world today.	./cache/londonreviewbookshop-co-uk-1663.html	./txt/londonreviewbookshop-co-uk-1663.txt