The Best Times: An Informal Memoir

The Best Time by John Dos Passos

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This is a delightful and captivating worm's eye view of American literary life in the early 20th Century. Dos Passos (“Dos”) was exactly the right age and in the right place to be part of the wave that transformed American literature. As a young man in his early twenties, he was friends with Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other literary luminaries. As a teenager, he volunteered to serve in the ambulance corps on the German front. He was transferred to Italy, where his radicalism resulted in him being invited to leave. Cummings had his own run-in with the French, which resulted in his imprisonment and the writing of “The Big Room.” He met Hemingway during the war and bummed around with Hemingway in Paris and Key West. Dos was an adventurous traveler. One chapter describes his journey through the Caucuses into Iran and back up through Iraq across the desert to Syria facing off brigands and robbers.

This is a sweet book because, I assume, Dos was a sweet man. This book really is his best memories. He has no knives to bury or grudges to share. For example, although the book was written in 1966 - five years after the death of Hemingway - the stories he shares about Hemingway are flattering to Hemingway. There is a brief note of melancholy when he reflects on how age can drive people apart, but there is nothing here about Hemingway's shameful treatment of his friend during the Spanish Civil War as “Hem” came under the influence of the Communists.

The first chapter may be the sweetest chapter as Dos reflects on his father. Dos was born in irregular circumstances and was not regularized until after his father's first wife died. Nonetheless, Dos shows a great deal of affection for his father, and the affection was shared. I ended that chapter with a tear in my eye.

Many writers, playwrights, and authors make cameos in his memoir from a period when they were just starting to become well-known. Some never made it or died in the war. We get to see unguarded moments when these icons were in their twenties and interacted with each other as young men. We see speak-easies and the casual avoidance of Prohibition. This is a living history or history as it was lived.

And, if you are older, you come to realize that the Best Times really were when you were in your twenties and everything was so serious but you really were existentially free to do whatever you wanted.