For something like forty years I've been getting various sorts of narratives off my chest without being able to hit upon a classification for them. There's something dreary to me about the publisher's arbitrary division of every word written for publication into fiction and nonfiction. My writing has a most irritating way of being difficult to classify in either category. At times I would find it hard to tell you whether the stuff is prose or verse. Gradually I've come up with the tag: contemporary chronicle.


Presentation at Carleton College, Nov 30 1960

John Dos Passos Quotes

For something like forty years I've been getting various sorts of narratives off my chest without being able to hit upon a classification for them....

For something like forty years I've been getting various sorts of narratives off my chest without being able to hit upon a classification for them....

For something like forty years I've been getting various sorts of narratives off my chest without being able to hit upon a classification for them....

For something like forty years I've been getting various sorts of narratives off my chest without being able to hit upon a classification for them....