80 Years with Dos Passos

CHOSEN COUNTRY (485 pp.)--John Dos Passos--Houghton Mifflin ($4).

John Dos Passos' massive, radical trilogy, U.S.A. (1930-36), sizzled with social protest, sent admiring critics scurry-ng to Balzac and Tolstoy for comparisons. Now a mellow 55, Dos Passos has put together a long, loose chronicle that parallels the history of many an intellectual of his own generation.

Chosen Country spraddles some 80-odd years of American life (1848-1930), but ;he only ground it really covers is from soapbox to soap opera and back. To hold that ground, Dos Passos mobilizes a small army of characters, chief among them Jay Pignatelli.

Jay is a man without a country, or feels he is. Illegitimate son of a sporty Italo-American lawyer-millionaire and a destitute Kentucky belle, he spends his boyhood caroming around Europe. When he gets to the U.S. and Harvard Law School, the strain of being a "wop" makes him as sensitive as his bastardy. The pinch of his father's dwindling fortune makes him self-reliant, and his jumps through the rusty hoops of experience set up by Novelist Dos Passos make him a bore. Examples: Jay's first impotent foray into sex with a Greenwich Village "free love" addict; Jay seeing a friend die during his "baptism of fire" in World War I; Jay defending a pair of Sacco-Vanzetti-like philosophical anarchists without fee.

Jay gradually revs up the tempo of his life with casual fornications. "She pushed her face with wide wet lips and dark staring eyes up into his. 'Jay, I'm glad it's you instead of the iceman or something.' " But he never comes to know his true self or his native land until he falls head-over-heels in love with a girl named Lulie, straight from the Midwestern heart of America. " 'Husband,' she said. 'Wife,' he said. The words made them bashful. They clung together against their bashfulness . . . The risen sun over the ocean shone in their faces." Novelist Dos Passos was better when he was angry.

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