ABSTRACT
One Man's Initiation is not a pleasant affair, despite the beautiful simplicity with which it is written. More than from a revulsion against the intimate glimpses of the physical devastation of war, the unpleasantness of the book comes from the once forbidden expression of mental devastation so closely related to the physical horrors. John Dos Passos wrote these memoirs before he fictionized his observations in Three Soldiers. One is seeing the novel at a stage of its gestation, before the vitals were covered by plot. The literary workmanship is remarkably skilful as war is forced to parade in nakedness—robbed of its chauvinistic, romance-embroidered clothing.
