AMERICAN NOVELIST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25814, 9 April 1945, Page 6

AMERICAN NOVELIST

EXPERIENCES IN PACIFIC (0.C.) NOUMEA, Mar. 31.

That American literature needs new blood, having run down to a low level in the past five years, is the opinion of Mr John Dos Passos, novelist, who has been in the Pacific for the past few* months preparing a series of articles for a well-known illustrated magazine. He passed through this week, returning to the United States from the Philippines via Australia and New Caledonia. Mr Dos Passos, who came to the fore as a young writer following the Great War, gave it as his opinion that actual war-time and army life were not immediately conducive to productive writing, but that this war, like the last, migh well prove a formative period for new writers and new writing. “There is plenty of room for new writers in America to-day,” he added. Early last December he started out in the Marshalls and the Gilberts and went on to Guam and Saipan. He then went out with the fleet, and was also on one of the early bombardments of Iwo Jima. His most interesting experience was a day spent with the guerrillas on an island in the Philippines. They were a ragged band, living in the interior with the Japanese outside them. One of the airstrips they had had been in the possession of the enemy only five days earlier.