Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos (Houghton Mifflin, 1964)

This novel, originally publshed by George H. Doran in 1921, is about American soldiers in WWI.  It follows them through basic training in the United States to several years of miserable battle in France.  Dos Passos' writing is a pleasure to read: his prose is artfully crafted and always interesting and engaging.

After reading this I got three-quarters of the way through Chosen Country, a much later (1951)  Dos Passos novel.  It's an ambitious multi-decade and -generational saga that follows a mid-western family through the first half of the 20th century.  I stopped without finishing it because it didn't seem as authentic or artful as the other Dos Passos books I've read.  It was dull and plodding (with a charmless young woman who is supposed to be insouciantly charming at its center) and seemed surprisingly generic, exhibiting none of the scintillating prose I associate with Dos Passos.