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Rosinante To The Road Again
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1922
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70 people want to read
About the author
John Dos Passos
219 books594 followersJohn Dos Passos was a prominent American novelist, artist, and political thinker best known for his U.S.A. trilogy—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money—a groundbreaking work of modernist fiction that employed experimental narrative techniques to depict the complexities of early 20th-century American life. Born in Chicago in 1896, he was educated at Harvard and served as an ambulance driver during World War I, experiences that deeply influenced his early literary themes. His first novel, One Man’s Initiation: 1917, and the antiwar Three Soldiers drew on his wartime observations and marked him as a major voice among the Lost Generation.
Dos Passos’s 1925 novel Manhattan Transfer brought him widespread recognition and introduced stylistic innovations that would define his later work. His U.S.A. trilogy fused fiction, biography, newsreel-style reportage, and autobiographical “Camera Eye” sections to explore the impact of capitalism, war, and political disillusionment on the American psyche. Once aligned with leftist politics, Dos Passos grew increasingly disillusioned with Communism, especially after the murder of his friend José Robles during the Spanish Civil War—a turning point that led to a break with Ernest Hemingway and a sharp turn toward conservatism.
Throughout his career, Dos Passos remained politically engaged, writing essays, journalism, and historical studies while also campaigning for right-leaning figures like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in the 1960s. He contributed to publications such as American Heritage, National Review, and The Freeman, and published over forty books including biographies and historical reflections. Despite political shifts, his commitment to liberty and skepticism of authoritarianism remained central themes.
Also a visual artist, Dos Passos created cover art and illustrations for many of his own books, exhibiting a style influenced by modernist European art. Though less acclaimed for his painting, he remained artistically active throughout his life. His multidisciplinary approach and innovations in narrative structure influenced numerous writers and filmmakers, from Jean-Paul Sartre to Norman Mailer and Adam Curtis.
Later recognized with the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize for literature in 1967, Dos Passos’s legacy endures through his literary innovations and sharp commentary on American identity. He died in 1970, leaving behind a vast and diverse body of work that continues to shape the landscape of American fiction.
Dos Passos’s 1925 novel Manhattan Transfer brought him widespread recognition and introduced stylistic innovations that would define his later work. His U.S.A. trilogy fused fiction, biography, newsreel-style reportage, and autobiographical “Camera Eye” sections to explore the impact of capitalism, war, and political disillusionment on the American psyche. Once aligned with leftist politics, Dos Passos grew increasingly disillusioned with Communism, especially after the murder of his friend José Robles during the Spanish Civil War—a turning point that led to a break with Ernest Hemingway and a sharp turn toward conservatism.
Throughout his career, Dos Passos remained politically engaged, writing essays, journalism, and historical studies while also campaigning for right-leaning figures like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in the 1960s. He contributed to publications such as American Heritage, National Review, and The Freeman, and published over forty books including biographies and historical reflections. Despite political shifts, his commitment to liberty and skepticism of authoritarianism remained central themes.
Also a visual artist, Dos Passos created cover art and illustrations for many of his own books, exhibiting a style influenced by modernist European art. Though less acclaimed for his painting, he remained artistically active throughout his life. His multidisciplinary approach and innovations in narrative structure influenced numerous writers and filmmakers, from Jean-Paul Sartre to Norman Mailer and Adam Curtis.
Later recognized with the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize for literature in 1967, Dos Passos’s legacy endures through his literary innovations and sharp commentary on American identity. He died in 1970, leaving behind a vast and diverse body of work that continues to shape the landscape of American fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 12, 2026
It’s strange that books that fit into the pattern of current interests – meaning that you can’t wait to read them! – don’t last very long, irrespective of the length of the book. Rosinante to the Road Again by John Dos Passos fell into this mould perfectly and was finished in under a day. I will make sure I will read it again.
The book is a tourist account of a journey through Spain in the 1920s. Two companions named Telemachus and Lyaeus – more on those names later – wander through the country and actually occasionally meet people, occasionally explore the culture and society, and occasionally relate the history of wherever they go. I use the word “occasionally” because they don’t present material didactically, it is always locally inspired by their direct experience. But Rocinante to the Road Again is no mere travelogue.
For such a small book, it visits an apparent multitude of aspects of Spanish life and culture. It is a veritable masterpiece of journalism, it is poetically descriptive of landscape, it examines Spanish literature and poetry, and it even describes the difference between Catalonia and the rest of the country.
In 1922, when the book was published, Spain was changing quickly. The nature of the change from local to at least regional experience, from peasant agriculture toward industrialization, from feudalism to at least a semblance of democratic politics are felt keenly by the characters that the travellers meet. Through them, the author examines lifestyle, diet, political allegiance, the national theatre, great contemporary novelists, and one famous poet in particular.
The figure of Quixote mounted on Rosinante appears regularly, but almost to illustrate that Spain has a mythical but tangible soul. Such association are, of course, allegorical, where the author deliberately likens someone met on his travels to the knight errant. But is does work as a thread that keeps the narrative rooted in the collective imagination of a society. Dos Passos quotes the philosopher Unamuna thus: “Your Quixotic madness has made you more than once speak to me of Quixotism as the new religion. And I tell you that this new religion you propose to me, if it hatched, would have two singular merits. One that it’s founder, its prophet, Don Quixote – not Cervantes – probably wasn't a real man of flesh and blood at all, indeed we suspect that he was pure fiction. And the other merit would be that this prophet was a ridiculous prophet, people’s butt and laughing stock.” Now this could double as a description of the origin of more than one religion!
One character sums up modernity, and the changes we are still coping with. ““What they of the old time did not have,” came a deep voice from under a bowler hat, “was the leisure to be sad….”” The contrast to the peasant life, where the weather and seasons dictated activity, could not be illustrated better than the character’s words.
Why Dos Pasos names his travellers Telemachus and Lyaeus is rather baffling. It is possible Telemachus, who was a central character in the Odyssey, is merely an archetypal traveller. But why, here and there, does Dos Passos us refer to his mother, Penelope? Lyaeus is another name for Dionysus or Bacchus, and thus could be a reference to the drinking habits of the second traveller, but the characteristic is not developed. Dos Passos might be referring to the common heritage of Greece and Rome, the classical world, on the Mediterranean, but this is never clear.
Overall, Rocinante to the Road Again is both a surprising and informative read. One wishes that all travel books were like this.
The book is a tourist account of a journey through Spain in the 1920s. Two companions named Telemachus and Lyaeus – more on those names later – wander through the country and actually occasionally meet people, occasionally explore the culture and society, and occasionally relate the history of wherever they go. I use the word “occasionally” because they don’t present material didactically, it is always locally inspired by their direct experience. But Rocinante to the Road Again is no mere travelogue.
For such a small book, it visits an apparent multitude of aspects of Spanish life and culture. It is a veritable masterpiece of journalism, it is poetically descriptive of landscape, it examines Spanish literature and poetry, and it even describes the difference between Catalonia and the rest of the country.
In 1922, when the book was published, Spain was changing quickly. The nature of the change from local to at least regional experience, from peasant agriculture toward industrialization, from feudalism to at least a semblance of democratic politics are felt keenly by the characters that the travellers meet. Through them, the author examines lifestyle, diet, political allegiance, the national theatre, great contemporary novelists, and one famous poet in particular.
The figure of Quixote mounted on Rosinante appears regularly, but almost to illustrate that Spain has a mythical but tangible soul. Such association are, of course, allegorical, where the author deliberately likens someone met on his travels to the knight errant. But is does work as a thread that keeps the narrative rooted in the collective imagination of a society. Dos Passos quotes the philosopher Unamuna thus: “Your Quixotic madness has made you more than once speak to me of Quixotism as the new religion. And I tell you that this new religion you propose to me, if it hatched, would have two singular merits. One that it’s founder, its prophet, Don Quixote – not Cervantes – probably wasn't a real man of flesh and blood at all, indeed we suspect that he was pure fiction. And the other merit would be that this prophet was a ridiculous prophet, people’s butt and laughing stock.” Now this could double as a description of the origin of more than one religion!
One character sums up modernity, and the changes we are still coping with. ““What they of the old time did not have,” came a deep voice from under a bowler hat, “was the leisure to be sad….”” The contrast to the peasant life, where the weather and seasons dictated activity, could not be illustrated better than the character’s words.
Why Dos Pasos names his travellers Telemachus and Lyaeus is rather baffling. It is possible Telemachus, who was a central character in the Odyssey, is merely an archetypal traveller. But why, here and there, does Dos Passos us refer to his mother, Penelope? Lyaeus is another name for Dionysus or Bacchus, and thus could be a reference to the drinking habits of the second traveller, but the characteristic is not developed. Dos Passos might be referring to the common heritage of Greece and Rome, the classical world, on the Mediterranean, but this is never clear.
Overall, Rocinante to the Road Again is both a surprising and informative read. One wishes that all travel books were like this.
August 21, 2020
A scattershot collection of essays and fictional sketches that mostly misses the mark. As someone who admires Dos Passos’s early fiction (I haven’t delved into his post-1930s work, yet), I'm surprised to find the weakest parts of these essays are his attempts to write “literary nonfiction,” in which he portrays the Spanish peasants in the narrative style of a novelist. The writing is flat and dull in these sections, with neither the insight of fiction nor the fine detail of reportage.
Dos Passos is at his strongest in this collection when he moves away from these flights of fancy and just gives direct commentary on Spanish literature, history, art, and culture. (I realize this opinion is the opposite of most critical reviews of this text.) He tends to shift into these modes in chapters that alternate with the character sketches. Although Donald Pizer tries to argue that this structure connects Dos Passos’s essays to the fiction and poetry of High Modernism (including the author’s own later brilliant fiction of the 30s), I find the argument unconvincing for the simple reason that Dos Passos’s technique here is too unrefined. Using Don Quixote to link Spain to a mythic past and naming one traveling peasant “Telemachus” are hardly groundbreaking stylistic choices. The highlight of the book is the chapter on Machado, as Dos Passos provides a few translations of his poetry, which made me wish I were reading a collection of Machado’s poetry rather than this volume.
In short, this collection is just what it appears to be: a very young writer enamored with a country and testing out his writing chops in some early sketches -- dipping his toe into the water, so to speak. The raw talent and potential are all there, but the final product lacks refinement. A much better place to start with Dos Passos is his novel published in the previous year, Three Soldiers.
Dos Passos is at his strongest in this collection when he moves away from these flights of fancy and just gives direct commentary on Spanish literature, history, art, and culture. (I realize this opinion is the opposite of most critical reviews of this text.) He tends to shift into these modes in chapters that alternate with the character sketches. Although Donald Pizer tries to argue that this structure connects Dos Passos’s essays to the fiction and poetry of High Modernism (including the author’s own later brilliant fiction of the 30s), I find the argument unconvincing for the simple reason that Dos Passos’s technique here is too unrefined. Using Don Quixote to link Spain to a mythic past and naming one traveling peasant “Telemachus” are hardly groundbreaking stylistic choices. The highlight of the book is the chapter on Machado, as Dos Passos provides a few translations of his poetry, which made me wish I were reading a collection of Machado’s poetry rather than this volume.
In short, this collection is just what it appears to be: a very young writer enamored with a country and testing out his writing chops in some early sketches -- dipping his toe into the water, so to speak. The raw talent and potential are all there, but the final product lacks refinement. A much better place to start with Dos Passos is his novel published in the previous year, Three Soldiers.
January 2, 2018
Confusing to read .
This seemed like it could entertain, but it turned out to be mediocre. Perhaps this reader was too tired to make sense of The book, but it did seem to be boring!
This seemed like it could entertain, but it turned out to be mediocre. Perhaps this reader was too tired to make sense of The book, but it did seem to be boring!
June 25, 2019
This is the first John Dos Passos book I've read that I haven't unequivocally loved. Some beautiful prose in here, but it's drowned out by uncharacteristic pomposity and a muddled structure.
September 1, 2013
This is an interesting blend of fictional road trip, literary criticism and travel writing. Dos Passos makes it work. He hears the incipient Republicanism rising against the centuries of rule by the landowners, but not yet the Fascism, so overall it is a positive work.
The fictional thread puts two outsiders, 'Telemechus' (an American) and 'Lyaeus' (I had to look it up: an epithet for Bacchus meaning 'releaser from care' or 'releaser of high spirits and creativity' depending on the source) on the road to Toledo. They meet up with a variety of Spaniards: crotchety actors, sultry dancers, an exuberant import/export agent, and of course two (possibly mystical) counterparts to Don Quixote and Pancho. There is substantial discussion of why some Spaniards emigrate to America and why others don't, with the emphasis on the sorry condition of American life, which is said to consist only of working and then resting so you can work again. Telemechus is also in search of the 'gesture' he saw the first night at a flamenco dance: the essence of Spanishness.
Second, Dos Passos selects four or five Spanish writers from different regions to profile, which he does with great insight. They are Pio Baroja, Unamuno, Blasco Ibanez, Antonio Machado, Juan Maragall, Jacinto Benevente. In doing so he also sketches in a wide variety of scenes relevant to each one: the small town where Machado teaches, the Madrid of the theater, the family pride of the Basque. He includes many translations, presumably by himself.
And throughout, there are comments on the life that Dos Passos found and discussed with the Spanards he met. There is a commentary on the two essential Spanish 'types' of Don Quixote and Sancho Panzo, the effect on the country of having so many vibrant men leaving to explore and emigrate over the centuries, the very meagre wages and caloric intake of workers, Cordoba as the center of an infant resistance, and many other topics.
Dos Passos writing is wonderful, both in his descriptions and his analysis. Makes me want to read more.
'Born in Ronda in the wildest part of Andalusia of a family that came from Velez-Malaga, a white town near the sea in the rich fringes of the Sierra Nevada, he had the mental agility and the sceptical tolerance and the uproarious good nature of the people of that region, the sobriety and sinewiness of a mountaneer.' (on Giner de los Rios)
'Since 1918 an extraordinary tenseness has come over the lives of the frugal sinewy peasants who, through centuries of oppression and starvation, have kept, in spite of almost complete illiteracy, a curiously vivid sense of personal independence. In the backs of taverns revolutionary tracts are spelled out by some boy who has had a couple of years of school to a crowd of men who listen or repeat the words after him with the fervor of people going through a religious mystery. Unspeakable faith possesses them in what they call 'la nueva ley' (the new law) by which the good things a man wrings by his sweat from the earth shall be his and not the property of a distant senor in Madrid.' (on politics in Cordoba)
'The sea and mountains, mist and cattle and yellow broom-flowers, and fishing boats with lateen sails like dark wings against the sunrise towards Mallorca: delight of the nose and the eyes and the ears in all living perceptions until the poison of other-worldliness wells up suddently in him and he is a Christian and a mystic full of echoes of old soul-torturing.' (on Maragall)
Well worth reading. There is a wealth of writing about travels in Spain that I am working my way through; Laurie Lee and Cela so far from this period. Next on to something much darker, Orwell during the war.
Finally, if you get this from Audible.com to listen to, the narrator can speak Spanish remarkably well--unlike many books with names, places and quotations in a language the narrator mangles.
The fictional thread puts two outsiders, 'Telemechus' (an American) and 'Lyaeus' (I had to look it up: an epithet for Bacchus meaning 'releaser from care' or 'releaser of high spirits and creativity' depending on the source) on the road to Toledo. They meet up with a variety of Spaniards: crotchety actors, sultry dancers, an exuberant import/export agent, and of course two (possibly mystical) counterparts to Don Quixote and Pancho. There is substantial discussion of why some Spaniards emigrate to America and why others don't, with the emphasis on the sorry condition of American life, which is said to consist only of working and then resting so you can work again. Telemechus is also in search of the 'gesture' he saw the first night at a flamenco dance: the essence of Spanishness.
Second, Dos Passos selects four or five Spanish writers from different regions to profile, which he does with great insight. They are Pio Baroja, Unamuno, Blasco Ibanez, Antonio Machado, Juan Maragall, Jacinto Benevente. In doing so he also sketches in a wide variety of scenes relevant to each one: the small town where Machado teaches, the Madrid of the theater, the family pride of the Basque. He includes many translations, presumably by himself.
And throughout, there are comments on the life that Dos Passos found and discussed with the Spanards he met. There is a commentary on the two essential Spanish 'types' of Don Quixote and Sancho Panzo, the effect on the country of having so many vibrant men leaving to explore and emigrate over the centuries, the very meagre wages and caloric intake of workers, Cordoba as the center of an infant resistance, and many other topics.
Dos Passos writing is wonderful, both in his descriptions and his analysis. Makes me want to read more.
'Born in Ronda in the wildest part of Andalusia of a family that came from Velez-Malaga, a white town near the sea in the rich fringes of the Sierra Nevada, he had the mental agility and the sceptical tolerance and the uproarious good nature of the people of that region, the sobriety and sinewiness of a mountaneer.' (on Giner de los Rios)
'Since 1918 an extraordinary tenseness has come over the lives of the frugal sinewy peasants who, through centuries of oppression and starvation, have kept, in spite of almost complete illiteracy, a curiously vivid sense of personal independence. In the backs of taverns revolutionary tracts are spelled out by some boy who has had a couple of years of school to a crowd of men who listen or repeat the words after him with the fervor of people going through a religious mystery. Unspeakable faith possesses them in what they call 'la nueva ley' (the new law) by which the good things a man wrings by his sweat from the earth shall be his and not the property of a distant senor in Madrid.' (on politics in Cordoba)
'The sea and mountains, mist and cattle and yellow broom-flowers, and fishing boats with lateen sails like dark wings against the sunrise towards Mallorca: delight of the nose and the eyes and the ears in all living perceptions until the poison of other-worldliness wells up suddently in him and he is a Christian and a mystic full of echoes of old soul-torturing.' (on Maragall)
Well worth reading. There is a wealth of writing about travels in Spain that I am working my way through; Laurie Lee and Cela so far from this period. Next on to something much darker, Orwell during the war.
Finally, if you get this from Audible.com to listen to, the narrator can speak Spanish remarkably well--unlike many books with names, places and quotations in a language the narrator mangles.
January 30, 2014
An early work, Rosinante blends travel, literary criticism, and a fictionalized account of Dos Passos' travels in Spain with a friend. I'm guessing that the young E.E. Cummings was the model for the irrepressible Lyaeus, who contrasts with the more Puritan and introspective Telemachus, representing Dos Passos himself. The book doesn't really work; the classical pseudonyms are precious and the cultural stereotyping is obnoxious. Much of what Dos Passos observes about Spain consists of romantic notions he appears to have brought with him and projected onto the people and situations he encounters, and that aspect feels like a holdover from the late 1800s, rather than a work by a modernist author. Some of the discussion of Spanish literary figures is thoughtful, and in that sense the book can serve as a jumping off point for further reading.
August 25, 2013
Giving homage to Cervantes by using Rosinante in the title bringing with it visions of Don Quixote's trusty steed on the path of discovery. Dos Passos examines the spirit of the people of Spain in the years after World War I in this work. The comparison of the all work attitude of the Americans versus the laid back Spaniard more concerned with enjoying life was center stage. My favorite quote from the work was "They fall in love sensually with ideas, with great ideas. They Re incapable of marrying a great and pure idea and breeding a family with it; they only flirt with ideas. They want them as mistresses, sometimes just for the night. "
October 19, 2021
*Rosinante to the Road Again* is a travel book that takes us through 1922 Spain. This is scholarly writing with its best parts being about the fine arts. It also has historical value as Spain is described as having the worst of corrupt societies, where the cops are basically bullies for the government and the people are by and large starving.
I was grateful that it wasn’t all bullfighting, which has been done. Yet bullfighting in Spain is pervasive from breeding to the ring.
John Dos Passos was called by Whittaker Chambers America’s greatest author.
I was grateful that it wasn’t all bullfighting, which has been done. Yet bullfighting in Spain is pervasive from breeding to the ring.
John Dos Passos was called by Whittaker Chambers America’s greatest author.
January 24, 2015
Me ha sorprendido gratamente este libro. Dos Passos demuestra un interés sincero por conocer y comprender cómo era España en los años 20 del siglo pasado (se nota que lo vivió); y lo más importante, sabe escribirlo. La misma clarividencia se aprecia en los brillantes análisis que hace de Machado, Blasco Ibáñez, Baroja, etcétera. Un libro realmente interesante.
October 5, 2015
Pio Baroja, Quijote, Valle-Inclán, Lope de Vega, vascos, catalanes, anarquia, tauromaquia. Todo eso y más en un libro.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews