Manhattan Transfer

Instead of one hero, this novel follows dozens of New Yorkers from the 1890s to the 1920s: Ellen Thatcher, an actress who rises through marriages and affairs; Jimmy Herf, a disillusioned reporter; Congo, a French sailor who becomes a rich bootlegger; a milkman, a lawyer, a union organiser, immigrants and drifters, as the city grows into a roaring, merciless metropolis. Their stories are cut together like scenes in a film, with newspaper headlines, songs and street noises.

John Dos Passos (1896–1970) published the novel in 1925, the same year as The Great Gatsby, and its collage technique made him one of the leading experimental writers of his generation. Compare Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.