Dos Passos

The Newsreel and Camera Eye sections certainly do offer an interesting piece to Mac. Although it feels easier to disregard these sections as irrelevant to the story, we know Dos Passos has added these sections in his writing for a purpose. There must be a reason why these are present throughout the narrative, but this reason is unclear just on a first read.

The very first Camera Eye section could easily be a memory that Fainy has of him and his mother. Although it is not explicitly stated in the section, it seems reasonable to me that in the next section where Fainy's mother dies, Fainy would have just had a flashback of his mother in a stream of consciousness thought process.

The final Camera Eye section shows the narrator seeing a man reciting Shakespeare's Othello. This could also be a view into the eyes of Fainy inside his mind. Given that Doc Bingham recited Shakespeare on several occasions and it was his recitation of Shakespeare that landed the two of them into trouble in the final few pages of the story, it would seem reasonable again to believe that the Camera Eye sections are through the point of view of Fainy and that these shed insight into what Fainy is really thinking at the times of these incidents.

The Newsreel sections are harder for me to figure out the purpose of. The only idea that pops into my head is that when these sections occur, it also occurs around the same time of when Fainy was reading a newspaper. The sections cover a vast amount of material, most of which are news clippings or happenings of the time when Dos Passos wrote. Alexander's Ragtime Band is mentioned in one of the newsreel sections and this was a song that came out around the time of the publishing of this story.

Although none of these things are stated explicitly throughout the story, this seems most logical to me.