Are there parallels in The 42nd Parallel?

I will be honest, during my first read through of John Dos Passos’ The 42^nd Parallel, I had no clue how the whole thing tied together. I still do not have a very good idea as to how the sections relate to each other, but I will give it my best guess. Dos Passos uses three different headings to distinguish his sections—“Newsreel,” “The Camera Eye,” and “Mac.” The most coherent section is the one entitled “Mac,” although I do not know why it has that name. This section tells the story of Fainy McCreary and is relatively easy to follow.

The “Newsreel” section only occurs twice and, for the most part, appears to be information that Fainy could be reading from a newspaper that he picked up. The people mentioned in both of the “Newsreel” sections were actual people who were alive during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Also, the lyrics to the songs that are interspersed in the sections are from songs that were written during the same time period.  A final indication that the “Newsreel” sections could be news that Fainy is reading is that a lot of the news reported in the sections takes place in the Midwest, close to Chicago. My best guess for the “Newsreel” sections is that Dos Passos is relating news to the reader that would have been relevant to the setting of Fainy’s story.

“The Camera Eye” section, on the other hand, occurs four times. This section, to me, is the most strange. It comes to the reader in a stream of consciousness form, and it is not completely in English. Also, the mechanics of this section are completely random—there is no punctuation and very little capitalization. I just do not know what to do with this section when trying to relate it to Fainy’s story. To me, it is a “camera eye” view into someone’s mind, but I am not sure whose mind it is.