E. L. Doctorow

Widely regarded as one of America’s preeminent authors, Edgar Lawrence Doctorow has published some of the most important novels in contemporary letters. His style is at once accessible and philosophically dense, and he is known for his varied and subtle prose.

While his novels can be broadly classified as historical fiction, Doctorow has never been much of a stickler for “Historic Truth,” preferring to place historical figures in extraordinary situations. The novel which made him a household name, Ragtime, was notable for its inclusion of early turn-of-the-century figures like Harry Houdini, Henry Ford, JP Morgan and Emma Goldman; it also featured Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung enjoying a ride together on Coney Island. “His big topic is challenging the official version of things,” says John G. Parks, author of E.L. Doctorow – Literature and Life, “because it’s usually the victors who tell the story and he feels that serious authors have a chance to challenge the official version of any story.” E.L. Doctorow was born in 1931 to a musical family: his mother was an accomplished pianist and his father owned a music shop in the Bronx, where he was born and raised and has set much of his fiction. He has said that he grew up in “a lower middle-class environment of generally enlightened socialist sensibility.” His books bear out that commitment, often focusing on the poor ...

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