E. L. Doctorow

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. Thenovel which made him a household name, Ragtime, was notable for itsinclusion of early turn-of-the-century figures like Harry Houdini,Henry Ford, JP Morgan and Emma Goldman; it also featured Sigmund Freudand Carl Jung enjoying a ride together on Coney Island. “His big topicis challenging the official version of things,” says John G. Parks,author of E.L. Doctorow – Literature and Life, “because it’s usuallythe victors who tell the story and he feels that serious authors have achance to challenge the official version of any story.”

E.L. Doctorow was born in 1931 to a musical family: his mother wasan 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 hassaid that he grew up in “a lower middle-class environment of generallyenlightened socialist sensibility.” His books bear out that commitment,often focusing on the poor and dispossessed, though he transcends thegenre limits of social critique as deftly as he does those ofhistorical fiction. After graduating from the Bronx High School ofScience, he attended Kenyon College, then a hotbed of literary activityunder the guiding hand of John Crowe Ransom. He received his B.A. fromKenyon in 1952 and continued on to Columbia University to pursuegraduate work. He had to forego his studies when he was drafted intothe army and stationed in Germany. After his discharge he workedbriefly at LaGuardia Airport as a reservations clerk, before becoming abook reader for Columbia Pictures. It was during these three years ofreading nearly a novel a day that convinced him he could do what theauthors he read did – and probably better. The novel that he wrote,Welcome to Hard Times, is the only Western in Doctorow’s oeuvre, but itprefigures his interest in history and character, as well as featuringan innovative framing device.

After his work with Columbia Pictures, Doctorow became an editor forNew American Library in the early 60s; he was editor in chief for DialPress from 1964 – 1969. It was during his time at Dial that he beganworking on The Book of Daniel. Fictionalizing the story of Julius andEthel Rosenberg, Doctorow focused on America’s communist-baiting pastas experienced through Daniel, their son. The book was nominated for aNational Book Award and was a critical success. It was his next novel,though, that would catapult E.L. Doctorow into the circle of criticallyacclaimed and hugely bestselling authors, where he remains to this day.

Ragtime was published in 1975 to nearly universal acclaim. Chartingpre-war America through three families and an assortment of historicalpersonae, the novel also pays homage to Heinrich Von Kleist’s novella“Michael Kohlhaas.” Such allusiveness and play put Doctorow on thepostmodern map. Frederic Jameson singled Ragtime out in his seminalwork Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism as anexample of the crisis of historiography. Doctorow has published morethan 15 books since Ragtime, including Billy Bathgate, which won aPEN/Faulkner Award and was the basis for a movie starring Bruce Willisand Nicole Kidman. His latest novel, The March, tells the story ofGeneral Sherman’s scorched earth march through Georgia and theCarolinas in the final years of the Civil War. It was awarded both theNational Book Critics Circle award (his second after Ragtime) and thePEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. E.L.Doctorow has also been awarded the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction,the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts andLetters, and the prestigious National Humanities Medal, conferred bythe president. His novel World’s Fair was awarded the National BookAward in 1986.

As Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker has said, “He is the world’s literary historian.”

E.L. Doctorow has taught at many prestigious universities includingUniversity of California- Irving, Sarah Lawrence, Yale University DramaSchool, Princeton University and New York University. He and his wifelive in New York.

Bibliography:
(1960) Welcome to Hard Times
(1966) Big As Life
(1968) The Songs of Billy Bathgate (short story)
(1971) The Book of Daniel
(1975) Ragtime
(1979) Drinks Before Dinner (play)
(1980) Loon Lake (novel)
(1982) American Anthem
(1983) Essays and Conversations
(1984) Lives of the Poets: Six Stories and a Novella
(1985) World's Fair
(1989) Billy Bathgate
(1993) Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution: Selected Essays 1977-92
(1994) Poets and Presidents: Selected Essays 1977-92
(1994) The Waterworks
(2000) City of God
(2002) Lamentation: 9/11 (text)
(2003) Reporting the Universe (nonfiction)
(2004) Sweet Land Stories
(2005) The March
(2006) Creationists: Selected Essays 1993-2006
(2009) Homer & Langley