E. L. Doctorow in conversation with Michael March

New York, 1997

What is the source for your novels?

My novels begin in the private excitements of my mind, images, musical phrases, half heard remarks, ideas of justice...

Loon Lake came of the experience of riding in the AdirondackMountains of northern New York State and passing a sign on the roadwith those two words - Loon Lake, The loon is a north American bird, alarge black and white diving bird that feeds on fish, very ancient asbird species go, with red eyes and a primordial beak and an assortmentof weird calls. If you hear one at night you will never forget it. I'mnot sure if such a bird is found in Europe. (I'm not sure if there areany birds left in Europe.)

Ragtime came of listening to the piano rags of Scott Joplin while staring at the wall of my study,

The Book of Daniel was inspired by a photograph of the electricchair at Sing Sing prison. I happened to see this photo in 1968, whenthe antiwar and countercultural youth movements in the United Stateswere at their peak.

Billy Bathgate grew from the image in my mind of men in tuxedosstanding at night on the deck of a tugboat. I wondered what they weredoing there.

And so on... All my books are acts of deduction from these unbidden images or private excitements of mind,

In Poets and Presidents you are taken by the American Constitution. Is this document a true model?

Everything written has a voice. The voice of the AmericanConstitution is of course legalistic. It assumes the legal diction ofthe empire - Britain - it has just supplanted. But it is moreprofoundly a scriptural voice. It is futuristic. It assumes for itselfthe power endlessly to give law, now and forever. It is a voice from onhigh, prophetic and self authenticating. It ordains, as God ordains,but in the name of the people. The ordaining voice of the Constitutionis scriptural, but in claiming its authority from the public consent,it presents itself as the sacred text of secular humanism. That is itsgenius, and why as nothing more than a piece of paper it has managed tostructure this otherwise unruly nation. With the appended Bill ofRights and antislavery amendments, it is our indigenous sacred text,and like all sacred texts it is subject to commentary andinterpretation that becomes an additional body of law that grows uparound it, just as the Torah has produced its Talmud, the Koran itshadith, and the New Testament its apostolic teachings. We strive, notalways happily, to live up to our Constitution. We haven't yet. But itis undeniably our conscience, residing even, one hopes, in the souls ofour worst demagogues and most intolerant men of the cloth.

Can a poet be President?

No American poet has ever become close to being a President. Thehighest rank for us is customs inspector - that's what Herman Melvillewas, and Nathaniel Hawthorne for a while. Writers of the United Statesare not considered seriously for office. Our diction, our means ofcommunication, is too textured, personal, unpredictable. We haveimaginations. American politicians are not supposed to haveimaginations, or use words in a way that is illuminating. In theFifties, Dwight Eisenhower, who could hardly speak a grammaticalsentence, won in a landslide over Adlai Stevenson, whose spoken Englishwas like music. Americans will elect a man who speaks in clichés andlies in simple forthright language.

The Czech people are lucky tohave Vaclav Havel, and he is lucky, as a poet, playwright, essayist, asa political philosopher, to have the Czech people. I note one crucialdifference between Mr. Havel's career and that of American politicians:his imprisonment preceded his election to office. In my country,politicians assume office first, and then they go to jail.