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E. L. Doctorow

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Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox writer Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (January 6, 1931 – July 21, 2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction.

He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama, including the award-winning novels Ragtime (1975), Billy Bathgate (1989), and The March (2005). These, like many of his other works, placed fictional characters in recognizable historical contexts, with known historical figures, and often used different narrative styles. His stories were recognized for their originality and versatility, and Doctorow was praised for his audacity and imagination.<ref name=nyt>"E.L. Doctorow Dies at 84; Literary Time Traveler Stirred Past Into Fiction", The New York Times, July 21, 2015</ref>

A number of Doctorow's novels and short stories were also adapted for the screen, including Welcome to Hard Times (1967) starring Henry Fonda, Daniel (1983) starring Timothy Hutton, Billy Bathgate (1991) starring Dustin Hoffman, and Wakefield (2016) starring Bryan Cranston. His most notable adaptations were for the film Ragtime (1981) and the Broadway musical of the same name (1998), which won four Tony Awards.Template:NoteTag

Doctorow was the recipient of numerous writing awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award which he was awarded three different times (for Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and The March). At the time of his death, President Barack Obama called him "one of America's greatest novelists".<ref>"US novelist EL Doctorow dies at 84", BBC, July 22, 2015</ref>

Doctorow was a member of the Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel group. In 1984, he signed a letter protesting German arms sales to Saudi Arabia.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Early lifeEdit

Doctorow was born January 6, 1931,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> in the Bronx, the son of Rose (Levine) and David Richard Doctorow, second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish extraction who named him after Edgar Allan Poe.<ref name=newsweek>Wutz, Michael. "The E.L. Doctorow I Remember", Newsweek, July 22, 2015</ref> His father ran a small music shop.<ref>Intersections: E.L. Doctorow on Rhythm and Writing, June 28, 2004.</ref> He attended city public grade schools and the Bronx High School of Science where, surrounded by mathematically gifted children, he fled to the office of the school literary magazine, Dynamo, which published his first literary effort. He then enrolled in a journalism class to increase his opportunities to write.<ref>American Conversation: E.L. Doctorow Template:Webarchive, September 25, 2008.</ref>

Doctorow attended Kenyon College in Ohio, where he studied with John Crowe Ransom, acted in college theater productions and majored in philosophy. While at Kenyon College, Doctorow joined the Middle Kenyon Association, and befriended Richard H. Collin.<ref name="Kenyon news">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="A group">Template:Cite journal</ref> After graduating with honors in 1952, he completed a year of graduate work in English drama at Columbia University before being drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War. In 1954 and 1955, he served as a corporal in the Signal Corps in West Germany.<ref name=huffington>"Beloved Historical Fiction Author E.L. Doctorow Dead At 84", Huffington Post, July 21, 2015</ref><ref name=pbs>"E.L. Doctorow, acclaimed author of historical fiction, dies at 84", PBS, July 21, 2015</ref>

Back in New York after military service, Doctorow worked as a reader for a motion picture company. Reading so many Westerns inspired his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times. Begun as a parody of western fiction, it evolved into a reclamation of the genre.<ref name=npr_parody>Template:Cite news</ref> It was published to positive reviews in 1960, with Wirt Williams of The New York Times describing it as "taut and dramatic, exciting and successfully symbolic."<ref>Williams, Wirt. "'Welcome to Hard Times'", The New York Times, September 25, 1960</ref>

When asked how he decided to become a writer, he said, "I was a child who read everything I could get my hands on. Eventually, I asked of a story not only what was to happen next, but how is this done? How am I made to live from words on a page? And so I became a writer."<ref name=guardian2>"EL Doctorow, author of Ragtime and Billy Bathgate, dies in New York aged 84", The Guardian, U.K., July 22, 2015</ref>

CareerEdit

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To support his family, Doctorow spent nine years as a book editor, first at New American Library working with Ian Fleming and Ayn Rand among others; and from 1964, as editor-in-chief at Dial Press, publishing work by James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Ernest J. Gaines, and William Kennedy, among others.<ref name="telegraph"/><ref name="guardian"/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> During this time he published his second novel Big As Life (1966), which Doctorow has, subsequently, not allowed to be republished.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:NoteTag

In 1969, Doctorow left publishing to pursue a writing career. He accepted a position as Visiting Writer at the University of California, Irvine, where he completed The Book of Daniel (1971),<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> a freely fictionalized consideration of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was widely acclaimed, called a "masterpiece" by The Guardian, and said by The New York Times to launch the author into "the first rank of American writers" according to Christopher Lehmann-Haupt.<ref>Review of 'The Book of Daniel', The New York Times, June 7, 1971.</ref>

File:E l doctorow 2751.JPG
Doctorow in 2014

Doctorow's next book, written in his home in New Rochelle, New York, was Ragtime (1975), later named one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library editorial board.<ref>"Modern Library: 100 Best Novels". Random House. Retrieved September 5, 2008.</ref> His subsequent work includes the award-winning novels World's Fair (1985), Billy Bathgate (1989), and The March (2005), as well as several volumes of essays and short fiction.

Novelist Jay Parini is impressed by Doctorow's skill at writing fictionalized history in a unique style, "a kind of detached but arresting presentation of history that mingled real characters with fictional ones in ways that became his signature manner".<ref name=cnn>"E.L. Doctorow's gift", CNN, July 22, 2015</ref> In Ragtime, for example, he arranges the story to include Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung sharing a ride at Coney Island, or a setting with Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan.<ref name=cnn/>

Despite the immense research Doctorow needed to create stories based on real events and real characters, reviewer John Brooks notes that they were nevertheless "alive enough never to smell the research in old newspaper files that they must have required".<ref name=nyt/> Doctorow demonstrated in most of his novels "that the past is very much alive, but that it's not easily accessed," writes Parini. "We tell and retell stories, and these stories illuminate our daily lives. He showed us again and again that our past is our present, and that those not willing to grapple with 'what happened' will be condemned to repeat its worst errors."<ref name=cnn/>

Personal life and deathEdit

In 1954, Doctorow married fellow Columbia University student Helen Esther Setzer while serving in the U.S. Army in West Germany.<ref>Contemporary Jewish-American Novelists: A Bio-critical Sourcebook (1997) by Joel Shatzky and Michael Taub, pp. 54</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The couple had three children.<ref name="telegraph">Template:Cite news</ref>

Doctorow also taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Yale School of Drama, the University of Utah, the University of California, Irvine, and Princeton University. He was the Loretta and Lewis Glucksman Professor of English and American Letters at New York University. In 2001, he donated his papers to the Fales Library of New York University. In the opinion of the library's director, Marvin Taylor, Doctorow was "one of the most important American novelists of the 20th century".<ref>"From Ragtime to Our Time E.L. Doctorow Donates His Papers to NYU’S Fales Library", New York University, April 19, 2001</ref>

Doctorow died of lung cancer on July 21, 2015, aged 84, in Manhattan.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He is interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Awards and honorsEdit

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  • 1989: Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=medal>"National Humanities Medal: Nominations", NEH.gov. Retrieved March 26, 2012.</ref>

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WorksEdit

NovelsEdit

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Short story collectionsEdit

NonfictionEdit

OtherEdit

  • 1978: Drinks Before Dinner: A Play<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • 1982: American Anthem (photographic essay)<ref name="conversations">Conversations with E.L. Doctorow (1999) by E.L. Doctorow and Christopher D. Morris, chronology</ref>
  • 2003: Three Screenplays (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press) Template:ISBN
  • 2004: How Then Can He Mourn?, essay criticizing George W. Bush for his pre-emptive war on Iraq.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Short fictionEdit

Title Publication Collected in
"Liner Notes: The Songs of Billy Bathgate" New American Review 2 (1968) All the Time in the World
"The Foreign Legation" Vanity Fair (April 1984) Lives of the Poets
"Willi" The Atlantic (May 1984)
"The Leather Man" The Paris Review 92 (Summer 1984)
"The Writer in the Family" Esquire (August 1984)
"The Hunter" Lives of the Poets (November 1984)
"The Water Works"
"Lives of the Poets"
"Heist" The New Yorker (April 21, 1997) All the Time in the World
"A House on the Plains" The New Yorker (June 18, 2001) Sweet Land Stories
"Baby Wilson" The New Yorker (March 25, 2002)
"Jolene: A Life" The New Yorker (December 23, 2002)
"Walter John Harmon" The New Yorker (May 12, 2003)
"Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden" Virginia Quarterly Review (Spring 2004)
"Wakefield" The New Yorker (January 14, 2008) All the Time in the World
"All the Time in the World" The Kenyon Review (Winter 2009)
"Edgemont Drive" The New Yorker (April 26, 2010)
"Assimilation" The New Yorker (November 22, 2010)
"The Drummer Boy on Independence Day" The New Yorker (July 8-15, 2024) -

NotesEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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Further readingEdit

External linksEdit

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Book reviewsEdit

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