E. L. Doctorow

E. L. Doctorow
Born	Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (1931-01-06)January 6, 1931 The Bronx, New York, U.S.
Died	Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Writer, editor, professor
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Kenyon College, Columbia University
Notable works	The Book of Daniel Ragtime World's Fair Billy Bathgate The March Homer & Langley
Spouse	Helen Esther Setzer (m. 1953–2015; his death)
Children	3
Website
http://www.eldoctorow.com/

Edgar Lawrence "E. L." Doctorow (January 6, 1931 – July 21, 2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known internationally for his works of historical fiction. He has been described as one of the most important American novelists of the 20th century.

He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama. They included 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.

A number of Doctorow's novels were also adapted for the screen, including, Welcome to Hard Times (1967), with Henry Fonda, Daniel (1983), starring Timothy Hutton, and Billy Bathgate (1991) starring Dustin Hoffman. His most notable adaptations were for the film, Ragtime (1981) and the Broadway musical of the same name (1988), which won four Tony Awards.

Doctorow was the recipient of numerous writing awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Ragtime, National Book Critics Circle Award for Billy Bathgate, National Book Critics Circle Award for The March, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction. President Barack Obama called him "one of America's greatest novelists".

Early life

Doctorow was born 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. His father ran a small music shop. 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.

Doctorow attended Kenyon College in Ohio, where he studied with the poet and New Critic John Crowe Ransom, acted in college theater productions and majored in philosophy. While at Kenyon College, Doctorow joined the Middle Kenyon Association, and he became friends with fellow student and future historian Richard H. Collin. After graduating with honors in 1952, he completed a year of graduate work in English drama at Columbia University before being drafted into the United States Army. He served as a corporal in the signal corps, in Germany 1954–55 during the Allied occupation.

He returned to New York after his military service and took a job as a reader for a motion picture company, where he said he had to read so many Westerns that he was inspired to write what became his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times. He began it as a parody of western fiction, but it evolved to be a serious reclamation of the genre before he was finished. 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."

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."

Career

"When you'd read Edgar's manuscripts, it was done. That's just the kind of writer he was; he got everything right the first time. I can't think of any editorial problem we had. Even remotely. Nothing."

Jason Epstein, Doctorow's book editor

To support his family, Doctorow spent nine years as a book editor, first at NAL 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.

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), 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.

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. 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". 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.

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". 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."

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. The library's director, Marvin Taylor, said Doctorow was "one of the most important American novelists of the 20th century".

Personal life and death

In 1954, Doctorow married fellow Columbia University student Helen Esther Setzer while serving in the U.S. Army in West Germany. The couple had three children: Richard, Jenny, and Caroline.

Doctorow was a heavy smoker. He died of lung cancer on July 21, 2015, aged 84, in Manhattan.

Awards and honors

• 1975: National Book Critics Circle Award for Ragtime
• 1986: National Book Award for World's Fair
• 1989: Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction
• 1990: National Book Critics Circle Award for Billy Bathgate
• 1990: PEN/Faulkner Award for Billy Bathgate
• 1990: William Dean Howells Medal for Billy Bathgate
• 1998: National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities
• 1998: Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award from the Tulsa Library Trust
• 2005: National Book Critics Circle Award for The March
• 2006: PEN/Faulkner Award for The March
• 2012: Inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame
• 2012: PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction
• 2013: Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation
• 2013: American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction
• 2014: Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction

Works

Novels

• 1960: Welcome to Hard Times – adapted as the 1967 film Welcome to Hard Times
• 1966: Big As Life
• 1971: The Book of Daniel – historical fiction about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg – adapted as the 1983 film Daniel
• 1975: Ragtime – adapted as the 1981 film Ragtime and the 1998 Broadway musical Ragtime
• 1980: Loon Lake
• 1985: World's Fair
• 1989: Billy Bathgate – adapted as the 1991 film Billy Bathgate
• 1994: The Waterworks
• 2000: City of God
• 2005: The March
• 2009: Homer & Langley
• 2014: Andrew's Brain

Short story collections

• 1984: Lives of the Poets: Six Stories and a Novella
• 2004: Sweet Land Stories – The New York Times Notable Book
• 2011: All The Time in the World: New And Selected Stories

Plays

• 1978: Drinks Before Dinner

Other

• 1982: American Anthem (photographic essay)
• 1993: Jack London, Hemingway and the Constitution (essay collection, published in the UK as Poets and Presidents)
• 2003: Reporting the Universe, Harvard University Press
• 2006: Creationists (essay collection)
• 2008: "Wakefield" (short story), The New Yorker, January 14, 2008
• 2012: "Unexceptionalism: A Primer" (op-ed), The New York Times, April 28, 2012

Further reading

• Ramsey, Joseph G. "The Limits of Optimism: E.L. Doctorow and the American Left" Counterpunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/28/the-limits-of-optimism-e-l-doctorow-and-the-american-left/

External links

• "The Limits of Optimism: E.L. Doctorow and the American Left" by Joseph G. Ramsey http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/28/the-limits-of-optimism-e-l-doctorow-and-the-american-left/
• Official website
• E. L. Doctorow at the Internet Movie Database

Book reviews

• KCRW Bookworm Interviews, audio, with Michael Silverblatt:
  Oct 1994, Jul 1997, May 2000, Jul 2004, Aug 2009