Award-Winning Author E. L. Doctorow Dies
July 22, 2015
E. L. Doctorow, one of the most respected American authors of the 1900’s, died July 21, 2015, at the age of 84. Doctorow was primarily known for his 10 novels, most of them imaginative explorations of American history. Doctorow also was a noted essayist, teacher, and editor.
Doctorow’s novels cover a span of 150 years in American history from the Civil War (1861-1865) to the turn of the new millennium in 2000. Critics praised him for his prose style and his skill at blending historical and fictional characters to create entertaining, often philosophically stimulating narratives.
Doctorow gained recognition with his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times (1960). The novel is set in the frontier American West of the later 1800’s and deals with the relationship between the individual and evil. Doctorow based The Book of Daniel (1971) on characters resembling Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, an American couple who were executed in 1953 for spying for the Soviet Union during World War II (1939-1945).
Doctorow’s next novel, Ragtime (1975), was perhaps his best-known work. Ragtime is a panoramic narrative of life in New York City in the early years of the 1900’s. The novel includes such notable Americans as banker J. P. Morgan, magician Harry Houdini, and political radical Emma Goldman. The central character was a fictional black musician named Coalhouse Walker, Jr., who was destroyed by racism in American society.
Loon Lake (1980) is set in the Great Depression of the 1930’s and involves a colorful cast of characters, including a business tycoon, his famous airplane-flying wife, gangsters, and an alcoholic poet. Doctorow continued his exploration of life in the Great Depression in World’s Fair (1985) and Billy Bathgate (1989). World’s Fair is a nostalgic portrait of family life in the Bronx borough of New York City. The title character in Billy Bathgate is a boy from New York City who drifts into the world of gangsters, including the real-life gangster Dutch Schultz.
Doctorow returned to the 1800’s in The Waterworks (1994) and The March (2005). The Waterworks is a complex mystery story set in the corrupt political society of New York City during the 1870’s. In The March, Doctorow recreated the destruction created by the Union army during Sherman’s march through the South during the Civil War.
In addition to his novels, Doctorow wrote numerous short stories, collected in Lives of the Poets (1984) and Sweet Land Stories (2004). His many stimulating essays were published in such collections as Reporting the Universe (2003) and Creationists: Selected Essays, 1993-2006 (2006). He also wrote a play, Drinks Before Dinner (1978).
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born in New York City on Jan. 6, 1931. He graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A. degree in 1952. He was an editor at the New American Library from 1959 to 1964 and editor-in-chief at the Dial Press from 1964 to 1969. Doctorow taught for many years at Sarah Lawrence College and New York University.
Other World Book articles and links:
- Motion picture (1981)
- Ragtime (music)
- WB Explains (video): How do writers deal with writer’s block (Robin Hemley, Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, discusses writer’s block and specifically Doctorow’s work, Ragtime)