E. L. Doctorow

E. L. Doctorow, born in 1931, American novelist, known for his fictional portrayals of the American historical experience, particularly immigration, class conflicts, politics, and urban life. Doctorow's novels are characterized by inventive form and radical social criticism.

Born in New York City, Edgar Laurence Doctorow was educated at Kenyon College. He worked as an editor in New York City from 1959 to 1969, serving as editor-in-chief of Dial Press from 1964 to 1969. In the 1970s and 1980s Doctorow was a writer-in-residence and a creative writing fellow at various colleges and universities, including Sarah Lawrence College and Yale and Princeton universities. His first novel was Welcome to Hard Times (1960). It was followed by Big as Life (1966).

Doctorow's novel The Book of Daniel (1971) is a fictionalization of the lives of the family of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the American husband and wife who were executed in 1953 for transmitting atomic military secrets to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The book is narrated through the angry voice of Daniel Isaacson, a son of parents who were executed. Isaacson searches for the truth of his parents' lives and for his own emotional survival in the revolutionary atmosphere of the United States of the late 1960s. The novel cross-cuts between Daniel's meditations on American left-wing politics and conservative reactions and his poignant accounts of his family's destruction.

In Ragtime (1975; National Book Critics Circle Award, 1976) Doctorow melded United States history and fiction into a dazzling account of historical and imagined personages who mingle in the American social world of the early 20th century. Such figures as industrialist Henry Ford, magician Harry Houdini, financier J. P. Morgan, and actor Evelyn Nesbit are portrayed alongside fictional characters from the American upper-middle classes as well as from working-class immigrants and African Americans. The novel is narrated in a flat, declarative style that belies its anger and fascination with the relentless forces of American energy in the modern world.

Doctorow's later novels include Loon Lake (1980) and Billy Bathgate (1989; National Book Critics Circle Award, 1990), fictional accounts of American society during the 1920s and 1930s. The two books feature gangsters, labor and union strife, and fables of upward mobility—all depicted through Doctorow's vivid scenes and deep irony. Doctorow also wrote World's Fair (1985; National Book Award, 1986), a memoir of his childhood in New York City in the 1930s, and Lives of the Poet: Six Stories and a Novella (1984). The Waterworks (1994), both science fiction and mystery, is a haunting tale of a mad medical genius in the New York City of 1871. In City of God (2000), which centers around the theft of a crucifix, Doctorow uses an experimental style and tells the story in fragmented and disordered narration. The March (2005) chronicles William Tecumseh Sherman’s march through the Carolinas and Georgia during the American Civil War and the resulting dislocation for white and black families.