Doctorow

Edgar Lawrence "E.L." Doctorow
1931-2015
(photo: Ruth Fremson for NY Times)
no copyright infringement intended

His parents (kind of social democrats old fashion) named him after Edgar Allan Poe; as a child he was reading as much as he could; eventually he started to be interested not only in what was to happen, but how was that done; so he became a writer, one of the most important American novelists of the past century (wiki); his novels situate fictional characters in recognizable historical contexts, among identifiable historical figures and often within unconventional narrative forms (nyt); he articulated the American darkness as well as any writer ever has - hubris, greed, stupidity around race and class — but this awareness of darkness vibrated alongside a deep optimism, a fascination with the beauty and genius of the American experiment (newyorker); Ragtime, World’s Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Book of Daniel, and Loon Lake constitute his essential list (Entertainment Weekly).




(A Life in Books)