A superb collection of fifteen storiesâincluding âWakefield,â the inspiration for the film starring Bryan Cranstonâby the author of Ragtime, The March, The Book of Daniel, and Billy Bathgate
He has been called âa national treasureâ by George Saunders. Doctorowâs great topic, said Don DeLillo, is âthe reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history.â This power is apparent everywhere in these stories: the bravery and self-delusion of people seeking the American dream; the geniuses, mystics, and charlatans who offer people false hope, or an actual glimpse of greatness.
In âA House on the Plains,â a mother has a plan for financial independence, which may include murder. In âWalter John Harmon,â a man starts a cult using subterfuge and seduction. âJolene: A Lifeâ follows a teenager who escapes her home for Hollywood on a perilous quest for success. âHeist,â the account of an Episcopal priest coping with a crisis of faith, was expanded into the bestseller City of God. âThe Water Works,â about the underbelly of 1870s New York, grew into a brilliant novel. âLiner Notes: The Songs of Billy Bathgateâ is a corollary to the renowned novel and includes Doctorowâs revisions.
These fifteen stories, written from the 1960s to the early twenty-first century, and selected, revised, and placed in order by the author himself shortly before he died in 2015, are a testament to the genius of E. L. Doctorow.
Praise for Doctorow: Collected Stories
âHere, without the framework of historical context that defines his best-known novels, we discover a Doctorow equally adept at plumbing the contemporary American psyche and are reminded of literatureâs loss following his death.ââO: The Oprah Magazine
âThese talesâsketches, really, wide-ranging in time, place and circumstancesâare penned by a modern master. . . . What makes Doctorowâs historical novels brilliant is their engaging prose, smart writerly style, unconventional narratives and inventive and entertaining plots. Same for these dog-eared, pre-owned stories.ââUSA Today
Praise for E. L. Doctorow
âHe has rewarded us, these forty-five years, with a vision of ourselves, as a people, a vision possessed of what I might call âaspirational verveââhe sees us clearly and tenderly, just as we are, but also sees past thatâto what we might, at our best, become.ââGeorge Saunders
âDoctorow did not so much write fiction about history as he seemed to occupy history itself. He owned it. He made it his own.ââTa-Nehisi Coates
âOn every level, [Doctorowâs] work is powerful. . . . His sensitivity to language is perfectly balanced, and complemented by a gigantic vision.ââJennifer Egan
â[He wrote] with such stunning audacity that I can still remember my parentsâ awed dinner-table conversation, that summer, about a novel they were reading, called Ragtime, that went up to the overgrown wall enclosing the garden of fiction and opened the doorway to history.ââMichael Chabon
âDoctorowâs prose tends to create its own landscape, and to become a force that works in opposition to the power of social reality.ââDon DeLillo
âA writer of dazzling gifts and boundless imaginative energy.ââJoyce Carol Oates