Tribute: E.L. Doctorow
The Bronx-born E.L. (Edgar Lawrence) Doctorow made the past come alive through his many novels –among them Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, The Book of Daniel, World Fair, and Loon Lake. He had been named after Edgar Allan Poe, whom he often disparaged as America's "greatest bad writer." During his long career, Doctorow would win the PEN/Faulkner Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. The March was widely recognized as a signature book, treated by critics as the climactic work of a career. John Updike, who hadn’t particularly cared for Ragtime, would write, “Reading historical fiction, we often itch, our curiosity piqued, to consult a book of straight history, to get to the facts without the fiction. But The March stimulates little such itch; it offers an illumination, fitful and flickering, of a historic upheaval that only fiction could provide. Doctorow here appears not so much a reconstructor of history as a visionary who seeks in time past occasions for poetry.” Doctorow died at the age of 84.
You can listen to all of our interviews with E.L. Doctorow below. He even treated us to Guest Picks in 2014.
January 2014, for the novel Andrew’s Brain
September 2009, for the novel Homer & Langley
September 2005, for the novel The March
May 2004, for his collection Sweet Land Stories
February 2000, for the novel City of God
