Word: bronxful
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...Arthur Flegenheimer, Billy's self-described "mentor" and as romantically dangerous a father figure as any lad could desire. Billy is his real name, Bathgate an alias he has invented, lifted from a street, known for its open-air markets, a few blocks from his birthplace in the Bronx. Billy's education in the criminal life is completed before his 16th birthday...
...this novel mingles fictional characters with historical ones: Schultz, Walter Winchell, Thomas E. Dewey. The setting combines Depression seediness and underworld glamour in a manner reminiscent of Loon Lake (1980). And this is not the first time Doctorow has written about a boy's coming of age in the Bronx; he did so in World's Fair (1985), even giving its made-up hero his own first name, Edgar. But the author is not simply repeating himself this time out. He is mixing elements from his other novels in a manner that proves combustible and incandescent...
...only is Doctorow's novel a welltold story, but it also has a poetic quality that barely misses overdescription. In one scene, Doctorow depicts a Bronx market, with "every one of the merchants competing with the same oranges and apples and tangerines and peaches and plums for the same prices," and where merchants shout out their prices. "They called Missus, look, I got the best, feel this grapefruit, fresh Georgia peaches just in. They talked they cajoled and the women shopping talked back...
...Doctorow has adopted Bathgate's code, he amazes with his dexterity. From a Saratoga racetrack to a Bronx orphanage, he manipulates scene and language, and his freedom of form is the product and proof of great control...
...people of affluence returned to the more normal thing: they had it, they showed it. And that radiated throughout society. When I was spending time in the Bronx, I saw young black men wearing chains with what I thought was the peace symbol. I thought, how interesting that these young men, living in such difficult circumstances, would still be concerned about such issues as world peace. And then I came to realize that these weren't peace symbols -- they were the hood ornament from a Mercedes. And they knew everything about a Mercedes, how much it cost, how fast...