Word: doctorow
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Doctorow...
Those who have followed E.L. Doctorow's career -- a considerable number, judging from the commercial and critical successes of previous books -- will find much in Billy Bathgate that feels, initially, familiar. As in Ragtime (1975), 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...
...readers may wonder how this young, confessed truant has run across terms like "dissynchronously" or where he picked up the poetic skills to describe a waterfall: "At the very bottom there hovered a perpetually shimmering rainbow as if not water but light was pouring and shattering into its colors." Doctorow eventually accounts for Billy's erudition, but by that time, no explanation is really required. Billy's voice has long since justified both itself and the unique power of the written word: it is convincing, mesmerizing and finally unforgettable...
...Doctorow's Billy Bathgate is the tale of a Bronx boy who comes under the vivid tutelage of a gangster named Dutch Schultz. Combustible reading...
...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...