Word: doctorow
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LOON LAKE by E.L. Doctorow; Random House; 258 pages...
Author E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime (1975) Author E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime (1975) was one of the cultural happenings of the past decade. The novel received largely rhapsodic reviews; its fictional use of such historical figures as Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan prompted reams of analysis. Commercial success accompanied the critical welcome. Paperback rights went for $1.9 million, a record at the time, a film deal was struck, and Ragtime became a bestseller. As the cash register continued to jingle, though, a number of literati began backing and filling from their earlier praise. If Doctorow is that good...
...Doctorow may try to do too much in Loon Lake. When the poet Penfield reminisces about his experiences in Japan, for instance, he seems to belong in a different novel. But the author's skill at historical reconstruction, so evident in Ragtime, remains impressive here; the novel's fragments and edgy, nervous rhythms call up an age of clashing anxiety. Loon Lake tantalizes long after it is ended. As Penfield writes about the bird that gives its name to the Bennett estate, "The cry of loons once heard is not forgotten...
...Doctorow is indeed playing a variation on an old theme: the American dream, set to the music of an American nightmare, the Depression. Much of the book's plot is generated by a single gathering of characters in 1936. A group of gangsters and their girlfriends travel to Loon Lake, the 30,000-acre Adirondack retreat of their host, Millionaire F.W. Bennett. The Mob runs an industrial service, which actually means spying, strikebreaking and union busting, and Bennett has been having more than a spot of trouble with the workers at his Indiana auto-body plant. workers...
...started as a casual conversation between two neighbors in the country. The subject: whom to cast in Ragtime, the film based on the 1975 E.L. Doctorow bestseller. "How about you, James?" said the movie's director, Milos Forman, to the owner of the 800-acre New York cattle farm near Forman's place in Warren, Conn. "Well," replied the farmer after considerable reflection, "let's do it." And so, 20 years after his "final" screen appearance in One, Two, Three, James Cagney, 81, was back before the cameras last week in Brooklyn, looking spry in the turn...