E. L. Doctorow

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E.L. Doctorow, photograph by Jill Krementz, from back cover of Doctorow's 1975 novel "Ragtime"

Edgar Laurence Doctorow (born January 6, 1931, New York, New York) is the author of several critically acclaimed novels that blend history and social criticism. Currently, he holds the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University.

Doctorow was raised in the Bronx, New York, by parents of second-generation Russian Jewish descent. At the Bronx High School of Science, he excelled in art making. Doctorow was a voracious reader and continued his education at Kenyon College where he studied with John Crowe Ransom. After graduating with honors in 1952, he did graduate work at Columbia University before he was drafted into the army and assigned to Germany. He began his career as a reader at Columbia Pictures, moved on to become an editor for New American Library in the early 1960s and worked as chief editor at Dial Press from 1964 to 1969. Although he had written books for years, it was not until the publication of The Book of Daniel in 1971 that he obtained acclaim. His next book, Ragtime, was a commercial and critical success.

He delivered a commencement address critical of President George W. Bush at Hofstra University on May 23, 2004.

[edit] Works

(1960) Welcome to Hard Times
(1966) Big As Life
(1968) The Songs of Billy Bathgate. [1] Short story; chronicling the career of a folk-rock musician, the tale is told in the form of liner notes. Doctorow would later recycle the protagonists' name for his PEN/Faulker award-winning novel Billy Bathgate. In an interview published in a compedium of critical analysis of his work, Doctorow claimed that he'd been questioned as to whether or not the protagonist of "Songs" was the son of the protagonist from Billy Bathgate, since the dates of birth given for the protagonists's son in Billy Bathgate correlate to the age of the protagonist from "Songs." Doctorow states that, while he had not intended it as such, he has no objection to the character being viewed as one and the same.
(1971) The Book of Daniel. Nominated for a National Book Award, it fictionalized the story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.
(1975) Ragtime. After receiving the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and the Arts and Letters Award, it was transformed into a film in 1980 and a musical in 1998.
(1979) Drinks Before Dinner (play)
(1980) Loon Lake (novel)
(1982) American Anthem
(1984) Lives of the Poets: Six Stories and a Novella
(1985) World's Fair. Received the 1986 National Book Award.
(1989) Billy Bathgate. Nominated for the Pulitzer and won the PEN/Faulkner award. Made into a major motion picture in 1991, which Doctorow--along with most of those involved in its production-- has disowned.^{[citation needed]}
(1994) The Waterworks
(2000) City of God
(2003) Reporting the Universe (nonfiction)
(2004) Sweet Land Stories
(2005) The March, ISBN 0-375-50671-3 Note: On Mar 3, 2006, this book was awarded the National Book Critics' Circle award for fiction.
(2006) Creationists: Selected Essays 1993-2006 (Random House, 178 pages)