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He has been called “a national treasure” by George Saunders. Doctorow’s great topic, said Don DeLillo, is “the reach of American possibility, in which plain lives take on the cadences of history.” This power is apparent everywhere in these stories: the bravery and self-delusion of people seeking the American dream; the geniuses, mystics, and charlatans who offer people false hope, or an actual glimpse of greatness.
In “A House on the Plains,” a mother has a plan for financial independence, which may include murder. In “Walter John Harmon,” a man starts a cult using subterfuge and seduction. “Jolene: A Life” follows a teenager who escapes her home for Hollywood on a perilous quest for success. “Heist,” the account of an Episcopal priest coping with a crisis of faith, was expanded into the bestseller City of God. “The Water Works,” about the underbelly of 1870s New York, grew into a brilliant novel. “Liner Notes: The Songs of Billy Bathgate” is a corollary to the renowned novel and includes Doctorow’s revisions.
These fifteen stories, written from the 1960s to the early twenty-first century, and selected, revised, and placed in order by the author himself shortly before he died in 2015, are a testament to the genius of E. L. Doctorow.
Praise for Doctorow: Collected Stories
“Here, without the framework of historical context that defines his best-known novels, we discover a Doctorow equally adept at plumbing the contemporary American psyche and are reminded of literature’s loss following his death.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“These tales—sketches, really, wide-ranging in time, place and circumstances—are penned by a modern master. . . . What makes Doctorow’s historical novels brilliant is their engaging prose, smart writerly style, unconventional narratives and inventive and entertaining plots. Same for these dog-eared, pre-owned stories.”—USA Today
Praise for E. L. Doctorow
“He has rewarded us, these forty-five years, with a vision of ourselves, as a people, a vision possessed of what I might call ‘aspirational verve’—he sees us clearly and tenderly, just as we are, but also sees past that—to what we might, at our best, become.”—George Saunders
“Doctorow did not so much write fiction about history as he seemed to occupy history itself. He owned it. He made it his own.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates
“On every level, [Doctorow’s] work is powerful. . . . His sensitivity to language is perfectly balanced, and complemented by a gigantic vision.”—Jennifer Egan
“[He wrote] with such stunning audacity that I can still remember my parents’ awed dinner-table conversation, that summer, about a novel they were reading, called Ragtime, that went up to the overgrown wall enclosing the garden of fiction and opened the doorway to history.”—Michael Chabon
“Doctorow’s prose tends to create its own landscape, and to become a force that works in opposition to the power of social reality.”—Don DeLillo
“A writer of dazzling gifts and boundless imaginative energy.”—Joyce Carol Oates
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 10, 2017 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780399588365
- File size: 1232 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780399588365
- File size: 1232 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Doctorow wrote some powerful short stories, but it's not clear why they need to be collected again.There's something unsettling about collecting, once more, the short fiction of Doctorow, who died in 2015 at age 84. Partly it's that he remains best known for his novels: The Book of Daniel (1971), Ragtime (1975), Billy Bathgate (1989). (Indeed, Doctorow published only 18 stories, parceled out over three collections, in a career spanning more than half a century.) But even more, it's that his new book overlaps almost entirely with All the Time in the World, the new and selected stories he put out in 2011. Each of the 12 efforts there appears here as well, along with three others, drawn from Lives of the Poets (1984) and Sweet Land Stories (2004). This is not to criticize his writing, which is often sharp and resonant, just to suggest there is little point in gathering it again. Doctorow's strength as a short story writer was similar to his strength as a novelist: an acute eye, an attention to detail, an understanding of both the promise and the limitations of narrative. "I thought how stupid, and imperceptive, and self-centered I had been," the young narrator of "The Writer in the Family" admits, "never to have understood while he was alive what my father's dream for his life had been." A similar sensibility marks the magnificent "Wakefield," inspired by the Hawthorne story of the same name, in which a successful attorney leaves his family and spends months hiding in the attic above his garage. What such stories have in common is a sense of displacement, what Doctorow once described as "dereliction": a posture of drift or irresolution, as if the very act of living had become too much. Nonetheless, how can this not be undercut by gathering the same pieces yet again, as if they were less literature than monument? This might not be so problematic had the book included all of his short fiction, but three stories from Lives of the Poets, including the title novella, which is among the finest of his shorter works, did not make the cut. This book leaves us to wonder about both the authority of the project and also its intention--whether or to what extent, in other words, the author's legacy is being served. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from October 15, 2016
The great American writer Doctorow, who died in 2015, produced a large number of novels that have been enthusiastically embraced by readers, e.g., Ragtime, The March, World's Fair, and Billy Bathgate. He was also a master of short fiction, and this new book contains a selection of his best work in this genre. While many of these stories appear in 2011's All the Time in the World: New and Selected Stories, this new volume was compiled by the author just before his death, and it includes revised and updated versions of all of his best stories, which makes it an essential acquisition for many libraries. Doctorow was known for his interest in American history, and, taken together, these richly imagined stories might be read as a meditation on the nature of modern America life. Doctorow tells a complex story, and there is promise, innocence, tragedy, and madness here in equal measure. These tales range from harrowing ("Jolene: A Life") to heartwarming ("Assimilation") to meditative ("All the Time in the World"). VERDICT Required reading for anyone who cares about American literature.--Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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August 15, 2016
Doctorow wrote some powerful short stories, but it's not clear why they need to be collected again.Theres something unsettling about collecting, once more, the short fiction of Doctorow, who died in 2015 at age 84. Partly its that he remains best known for his novels: The Book of Daniel (1971), Ragtime (1975), Billy Bathgate (1989). (Indeed, Doctorow published only 18 stories, parceled out over three collections, in a career spanning more than half a century.) But even more, its that his new book overlaps almost entirely with All the Time in the World, the new and selected stories he put out in 2011. Each of the 12 efforts there appears here as well, along with three others, drawn from Lives of the Poets (1984) and Sweet Land Stories (2004). This is not to criticize his writing, which is often sharp and resonant, just to suggest there is little point in gathering it again. Doctorows strength as a short story writer was similar to his strength as a novelist: an acute eye, an attention to detail, an understanding of both the promise and the limitations of narrative. I thought how stupid, and imperceptive, and self-centered I had been, the young narrator of The Writer in the Family admits, never to have understood while he was alive what my fathers dream for his life had been. A similar sensibility marks the magnificent Wakefield, inspired by the Hawthorne story of the same name, in which a successful attorney leaves his family and spends months hiding in the attic above his garage. What such stories have in common is a sense of displacement, what Doctorow once described as dereliction: a posture of drift or irresolution, as if the very act of living had become too much. Nonetheless, how can this not be undercut by gathering the same pieces yet again, as if they were less literature than monument? This might not be so problematic had the book included all of his short fiction, but three stories from Lives of the Poets, including the title novella, which is among the finest of his shorter works, did not make the cut. This book leaves us to wonder about both the authority of the project and also its intentionwhether or to what extent, in other words, the authors legacy is being served.COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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