He awoke every day into a state of solemn joy.

July 22, 2015 11:54 AM

E. L. Doctorow, author of Ragtime, died Tuesday. He was 84.

New York Times obit.

Time Magazine's original reviews of his major works.

posted by tzikeh (40 comments total)

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posted by Smart Dalek at 11:57 AM on July 22, 2015

Ragtime is such a weird book cause I went in thinking it was a historical picaresque and .... it's not NOT that buuuut

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posted by The Whelk at 11:58 AM on July 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

The Ragtime is easily one of the best three or four novels about America.

Thanks, EL.
posted by entropone at 12:00 PM on July 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

A brilliant writer and a loss to the literary community. The New Yorker issue for January 2008 has a wonderful short story written by E.L. Doctorow. It is titled “Wakefield” which is a retelling of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story of the same name. Doctorow’s “Wakefield” can be read here, and Hawthorne’s short story here.

First paragraph from the story:

People will say that I left my wife and I suppose, as a factual matter, I did, but where was the intentionality? I had no thought of deserting her. It was a series of odd circumstances that put me in the garage attic with all the junk furniture and the raccoon droppings—which is how I began to leave her, all unknowing, of course—whereas I could have walked in the door as I had done every evening after work in the fourteen years and two children of our marriage. Diana would think of her last sight of me, that same morning, when she pulled up to the station and slammed on the brakes, and I got out of the car and, before closing the door, leaned in with a cryptic smile to say goodbye—she would think that I had left her from that moment. In fact, I was ready to let bygones be bygones and, in another fact, I came home the very same evening with every expectation of entering the house that I, we, had bought for the raising of our children. And, to be absolutely honest, I remember I was feeling that kind of blood stir you get in anticipation of sex, because marital arguments had that effect on me.

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posted by Fizz at 12:00 PM on July 22, 2015 [10 favorites]

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posted by tilde at 12:00 PM on July 22, 2015

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posted by Katjusa Roquette at 12:06 PM on July 22, 2015

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posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:06 PM on July 22, 2015

I read _Ragtime_ as a kid, and it was my introduction to the complex racial, radical, and labor history of the early twentieth century. Pretty mindblowing, because it wasn't anything school touched on, or even my other reading.
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posted by tavella at 12:09 PM on July 22, 2015

" America was a great farting country." has been burned on my brain ever since I first read ragtime at a way too tender age
posted by The Whelk at 12:12 PM on July 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

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posted by ghharr at 12:13 PM on July 22, 2015

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posted by Iridic at 12:14 PM on July 22, 2015

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posted by lalochezia at 12:22 PM on July 22, 2015

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" America was a great farting country." has been burned on my brain ever since I first read ragtime at a way too tender age

I haven't looked at ticker tape parades the same way since reading Ragtime.

The Book of Daniel was pretty goddamn good, too.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:22 PM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

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posted by Pardon Our Dust at 12:26 PM on July 22, 2015

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posted by notyou at 12:27 PM on July 22, 2015

" America was a great farting country." has been burned on my brain ever since I first read ragtime at a way too tender age

What made the most vivid and lasting impression on me was the scene of Emma Goldman pleasuring Evelyn Nesbit into feminist awakening and Mother's Younger Brother bursting out of hiding in a closet, masturbating furiously, uncontrollably, comically.
posted by entropone at 12:33 PM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

E. L. Doctorow, The Art of Fiction No. 94
posted by betweenthebars at 12:33 PM on July 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Damn. He was a wonderful writer and Ragtime is a great book and he should have stuck around longer.

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posted by languagehat at 12:36 PM on July 22, 2015

I looked up the Doctorow Paris Review interview yesterday after hearing the news and this bit about planning and inspiration was nice (and there are other nice things in that interview, as well)

Well, it can be anything. It can be a voice, an image; it can be a deep moment of personal desperation. For instance, with Ragtime I was so desperate to write something, I was facing the wall of my study in my house in New Rochelle and so I started to write about the wall. That’s the kind of day we sometimes have, as writers. Then I wrote about the house that was attached to the wall. It was built in 1906, you see, so I thought about the era and what Broadview Avenue looked like then: trolley cars ran along the avenue down at the bottom of the hill; people wore white clothes in the summer to stay cool. Teddy Roosevelt was President. One thing led to another and that’s the way that book began: through desperation to those few images. With Loon Lake, in contrast, it was just a very strong sense of place, a heightened emotion when I found myself in the Adirondacks after many, many years of being away . . . and all this came to a point when I saw a sign, a road sign: Loon Lake. So it can be anything.

Just stare at the wall. Soon enough you will have written one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.
posted by notyou at 12:38 PM on July 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

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posted by Cash4Lead at 12:41 PM on July 22, 2015

What made the most vivid and lasting impression on me was the scene of Emma Goldman pleasuring Evelyn Nesbit into feminist awakening and Mother's Younger Brother bursting out of hiding in a closet, masturbating furiously, uncontrollably, comically.
posted by entropone at 3:33 PM on July 22 [+] [!]

I think it says something about me that I remember almost none of the details about that scene except for it being where child Ilana learned what the word "paroxysm" meant. (It's a great word. Also a great book.)

The musical of Ragtime premiered in Toronto in its tryout and I remember going to see it when I was 12 and absolutely falling in love. I had the "selections" cast recording and learned it by heart. It was really one of the first book-to-musical adaptations that really fascinated me in relation to both forms, and their needs and differences. (I went on to parody the title song in a school project on commercials that year as the musical "Bragtime." I'll spare you the lyrics.) More than a decade later, saw the revival on Broadway and realized that a bunch of things had gotten changed when it originally got to Broadway in 1998 and it was like an old friend had gotten discomfiting plastic surgery.

Thanks for all the formative memories, E.L.

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posted by ilana at 12:53 PM on July 22, 2015

My memory of Ragtime is meeting my uncle at the stage door after a performance of the Broadway musical and going round the corner to have drinks with him and the actor who played Coalhouse Walker. My Uncle Tommy passed away last week at 87 so I guess all the old guys are dying off.
posted by three blind mice at 12:57 PM on July 22, 2015

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I read Ragtime having no idea what it was about. I'm not even sure how I got it, but it was a really beat up copy that had a few lives before I picked it up. It was great, but I had no idea anyone even knew who this author or book was until I discovered my friend's boyfriend was obsessed with him. I guess we weren't the only two.
posted by lownote at 1:37 PM on July 22, 2015

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posted by peripathetic at 1:41 PM on July 22, 2015

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E.L. Doctorow was a New Rochellean, like me. Ragtime was, of course, required reading material for AP American history students at New Rochelle High School.

Doctorow was single-handedly responsible for turning me on to Emma Goldman, probably at least partially as a result of the aforementioned closet masturbation scene.
posted by brina at 1:49 PM on July 22, 2015

America is not the "great farting country" it used to be.
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posted by oneswellfoop at 2:07 PM on July 22, 2015

I have to also mention "Billy Bathgate" and "The Waterworks". He wrote so many good novels.
posted by acrasis at 2:31 PM on July 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

The opening number of the musical adaptation of Ragtime, which opened on Broadway in 1998, and won four Tony Awards and five Drama Desk Awards. If it hadn't been up against The Lion King, it would have easily won Best Musical at the Tonys.
posted by tzikeh at 2:37 PM on July 22, 2015

The Book of Daniel was pretty goddamn good, too.

Wow! I read that book about 40 years ago and it had a big impact on me but I'd completely forgotten about it until I read that comment.

Thanks mandolin conspiracy
posted by night_train at 2:38 PM on July 22, 2015

I read The Book of Daniel while an undergrad at UC Irvine, and remember cracking up at his very accurate description of what passes for architecture at UCI ("a ring of great concrete egg boxes").
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posted by thomas j wise at 2:54 PM on July 22, 2015

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posted by brecc at 2:59 PM on July 22, 2015

. Loved Ragtime and Waterworks and liked Loon Lake. Keep meaning to read The Book of Daniel although I remember liking the film.
posted by octothorpe at 3:15 PM on July 22, 2015

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posted by trip and a half at 3:33 PM on July 22, 2015

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The only Doctorow I've read is Billy Bathgate; it was very good. I copied a few paragraphs down at the time, I was so struck by the writing---

One of the most perceptive observations about sex I've ever read:

"…This was the moment I began to understand that you can't remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the details, but the sex of the sex cannot be remembered, the substantive truth of it, it is by nature self-erasing, you can remember its anatomy and be left with a judgement as to the degree of your liking of it, but whatever it is as a splurge of being, as a loss, as a charge of the conviction of love stopping your heart like your execution, there is no memory of it in the brain, only the deduction that it happened and that time passed, leaving you with a silhouette that you want to fill in again."

And I loved the onrushing energy of this sentence:

"I am proud of this boy I was, thinking through his cold dread, and you know the quickest thinking is the thinking of the body, and the body thinks surely, errorlessly, because it is not soaked in character as the brain is, and my best guess was of the worst that could happen, because I didn't remember coming in from the street or going through the lobby, but I found myself becoming aware that I was in my room and I was holding my loaded Automatic in my hand, I was holding my gun."

[Don't know if the movie Ragtime was any good, but I've had Randy Newman's soundtrack around forever. I Could Love a Million Girls is my fave.]
posted by Bron at 5:11 PM on July 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

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posted by grimmelm at 6:47 PM on July 22, 2015

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posted by mark k at 7:47 PM on July 22, 2015

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posted by Lyme Drop at 12:55 AM on July 23, 2015

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posted by Wolof at 12:55 AM on July 23, 2015

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posted by hap_hazard at 2:25 AM on July 23, 2015

I re-read "Homer and Langley" any time I feel myself headed down the road toward hoarding.
posted by candyland at 12:20 PM on July 23, 2015