Doctorow, E L
Entry updated 23 June 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1931-2015) US author who remains best known for Ragtime (1975), a novel that evokes the past with a hallucinatory power which edges its real-life and fictional characters into a fable-like milieu (see Fabulation). His first novel of any interest in a fantastic sense, Big as Life (1966), depicts Satirically the Dystopian response of the New York authorities when enormous beings suddenly appear in the city streets; the sf-like overtness of this tale caused the fastidious author not to permit its reprinting. Over the years, Doctorow created a fabulated history for New York, his continuing central venue; his modes of presentation varied, but The Waterworks (1994), set in a Steampunk version of the nineteenth-century city, is an intricate tale of conspiracy and Suspended Animation [JC]
Edgar Laurence Doctorow
born New York: 6 January 1931
died New York: 21 July 2015
works (highly selected)
- Big as Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966) [hb/Lawrence Ratzkin]
- The Waterworks (New York: Random House, 1994) [hb/Paul Bacon]
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