American Essays, 20th Century American Literature - General & Miscellaneous - Literary Criticism

Creationists: Selected Essays 1993-2006

Name: Creationists: Selected Essays 1993-2006
Author: E. L. Doctorow
ISBN: 9780812975642

by E. L. Doctorow

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Overview

E. L. Doctorow is acclaimed internationally for such novels as Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and The March. Now here are Doctorow’s rich, revelatory essays on the nature of imaginative thought. In Creationists, Doctorow considers creativity in its many forms: from the literary (Melville and Mark Twain) to the comic (Harpo Marx) to the cosmic (Genesis and Einstein). As he wrestles with the subjects that have teased and fired his own imagination, Doctorow affirms the idea that “we know by what we create.”

Just what is Melville doing in Moby-Dick? And how did The Adventures of Tom Sawyer impel Mark Twain to radically rewrite what we know as Huckleberry Finn? Can we ever trust what novelists say about their own work? How could Franz Kafka have written a book called Amerika without ever leaving Europe? In posing such questions, Doctorow grapples with literary creation not as a critic or as a scholar–but as one working writer frankly contemplating the work of another. It’s a perspective that affords him both protean grace and profound insight.
Among the essays collected here are Doctorow’s musings on the very different Spanish Civil War novels of Ernest Hemingway and André Malraux; a candid assessment of Edgar Allan Poe as our “greatest bad writer”; a bracing analysis of the story of Genesis in which God figures as the most complex and riveting character. Whether he is considering how Harpo Marx opened our eyes to surrealism, the haunting photos with which the late German writer W. G. Sebald illustrated his texts, or the innovations of such

literary icons as Heinrich von Kleist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Sinclair Lewis, Doctorow is unfailingly generous, shrewd, attentive, surprising, and precise.
In examining the creative works of different times and disciplines, Doctorow also reveals the source and nature of his own artistry. Rich in aphorism and anecdote, steeped in history and psychology, informed by a lifetime of reading and writing, Creationists opens a magnificent window into one of the great creative minds of our time.

From the Hardcover edition.

Synopsis

In follow up to the multi-award winner, The March, E.L. Doctorow focuses his brilliant mind on writers, with eloquent and surprising essays on the literary craft. These revelatory essays on the nature of creativity in writers run the gamut, from the literary, to the comic, to the cosmic. Rich with philosophical asides, personality, historical context and speculation, personal observations and literary judgments, Doctorow considers creativity from many angles. What emerges is a thoughtful and provocative portrait of art, literature and society, as well as a surprising view into one of the great literary minds of our time.

Ron Powers

Doctorow offers no apologies for the charm. His subjects, all summoned rather pointedly from the past, do have a certain radiance in my eyes, he happily admits early on, adding, "underlying all my attentions is a collegial homage, a sympathy, even a love for the aesthetic struggle as it shines with a kind of blessedness." Edgar Allan Poe (the worst writer of his, etc.) may Nevermore see this bounty of slack cut him.
« The New York Times

About the Author, E. L. Doctorow

Few writers have succeeded as E. L. Doctorow has at creating stories (largely based in 1930s New York) that evoke both warm, personal memory and a grander national portrait. Doctorow doesn't always promise historical veracity, but he captures our imagination of the past flawlessly.

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Editorials

Ron Powers

Doctorow offers no apologies for the charm. His subjects, all summoned rather pointedly from the past, “do have a certain radiance in my eyes,” he happily admits early on, adding, "underlying all my attentions is a collegial homage, a sympathy, even a love for the aesthetic struggle as it shines with a kind of blessedness." Edgar Allan Poe (the worst writer of his, etc.) may Nevermore see this bounty of slack cut him.
« The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

A grandfatherly gruffness has crept into the speech of the septuagenarian Doctorow. His aging voice is not at all amiss, for Doctorow's essays on literary and other creative minds (such as Harpo Marx and Albert Einstein) contain the sort of wisdom that should be passed on to the young. Doctorow's canonical choices (Melville, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Harriet Beecher Stowe) will make the listener feel well read as well as amused and enlightened. The essays are best taken one at a time, for Doctorow reads slowly and without affect. He even refuses to draw attention to his often wry remarks, as when he calls Edgar Allan Poe "not exactly the boy next door." Most essays begins on a new track, but this is not always the case, so unfortunately, listeners who have had enough of Ishmael or Jay Gatsby will have to fast forward to find the starting point of the next piece. Doctorow's gentle wisdom will remind listeners of what they liked about their favorite teacher: both knowledge and humor without a trace of pomposity. This is an audio to savor and then to pass down to children or grandchildren who know Jaws but not Moby Dick. Simultaneous release with the Random House hardcover (Reviews, June 12). (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

An eclectic and engaging selection of recent pieces, mostly about other writers, from the award-winning novelist (The March, 2005, etc.). Doctorow's playful title (it alludes to those who create, not those who believe we were created) masks a serious purpose-to examine the mystery and the magic of human creation. Although he focuses principally on novelists and playwrights, he includes a very strong piece about Einstein, whose creativity, Doctorow argues, though astonishing, was nonetheless similar to the acts of novelists and artists and creative thinkers of all sorts. These essays form an impressive collection, in one sense, because they are so different from one another. They all deal with "creationists," but they originally appeared as speeches, forewords or afterwords to other books, remarks at symposia, essays in literary or political journals. As a result, although each bears Doctorow's signature intelligence and lyricism, each has a singularity, as well; these are not cookie-cutter pieces lifted from the same piece of rolled dough. Doctorow has no peer in his powerful use of imagery. In his wonderful piece on Melville, he offers the picture of Moby-Dick swallowing not just the Pequod but the entire English language. He notes that Hemingway found the "most romantic face" of "our great operative myth of rugged individualism." He blasts Margaret Thatcher and George Bush; he writes hymns to Arthur Miller and John Dos Passos and Harpo Marx. The range of these pieces reveals Doctorow's wide reading and capacious mind: He takes on the book of Genesis, plus Malraux, Poe (whose poetry Doctorow disdains), Twain, Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Kafka, W.G. Sebald and others. Alsopresent are some keen-edged political and social commentary. "Why write when you could be shooting someone?" he asks at the outset. And his final piece (about thermonuclear bombs) notes that World War II brought an end to the quaint distinction between combatants and noncombatants. The bomb is an equal-opportunity destroyer. A first-rate collection from a first-rate writer.