BOOKS
BETWEEN DOCTOROW, OBSTACLES AND FICTION
On a leisurely spring afternoon, author E.L. Doctorow
sits for an interview in his office at New York University, a professorial
figure with a high forehead and soft beard, his wry smile fitting for a man
who always seems to be debating how much he's willing to tell. With books by
Stendhal, Tolstoy and other favorites stacked on shelves behind him and his
own books on shelves in front of him, it is a comfortable setting for the
author of Ragtime, Billy Bathgate and other acclaimed bestsellers. A professor
of creative writing at NYU, the 73-year-old Doctorow has been publishing
novels for more than 40 years and remains committed to storytelling at a time
when readers seem preoccupied with politics, diets and spirituality. "Fiction
writers have always faced obstacles of this sort," he says. "So part of the
game is figuring out how to move the audience. "I stay away from theory, from
any aesthetic plan or ideal of what fiction should be. The books always come
out of very private mental excitement. I just pursue it and if it turns into a
book that's great." Although known for historical novels based in New York
City, Doctorow has always been willing to experiment. He has written a Western
(Welcome to Hard Times) and science fiction (Big as Life). He has written in
third person and first person, about religious quests (City of God) and
matters of the flesh (Billy Bathgate). His current book, Sweet Land Stories,
is another departure, fiction set mostly in such unlikely terrain (for
Doctorow) as Alaska and Kansas. Instead of urban legends stocked with the
likes of Henry Ford and Harry Houdini, he presents a series of old-fashioned,
non-urban tales.
"I
edited an anthology of short stories in 2000 (The Best American Short Stories)
and I realized that some of the writers I was enjoying most were from other
countries -- from the Caribbean, from Latin America, from Eastern Europe,
Korea, China. "And they were not doing the classic modern short story. . . .
These people were writing stories more like the tales being written in the
19th century. They didn't start close to the end of the action. They took
their time. And I felt, 'Yeah, why not?' " Doctorow did not do any firsthand
research for his stories. Instead, he began with an image or a historical
event, as in A House on the Plains, based on the true story of a murderer who
hides out in rural Illinois. The characters in Sweet Land are outsiders,
finding -- or losing -- their place in a world that has granted them little
actual power. Walter John Harmon is the story of a cult commune in Kansas. In
Jolene: A Life, a young woman from the South survives three marriages and ends
up in Hollywood, dreaming of the movies.