My most sensually delightful experience with E. City of God made heavy intellectual demands, changing literary styles again and again within itself. Loon Lake’s prose, like The Book of Daniel, was tougher and dense. His most popular historical novels like Ragtime or The March or World’s Fair are written in beautiful prose that effortlessly draws you in to a richly told tale. I learned that Doctorow was a writer who would change literary styles and voices for each novel, sometimes quite dramatically. It was too dense and difficult for me at that age. Here Doctorow’s prose changed completely. I quickly moved on to Doctorow’s debut novel, the wry western “Welcome to Hard Times”, and then hit a wall when I attempted “The Book of Daniel”. And what a ride! Such a sprawling epic of the beginning of the American 20 th Century, full of colorful, diverse characters and incidents! As such Ragtime made an excellent introduction to sophisticated adult literature for a boy who was a casual book reader at best. I wasn’t following the text, it was taking me along on a ride. The prose was intelligent and the storytelling complex, yet the language was not only deceptively easy to read, it practically pulled me along. I was enthralled by the sprawling historical fiction that mixed historical and imagined characters and events in a glorious literary melting pot. I was either ten or eleven years old when I picked up my parents’ already well-worn paperback edition. Doctorow’s most famous work, “Ragtime”, was the first “grown-up” book I read. I intend to catch up with those three as of yet unread Doctorow books (I love books but I am not a voracious reader and my “want-to-read” list only keeps growing…).Į. I have read nine of his twelve books, a ratio and record I have equaled in passion and loyalty with only two other contemporary authors, John Irving and J. Doctorow, one of the giants of contemporary literature has passed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |