All the Time in the World: New and Selected Stories [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

E.L. Doctorow (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 22, 2011

From Ragtime and Billy Bathgate to World’s Fair, The March, and Homer & Langley, the fiction of E. L. Doctorow comprises a towering achievement in modern American letters. Now Doctorow returns with an enthralling collection of brilliant, startling short fiction about people who, as the author notes in his Preface, are somehow “distinct from their surroundings—people in some sort of contest with the prevailing world”.

A man at the end of an ordinary workday, extracts himself from his upper-middle-class life and turns to foraging in the same affluent suburb where he once lived with his family.

A college graduate takes a dishwasher’s job on a whim, and becomes entangled in a criminal enterprise after agreeing to marry a beautiful immigrant for money.

A husband and wife’s tense relationship is exacerbated when a stranger enters their home and claims to have grown up there.

An urbanite out on his morning run suspects that the city in which he’s lived all his life has transmogrified into another city altogether.

These are among the wide-ranging creations in this stunning collection, resonant with the mystery, tension, and moral investigation that distinguish the fiction of E. L. Doctorow. Containing six unforgettable stories that have never appeared in book form, and a selection of previous Doctorow classics, All the Time in the World affords us another opportunity to savor the genius of this American master.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Advanced Praise for All the Time in the World

“Virtuoso Doctorow is revered for his grandly dimensional novels, but he is also a superlative and transfixing short story writer. The incandescent new stories and forever stunning vintage tales…that Doctorow selected for this powerhouse collection portray psychological outliers on the edge of either liberation or an abyss. Doctorow is rightfully treasured for his social acuity and fluency in urban life, but he is also a penetrating observer of nature and our concealed primal selves….Like iron trellises wreathed with flowering vines, Doctorow’s complex and masterful tales of the strangeness, pain, and beauty of life are wise and resplendent…A landmark collection from a preeminent and popular writer who elevates the best-seller lists with each new book.”
--Booklist

“The new and previously published stories in All the Time in the World are a reminder that, for decades, Mr. Doctorow has been a first-rate artist in the short form, able to coax forth readerly empathy for almost all his creations…Mr. Doctorow is now 80, and as the assessments of his long career commence, it is clear that he has been, like his characters, a man apart from his contemporaries. The stories of All the Time in the World do not seem to belong to any school or style but to emanate from his own solitary visions.”
–WALL STREET JOURNAL

“Wonderful descriptions [and] gorgeous sentences…seem to fall effortlessly from Doctorow's fingertips….Doctorow's stories generally come back to the melancholy reality of imminent doom — yet they are rarely dreary and can be, in fact, quite funny. His characters, trapped as they are, manage to make a ragged music by rattling their chains.”
–CHICAGO TRIBUNE

“Distinctive, sharply focused, glistening with crisp language….Wherever they take place, these memorable stories reflect a novelist’s intimate understanding of human frailty and penchant for delusion….[Doctorow] is also keenly alert to the demands of short fiction, the blend of nuance and straightforwardness that makes stories hum with resonance and vitality…Savor All the Time in the World for its elegance, its intuition and for Doctorow’s understanding of the complexity of the human drama.”
–MIAMI HERALD
 
“Egoless, frank, spontaneous and altogether wonderful.”
–SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“[All the Time in the World] gives us a sense of breadth, of movement, of the scope of Doctorow’s career…. [stories that] trace, with grace and acuity, the tension between longing and obligation, between who we are and who we mean to be.”
–L.A. TIMES

“Doctorow seems telepathic in his ability to channel so many different kinds of characters - men and women from a wide range of eras, landscapes, ethnicities. This virtuosity is one reason he’s such a revered writer, though he has other skills, too…As ever, Doctorow has captured the mood of our time and rendered it in compelling fiction.”
–PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

“The mystery, tension and shock Doctorow is known for are all here in this collection. If you're a fan you will not be disappointed in the new, and happy to be reacquainted with the old.”
—USA TODAY

“This history lover’s nuanced collection of stories shouldn’t be overlooked….delightfully idiosyncratic…Doctorow has always known that whether we act out of love, fear or necessity, these are the imperatives that drive our national consciousness.”
—TIME OUT NEW YORK

"First rate…Never as simple as they seem on the surface, his stories are full of paradox and good humor with a sometimes caustic underbelly; they're absurd in a funny sort of way. He reveals the quirks of our society in the kind of stories others can only aspire to write."
–MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

"Tales of dysfunction, disintegration tempered with wit…Doctorow prefaces the new collection by saying he doesn't expect readers to see the ‘light’ that guided his selection and sequencing of the stories, but it shines vividly and creates a distinctive, sometimes disturbing constellation"
–PORTLAND OREGONIAN

"When its soulful writing and vagrant characters are read in the context of this powerful impression, All the Time in the World feels, more often than not, like a haunting collection of ghost stories."
–RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH

"Once you immerse yourself in these stories, you'll wish you had all the time in the world…all these stories work on another level, revealing news about the world, yes, but also revealing the mysteries that lie at the heart of human behavior."
–NPR ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

About the Author

E. L. Doctorow’s novels include Homer & Langley, The March, City of God, The Waterworks, Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World’s Fair, and Billy Bathgate. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. E. L. Doctorow lives in New York City.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (March 22, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400069637
• ISBN-13: 978-1400069637
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #819,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Author For All Time March 22, 2011

By Jill I. Shtulman TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

E.L. Doctorow is without a doubt one of the most critically acclaimed authors publishing in America today. He has enthralled me with Ragtime, mesmerized me with Homer & Langley, snapped me to attention with March, and provoked me to think outside of the box with The Book of Daniel.

But even though I've periodically read his short stories in The New Yorker, I never quite viewed him as a "short story writer." Well, after finishing All The Time in the World, that perception has definitely changed.

Stylistically, Doctorow has been described as a nomad, leaping across styles and genres and this collection is no exception. The reader must dig hard to discover a thread that connects these disparate stories, finally deferring to Doctorow's own judgment as defined in the preface, "I see there is no Winesburg here to be mined for humanity... What may unify them is the thematic segregation of their protagonists. The scale of a story causes it to home in on people who, for one reason or another, are distinct from their surroundings - people in some sort of contest with the prevailing world."

Take these stories for example: an affluent lawyer at the end of an ordinary workday decides to become an observer of his own life, hiding within feet of his wife and twin daughters. As he pares his life down to the bare essentials, it is only the thrill of competition that brings him back once again.

A husband and wife - who have elevated verbal sparring to a fine art - see their relationship exposed in bare relief when a homeless poet who once lived in their home enters their life.

A young immigrant, with aspirations to produce films, takes a dishwasher's job in a criminal enterprise, and agrees to marry the top honcho's beautiful niece for money. Yet this mercenary decision entangles him in a greater emotional involvement than he ever expected.

A teenage boy named Jack - the writer in the family - is prevailed upon by an aunt to write letters to his ancient grandmother in the voice of his recently deceased father...until he comes face to face with his father's real dream of life.

And, in the eponymous final story, an urban citizen, out for a typical morning run, no longer recognizes his city and suspects that a nefarious Program has put him there without his consent.

These wide-ranging pieces span time, American geography, and social strata: they're set in New York City, a nameless but instantly recognized suburbia, the deep south, the Midwest. They move from the late nineteenth century to a moment in the future. They are populated with disenchanted lawyer, a down-on-her-luck teenager, an increasingly cynical priest, even a son of a serial murderer. They sing with tension, poignancy, and authenticity. And they evoke the past, present and future in ways that are both mysterious and familiar.

In short, this is yet the latest indication that E.L. Doctorow is an author not only for our times, but for all time. The book contains six memorable stories that have never appeared in book form combined with a selection of beloved Doctorow classics.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars E.L. Doctorow continues to shine March 30, 2011

By Bookreporter

Format:Hardcover

If E. L. Doctorow and his publisher had wanted to choose an apt title for his third collection of short stories, they might have called it "American Misfits." Although in a brief preface he expresses doubt that "stories collected in a volume have to have a common mark, or tracer, to relate them to one another," in virtually all of these tales, spanning more than 150 years of this country's history, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author portrays troubled individuals struggling to make sense of their lives in a society that exalts individualism over community.

No story better illustrates that unity than "Wakefield," which opens the volume. Drawing its inspiration from the same wellspring as John Cheever's classics "The Country Husband" or "The Swimmer," Doctorow describes a character who stumbles back to his suburban home after a power outage strands his commuter train and decides to take up residence in his detached garage, vanishing from his life in the process. Doctorow renders that bizarre premise completely plausible, as Howard Wakefield, a seemingly successful New York City attorney, manages to slip the bonds of his crumbling marriage. "I lived in Diana's judgment," he observes of his wife on the night of his fateful decision, "it shone upon me as in a prison cell where the light is never turned off."

"Walter John Harmon" and "Heist" both deal with characters experiencing crises of faith. The narrator of the former story lives in a community led by a Jim Jones/David Koresh-like character who makes off with both the narrator's wife and the community's treasury. The story's concluding sentence is as chilling as any to be found in recent short fiction. Thomas Pemberton, the protagonist of "Heist," is a troubled Episcopal priest facing professional discipline for his sermons fueled by a growing skepticism. "Why must faith rely on innocence," he asks. "Must it be blind? Why must it come of people's need to believe?"

Doctorow doesn't limit himself to male protagonists. In "A House on the Plains" (a tale that seems to share its lineage with the best of Stephen King's mature short fiction), he tells the story of a murderous widow in post-Civil War Illinois. "Jolene: A Life" recounts 10 nomadic years in the life of a young woman who marries at 15 and then flees a series of disastrous relationships across the United States, from South Carolina to West Hollywood.

What is consistent in all of these stories is the measured elegance of Doctorow's prose and the incisiveness of his character portraits. "Edgemont Drive" is the story of a man who appears one day at a home where he claims he once lived. His arrival exposes the fault lines in the occupants' marriage:

"When people speak of a haunted house, they mean ghosts flitting about in it, but that's not it at all. When a house is haunted --- what I'm trying to explain --- it is the feeling you get that it looks like you, that your soul has become architecture, and the house in all its materials has taken you over with a power akin to haunting. As if you, in fact, are the ghost."

Not all of the stories hit the mark. There are times, as in "Liner Notes: The Songs of Billy Bathgate," (no apparent relation to the title character of Doctorow's novel about Depression-era mobsters), a series of sketches of the lives of two folk musicians, that his treatment of the subject matter feels almost willfully obscure. "The Hunter," the brief story of a young school teacher and menacing bus driver, suffers from the same infirmity.

Given Doctorow's age (he turned 80 in January) and stature in the literary world, it's also fair to ask why Random House hasn't seen fit yet to produce a volume of collected stories. The current collection contains six stories that appeared either in SWEET LAND STORIES, published in 2004, or in 1984's LIVES OF THE POETS. Four of the remaining six stories, including one later adapted for his novel CITY OF GOD, were first published in The New Yorker. It would hardly be a stretch to assemble his relatively small output of short fiction in one place.

These quibbles aside, the publication of any new work by this American master is something to celebrate. Coming on the heels of strong late-career novels like THE MARCH and HOMER & LANGLEY, we can hope Doctorow's fiction will continue to provoke and move us.

--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Virtuoso April 22, 2011

By Stephen T. Hopkins VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I think I've read all of E.L. Doctorow's novels, and most of his short stories. His new collection of a dozen previously published and new short stories is titled, All the Time in the World. Within the constraints of the short story form, Doctorow masterfully presents fully developed characters in situations that are described well and that unveil aspects of human behavior that will resonate with and engage readers. Those readers who are too busy for long forms of fiction will find that reading one of these stories at a time is pleasurable and achievable. Any reader who recognizes and admires fine literary writing will enjoy each of these twelve stories.

Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)