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City of God

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I waited until I finished reading Doctorow's "City ofGod" before reading any reviews of this book - not sure why Imade that choice but once made I was thankful I had. If you're looking for his usual mix of historical fact with fascinating fiction, don't try this work. Work? Yes, that is exactly what this book is. And after wading through alot of pages that begged editing, I started over. City of God takes us back to college days, when we wandered from Philosophy to Religion to History to Psychology to Physics and to Biology classes. None of it pulls together until all the courses are finished THEN the magnificence of Doctorow's mind is appreciated. There is a good novel buried in this book, but the true rewards are found in Doctorow's philosphical excursions. His exploration of the beginning of the universe, his mingling the various philosophies that address man's condition and his search for meaning in a abusively chaotic cosmos, his paring down the tennants of Jewish and Christian thought - all these are done with enormous skill and read even better when approached a second and third time. Sometimes he is out of his territory - as when he maligns us with the oh-so-corny reinterpretations of banal songs. But Wow! this man's mind is impressive. And for those hardy readers who commit to finishing this literary task the retrospective gratification is magnificent!

I have just completed the first reading of Edgar Laurence Doctorow's latest novel, "City of God". It is not an easy read. It is disjointed. Some of the characters require imaginative guesswork. BUT it is well worth the effort. Anyone who has lived the majority of his or her life in the 20th century will find a "shock of recognition" on many pages. The conflict of science and religion, the newer studies in cosmology and the horrors we have been witness to, all pose questions that defy answers. Some of us may still find solace in our faiths. As a retired physician I found myself frequently facing a dark, starry sky with my fist upraised asking: "WHY?" How could God, an infinite, all-knowing, loving, immortal being allow so much hatred, so much misery, some of which occurred with the concurrence of organized religion to take place? The pat answers learned from my faith were not sustaining and have left a void. The author addressed many of these conundrums and stimulates the reader to begin or, in my own case, to continue to puzzle over these age old problems. He touches on the next centuries ecological catastrophies, which if dealt with with past solutions will surely lead to our extinction. His evolutionary concept of an evolving infinite being is intriguing. The novel is thought provoking, uncomfortable but thoroughly engaging. I will re-read it and would highly recommend it to all thoughtful yet perplexed readers.

Some initial caveats: 'City of God' is not a straightforward mystery as its blurb suggests. Nor is it the impossibly cerebral challenge that some have suggested. It is not a theological manifesto. Nor does its blend of fact and fiction does not entail Doctorow's habitual ironic play with history.

This is a book about connections. Life and art, fact and fiction, and the past and present conjoin in the ruminations of a middle-aged writer attempting to make holistic sense from the seemingly disparate threads of the late twentieth century. The novel is therefore also about the potential difficulties of being middle-aged, and of trying to look to the future when one is increasingly compelled to reminisce (and confess) about the past. Its characters roam the city of New York and then the world for missing objects and people, including stolen brass crosses from churches, WWII diaries containing evidence of Nazi criminals, and excommunicated reverends. Predictably (but also pleasurably), more important than what they find is what they learn about both themselves and the age in which they live.

Some reviewers have criticised the novel for its fragmentary style. But here Doctorow produces some of his most lyrical, least mannered excursions into the human unconscious yet. The novel's chief difficulty for readers is not in trying to understand it but in knowing how to read it. My experience of its chief pleasures come not from looking at the fragments individually, but by examning the connections between them.

Moreover, don't expect the 'city' of the title to be teeming with carefully delineated characters. Perhaps it's best to think of the novel as the examination of one person (Everett, the writer who collects ideas for stories, poems and songs in this 'workbook') whose presence is replicated in a number of different stories which range across twentieth-century history. That said, this presence is most successfully telescoped into Everett's contemporary evocations of Tom Pemberton, a cleverly drawn character and a bewitching symbol of oft-thwarted yet surviving ambitions.

This novel is a joyful celebration of age, memory, regeneration and hope for the future.

Final note: this isn't a 'postmodern' novel, although its style is experimental. In my opinion the subject is more traditional: like Victor Hugo or Dostoyevsky, it is concerned with the power of art to transfigure and redeem history. Be patient with this novel, and enjoy the rewards.

E L Doctorow's latest is typical of an unpredictable author. It is another of his attempts to connect historic fact in modern, or in this case, post modern reality. In this sense it is hugely ambitious but it rewards the adventurous reader, willing to journey on his roller coaster ride of themes and styles.

His ostensible subject is spirituality at the turn of the 20th Century. He explores this through the experience of a liberal episcopal priest in a crumbling downtown parish in New York City. Under threat from the Authorities his faith is challenged fianlly by the disappearance of his altar cross and ir=ts eventual reappearance on the roof of an uptown liberal Jewish synagogue. There appears to be no reason for this move.

Doctorow uses this fable to faith in the 20th century through the development of philosphical thought (principally Wittgenstein, whose parodic musings are a highlight)and in the teeth of the grim horrors of WW1,WW2, Vietnam and, especially, the Holocaust. All this is held together through the attempts of an author to bring the characters and themes together through his own notebooks. thus we also find notes and thoughts on other types of faith including the American popular song, for Doctorow, one of the most obvious expressions of secular belief the 20th century has to offer.

If this sounds a tough nut to crack, it isBut dull it is not. The reader barely has room to breathe as he or she is taken through fastidiously grim Holocaust narratives, elegaic descriptions of the beauties of faith and rough hewn poetry.

Through it all, this envigorating journey of the mind becomes a meditiation on the development of the soul and the role of faith in any future we might have. If his answers are not comfortable, his style is challenging and thrilling.

Doctorow has garnered so many writing awards-the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle awards, the PEN/Faulkner award, and the National Humanities Medal from the president, just to name a few-each successive novel is eagerly anticipated and closely scrutinized. And while I have no doubt that most critics will applaud this latest effort, I found it frustratingly demanding and wearisome. Those hoping to find another "Billy Bathgate" or "The Waterworks" will be disappointed. In "City of God," Doctorow has chosen to go down a new and entirely different path than his past efforts.

We are treated to a series of separate narratives that include a Holocaust survivor and discourses on everything from astrophysics to the lyrics of popular songs, to the meaning of life and role of God and religion at the end of the twentieth century. Many of the novel's moments are beautifully written, such as the recitations from the Holocaust survivor and the prayer offered by the Episcopalian minister at his wedding. And these moments are almost worth the time and trouble of wading through the remainder of the book. But many of the plot lines appear to lead to dead-ends, such as the prominent story of the cross that is stolen from the Episcopal church and ends up on the roof of the Jewish synagogue. Besides the torturous symbolism, what are we to make of this event that hangs over the story line but is eventually forgotten and dropped by the author?

Readers beware-"City of God" has its satisfying moments (and they can be surprisingly rewarding) but you will be made to sweat for each one.

It's true this book is perhaps a little more all over the place than it needs to be -- did we really need those bizarre commentaries on popular songs? -- but I can't understand why so many people are calling it boring, or impossibly difficult. While it's true there's a whole lot going on here, and you often have only a vague sense of the connection between all the parts, I think that's a good thing rather than a bad thing. There's a whole lot going on, but it's all enjoyable and not terribly abstruse. And the mild sense of confusion one feels in trying to piece together the connection between the multitude of themes -- theorizing and retheorizing about exactly how all the parts are supposed to fit together -- isn't so much frustrating as it is intriguing.

The thing that struck me most about this work was the fact that I found myself immediately taken in by almost all of the many narrative strands, and was happy each time one of them resurfaced. (The exceptions being the commentaries on songs, and possibly the passages narrated by Wittgenstein which struck me as being written by someone who had a less than tight grasp on the man's philosophy.) All of the characters were sympathetically and richly drawn -- quite a feat considering how infrequently we meet with most of them -- and all of the ruminations were beautifully written which makes up for the fact that very few of them had anything truly original to say. I'm not sure how original Doctorow thought his ponderings on physics and metaphysics were supposed to be -- I'm guessing he knew their level of sophistication and originality very well. The originality, I think, was meant to come in where it's suposed to come from in a novel -- from the stories of particular lives. And these stories -- both on the individual level, and as a conglomerate -- succeeded in injecting the book with real originality and even brilliance.

Doctorow's latest novel explores the nature of religous faith for those for whom traditional forms of religion have become difficult or lost their meaning. The book straddles the line drawn by some people between religion (in the sense of devotion to a traditional creed) and spirituality (a personal devotion to the transcendent separate from any church or group.) The predominant form of religion in the book is Judaism, but it is very evolutionist, modernistic, and personal, in many respects, and definitely not tied to the texts and practices of traditional Judaism.

The book is modernistic and episodic in tone with three principal voices: a journalist who seems to be a figure for at least some of the author, a lapsed Episcopalian priest, and a woman rabbi of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism. The three are drawn together by the theft of a cross from the Church and its mysterious appearance at the Synagogue. The "mystery" is dropped but it is mostly a vehicle to discuss the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, another theme of this complex book.

There are long chillingly written scenes of the Holocaust which forms a backdrop to at least some of the thought and action of the principal characters. Also, important discussions of the philosopher Wittgenstein, which I found very apropos to the spriritual questing theme of the book, comtemporary physics, the big bang theory, and popular song and film.

Doctorow has New York City in his bones and the large secular city is artfulllly drawn. In fact, one of the main themes of the book is the secular city (to steal a title from Harvey Cox's book of many years ago) and of a secular America with its own Civil Religion. Contrary to what I remember of Doctorow from earlier books, such as The Book of Daniel, Doctorow appears to me to cherish the city and America in their very variety and secularity for the purposes of spiritual growth and questioning that they afford. A wonderful development from the America-bashing of the 1960s.

The book also shows song and poetry, (in the line of Whitman, Reznikoff, Ginsberg, W.C Williams) as components of a spiritual jounney towards self-understanding.

As befitting a book with a title from St. Augustine, the book explores questions of original sin, the nature and possiblity of immortality and religious change. It shows the continual struggle of people with religious questions and, importantly, suggests an evolving religion, not necessarily bound to the forms of the past.

The book does not give answers but provokes questions and is an antidote to all-pervasive smugness or indifference.

A valuable book for those who want to think about religion and spiritual issues or to see why people think about them. Difficult to read, at the outset, but the effort will be rewarded.

This is a very tough one to review because it's a difficult book to know how to feel about. Despite its length, it has all the elements of an epic - Holocaust, God, philosophy, cityscapes, a millenium approaching etc - and plays self-consciously, and often brilliantly, with the possibilities of the epic form at the twentieth century's end.

However, I can only agree with Christopher Smith's sharp point below regarding the way in which Doctorow relies on detached speeches to make his point. There is very little character interaction or development, and thus little drama. It's almost as if Doctorow didn't trust the strength of his central story to hold the weight of the message, and also didn't feel he could write a full-on Holocaust story as an alternative (though I think he can judging by the scenes in here).

Nevertheless, there are long stretches of brilliant writing, particularly in the aforementioned Holocaust sections and in the thoughts of Wittgenstein and Einstein. The structure is also very clever as the reader is lost for a while but soon begins to see the outline of the book's narrative form. All in all, an ambitious and challenging work, up there with "Ragtime" and "Billy Bathgate" as one of Doctorow's best works.

E.L. Doctorow does a clever thing. He has a character who is the author writing this book. One organizing idea of the book is New York City. Another is ecumenical interest in God. The author uses time shifting and place shifting. This is an example of the use of the new historicism. Doctorow always has written with a sense of history.

The city's grid was laid out in the 1840's. Ben and Ruth had two sons, Ronald and Everett. Ben was a naval officer, a naval communications observer in World War I. Ronald served in World War II. He had to parachute from his plane and was discovered by a French peasant. Ruth lived to age ninety five, exceeding the lifetime of her husband by some thirty seven years. She always said she would not give her opinion unless asked to do so.

Sarah Blumenthal and Joshua Gruen are rabbis at the Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism. The synagogue is the site of the placement of a cross stolen from Saint Timothy's, an Anglican Church in the East Village. Thomas Pemberton, or Pem, meets Sarah and Josh when the locus of the cross is determined. Pem, in the course of the book, undergoes the closing of Saint Timothy's and his own self-designated reassignment to a hospice, the finding of a holocaust archive from Vilnius pertaining to the experience of Sarah's father following the death of Josh from a beating in Lithuania, the start of his studies to convert to Judaism, and his marriage to Sarah.

The author has occasion to interact with his own characters Pem and Sarah at the synagogue. Prior to Pem's beginning the conversion studies and prior to his marriage to Sarah, the author had commenced to study Pem in order to write an account of his experiences in his search for God. The book is multi-layered, intelligent, delightful.

This is a brilliant book, only partly a novel, important to read and often thrilling, but not consistently compelling. Several motifs appear. Most resolve into the body of the piece, but a few remain frustratingly obscure. Doctorow's theme is our craving for transcendental and romantic meaning despite the failure of religion. While many postmoderns give a pass to "organized" religions in favor of a vague spirituality, Doctorow knows that if the metaphysical holds any meaning for mankind it must be vetted--tracked and challenged in all its sobersided and pop manifestations--by a community of seekers. City of God invites us in. It is Doctorow's gift that he can connect difficult theological and cosmological ideas and render them simply and vividly for his readers. We get a close-up view of the bleeding edge of contemporary philosophy. While we cannot expect closure to his tale, we can appreciate his wise guidance.