Creationists: Selected Essays, 1993-2006 [Kindle Edition]

E.L. Doctorow (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From 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.
Copyright© American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Bookmarks Magazine

The brevity of these essays doesn't prevent E. L. Doctorow (Ragtime; The March, ****1/2 Selection Nov/Dec 2005) from writing with strength and intensity, though it does occasionally make it hard to feel deeply engaged by the material. Doctorow treats his fellow authors with uniform respect, one of several ways that he differs from writers who focus more on literary criticism. His approach is frequently both analytic and personal as he discusses the ways each creation is assembled and explores his own connections with it. Written clearly and with passion, this collection will please both casual readers and those who share Doctorow's deep and abiding love for great creations and fascination with their creators.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 307 KB
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (December 10, 2008)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001NJUP20
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #384,199 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All creationists are mortal., January 3, 2007

By 

Aco - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creationists: Selected Essays: 1993-2006 (Hardcover)

I picked this up at the library, having known of Doctorow's work for years, but never reading it.
These are gathered essays, all regarding the artistic process, E.L.'s own imagination and a critical analysis of particular works.
All of the works and workers are classics. The Bible, Poe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, a terrific imagining of Melville's experience writing Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer + Huck Finn as unfulfilled projects, Arrowsmith, F. Scott, an excellent piece comparing Malraux's L'Espoir and Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls, John Dos Passos' U.S.A., why Harpo Marx stands out among his brothers, the German poet/playwright von Kleist (who I now will look out for), a nice short bit on Arthur Miller, how Kafka's first novel Amerika could be written by a guy who'd never been there, W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants (another writer and book I learned about), a great piece on Einstein's imaginative ability, and a closing essay on The Bomb, the furtive genius that created it and the brilliance it destroyed.
The Bible, poets, gigantic classics, silent comedians, scientists and mass destruction...All are created. Creationists are all mortal, but their creations are immortal.
Doctorow's impressive expertise and reverence for each of his subjects makes for terrific reading, and an education.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A loving look at the creative impulse, January 13, 2007

By 

Erica Bell (Washington State) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Creationists: Selected Essays: 1993-2006 (Hardcover)

"A writer who is not writing is a madman". That's Kafka--one of his letters, I think. Is it the one where he cancelled plans for a country holiday with friends because when a writer is creating, "he must hold on to his desk with his teeth"?

E.L. Doctorow understands. He writes in the introduction to his essays,"A novel or play has its origins in the peculiar excitement of the writer's mind. These are powerfully-felt, even inspired, responses to what may be the faintest or fleeting of stimuli--an image, the sound of a voice, a kind of light, a word or phrase, a bar of music."

Doctorow knows how fleeting inspiration is, and he seeks it from the inspired because he also knows just how damn hard it is to get it right. That's why these essays are so nourishing. He includes Harpo Marx and Einstein in this collection. With Harpo taking words and communicating silence, and Einstein thinking frantically against the limits of age, you'll see why.

His essay on Kafka's Amerika [The Man Who Disappeared] is worth the price of the book. Kleist he approaches more obliquely: where is the glorious dramatist who knew women's hearts so well (Penthesilea, The Broken Pitcher)? Later, he muses over Huck Finn, positing that he was Twain's match, a character wholly beyond Twain's ability, a giant metaphor deserving more than the plot Twain gave him. T.S. Eliot said much the same of Hamlet.

Where Doctorow loves (Kafka, Melville, Marx), he writes movingly, even nakedly. Where his mind is tickled, he is a fierce intellect, more than able to communicate the convergence of time, inspiration, culture, failure--and genius.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First-rate!!, April 25, 2007

By 

Librum "6nomad9" (CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Creationists: Selected Essays: 1993-2006 (Hardcover)

I can only echo the other positive reviews on this page. The essays in CSE are superb: acutely insightful and beautifully written. Like another reviewer, before I encountered CSE I, too, had known of Doctorow but never read him. I am very pleased to have begun exploring this author's oeuvre with his own reflections on literature and the literary craft. Though I also have yet to read several of the works that Doctorow discusses in CSE, I nonetheless very much enjoyed learning about them and have added them all to my burgeoning list of future reads. Anyone who loves literature will take great pleasure in reading CSE.