Lives of the Poets: A Novella and Six Stories [Paperback]

E. L. Doctorow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1997

A son is set the task of concealing his father's death; a drowned child is callously handled by rescuers; a lonely schoolteacher is shot by a hunter; a boy witnesses his mother's act of infidelity; a car explosion kills a foreign schoolgirl; and the middle-aged author of these tales depicts his own consciousness. In a perceptive work about a writer of stories, acclaimed author E.L. Doctorow opens to the reader the creative imagination of a writer.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Extraordinary beauty and power . . . a book to fall in love with.”—Chicago Tribune Book World
 
“Better than any fiction I know, Lives of the Poets illuminates the sources from which fiction springs.”—Newsweek
 
“Doctorow is an impeccable stylist, a man who writes with exceptional clarity and precision.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Invaluable . . . Doctorow’s subtlest work of fiction.”—New York Times Book Review
  --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

E. L. Doctorow’s novels include 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. His work has been published in thirty-two languages. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, 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. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Plume (May 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452278791
• ISBN-13: 978-0452278790
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,729,953 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

E. L. Doctorow's novels include 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. His work has been published in thirty-two languages. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Anomie, December 31, 2006

By 

Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lives of the Poets: A Novella and Six Stories (Paperback)

Everything that Doctorow writes shows his mastery, but I cannot say that I enjoyed this slim collection; indeed, if it had not been so slim I doubt I'd have finished it. The novella which gives its title to the collection is virtually plotless, seeming more like a memoir than a story. In apparently random manner, Doctorow describes the social lives, affairs, and marriages of a group of his fellow writers. "I am not talking about divorced couples, you understand, but couples not entirely together." Everybody seems to be floating in a social limbo where personal ties are transitory and superficial, and upon which the outside world impinges only as a distant annoyance. In a word, anomie.

The novella is given a little more weight by the addition of six very short stories, most of which are also virtually plotless and portray the same qualities of social isolation. In several instances, images from the novella crop up again in the stories, or vice-versa. Doctorow has always been fond of cross-connecting his works, but several of the stories have the air of being discarded fragments from one of his novels; one even shares almost the same title, THE WATERWORKS. As I say, nothing that Doctorow writes is without interest, but these fragments might better have been left on the cutting-room floor.