Customer Reviews

World's Fair

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Written ten years after Ragtime, Doctorow's World's Fair seems to be a far simpler book, primarily because it is all told from a single point of view, that adult Edgar looking back at his childhood and its significance. Doctorow, however, creates a complex picture of what it meant to be Jewish and growing up in the Bronx during the 1930's, a time when Americans struggled against the hardships of the Great Depression. Much as he does in Ragtime, Doctorow sets up the beginning - the birth of Edgar - as a time of innocence and imagined perfection that eventually gets marred by reality, with the safety of childhood challenged as much by family dynamics as current events.

As with all Doctorow's later books, there is a strong element of nostalgia, a sense that the author is writing about better, more defining times. Edgar's progression through childhood and his sharp observations of all that unfolds around him comprise the plot. His mother, caught in a squabble of a marriage but dedicated to her family all the same, gives Edgar and his older brother Donald stability where their unreliable but dashing father cannot. As the 1939 World's Fair approaches, Edgar places his hopes on winning an essay contest about the All-American Boy to get free tickets, but, of course, events don't transpire exactly as Edgar expects.

The novel is meant to be taken as autobiographical (the "E" in E.L. Doctorow stands for "Edgar.') This carefully constructed fiction, with its concrete details and straightforward style, melds invention with truth, giving this novel an intimate, honest tone. The method of adopting historical details - events, personalities, mass psychology - gives the character context within the times and lends the sense of a greater story to what is essentially a coming-of-age novel.

Although World's Fair is not my favorite Doctorow novel, it remains a fine addition to any reading list.

E.L. Doctorow is probably New York's greatest literary nostalgia artist. While "Ragtime" recalls the city's colorful population explosion of immigrants at the beginning of the twentieth century and "Billy Bathgate" is a boy's Depression-era underworld fantasy, "World's Fair" evokes what it might have been like to grow up in the Bronx in the 1930's. The narrator, Doctorow's voice and presumed alter ego, is a Jewish boy named Edgar Altschuler who is about nine by the time the book ends, so it remains in a state of pre-pubescent innocence without entering into the turbulent years of adolescent awakening.

Edgar is an extremely observant child who is fascinated by the intricacies of the most mundane things and events. Normal kid routines like school, ball games, movies, comic books, and radio programs are described in loving detail as though he were eager to explain to his jaded adult readers what's so special about being a kid. Similarly, tragedies like the death of his grandmother, witnessing a woman getting hit by a car, and meeting terminally ill children in the hospital take on perceptively morbid new dimensions through Edgar's words.

The members of Edgar's immediate family are so realistic they seem like sepia-tinted photographs come to life. His father Dave co-owns a music store and, far from being the moral compass a father's role is traditionally given, is somewhat irresponsible and irreverent, a social activist about thirty years ahead of his time. Edgar's mother Rose is a bundle of anxiety, worrisome and contentious from living in a house full of men. His older brother, Donald, and uncle Willy are both musically inclined, one a failed bandleader, the other destined to be a failed bandleader.

That Edgar is Jewish is an indispensable part of the story, as it defines his upbringing and characterizes his family, friends, and the neighborhood. From his strictly observant maternal grandmother to his atheistic paternal grandfather, there is a wide range of piety among his family members, which makes for lively scenes at rituals such as the Passover Seder. Nothing, however, raises the little boy's Jewish consciousness so much as the appearances of swastika graffiti in the neighborhood, threats from antisemitic hooligans, and Hitler's menacing shadow looming across the ocean.

Edgar's bittersweet final taste of youthful innocence is his long-anticipated and enthusiastic first visit to the 1939 World's Fair, an ironic symbol of man's proud achievements in the technological advancements of civilization considering the world was getting ready to destroy itself in war. The book ends with Edgar burying a time capsule in a nearby park in imitation of the one buried at the Fair, and it becomes apparent that this novel is meant to be Doctorow's personal time capsule.

Things we experience as children can be confusing and difficult to understand in all their aspects, but as adults we are able to articulate our thoughts and feelings about our childhood experiences with fresh insights that we didn't have at the time. That Doctorow does this so delicately and poetically in "World's Fair" makes his novel an absolute success.

We expect that Doctorow will use some piece of New York City's past as the setting for each of his novels but we also expect that he will give us a story with drama, tragedy or some wry take on the human comedy. In World's Fair he only gives us the view of time past. There is precious little story in this book. It deals with a young boy and his family during the 1930's and concerns itself mostly with ordinary life and the ups and downs of family relations. The story is mostly told by the younger son (who is nine at book's end) as he recounts his earliest memories, preoccupations, dreams, friends, illnesses and enthusiasms, but other characters (his mother, older brother and aunt) all have chapters in which they 'remember' the story from their own point of view. Yet if the plot is thin, the sense of reality generated by the writing is substantial. Doctorow uses the ordinary life of his characters to reflect and represent the broader story of the Great Depression, the rise of Nazi Germany, the extreme political divisions of the time, the fear of impending war and the great hope in a bright and shiney future free of the dark menace of poverty and repression.

This book kept me focused from the first few sentences. It doesn't demand a lot from the reader but it delivers a great deal. I suspect that there is a great deal of Doctorow himself in his main character. He was born in 1931, so would have been about the right age to experience the music, radio shows, games and other experiences that make up his protagonist's world. He certainly feels strongly about these simple byegone experiences and manages to convey that to the reader. This is a very satisfying glimpse into the life of ordinary but interesting people and I highly recommend it.

This book was very hard to put down once I stared to read it. It's a simple story about a boy growing up in Depression era NYC. There's no real excitement or climax (well, maybe Edgar finally going to the World's Fair) but it is simply a story about a boy and the time he lived in. Wonderfully written.

How true it is that our human tastes run the spectrum. I read several reviews of this book to the effect that they liked other Doctorow offerings, but had no taste for this one. I'm the opposite. There have been a few other Doctorow books that I didn't complete. But this one I considered a gem. There is no bombastic, nerve-snagging plot. It is the story of a boy growing up in New York and culminating in a trip to the World's Fair, but Doctorow captures perfectly the mind of a boy and the little details that, while perhaps not very significant to an adult, truly matter to a child. This is the real stuff of families and of life, including the foibles and failures along the way. I don't know if Doctorow was drawing at all from his own childhood, but the writing is alive and vivid enough to make me think so.

An absorbing experience with New York-Bronx life in the '30s. The title is a bit mis-leading in that less than half the book is devoted to the 1939 World's Fair- that being my own personal interest I would have prefered more of the setting to revolve around the Fair. Having said that, Doctorow is still a master of his art.

This book was like a great painting. Sentences are like brush strokes. Each one creating light, texture and in totality, portraying a beautiful moment in time.Doctorow is a master. His research of New York around the time period when the World's Fair came through town is painstakingly accurate. He describes it all with such beauty, through a young boy's eyes. I hesitate to say much more other than I strongly urge anyone to pick this one up

Mr Doctorow blew me away with Ragtime, which instantly became a favourite book and one of the best books i've ever read.

I had heard that his style changed quite a bit from book to book, so what was the chance, i wondered, of finding another Doctorow book which was as good?

But i underestimated the great Mr Doctorow.

His World's Fair is the first book since Roald Dahl's BFG, reading it as a boy about the age of Doctorow in this semi-autobiographical novel, that i genuinely was sad near the end, that it should soon be over. Just like with the BFG, and never since among the many novels i've read, from Dickens, Tolstoy, DH Lawrence, Henry James, name your giant, have i felt as i neared the book's end as if i were losing a friend.

To evoke this kind of impression with no-nonsense sentences is Doctorow's gift. Every sentence is a masterpiece of declarative communication which Hemingway would have been proud of. The amount of detail in the novel is astonishing - the little things no human could possibly remember, the impressions so vividly evoked, are why we have novelists like Doctorow.

I am grateful to Doctorow for inserting me so viscerally into his childhood - so that i almost felt I had experienced it myself. It felt, at the end, that it was my own father i was seeing for the last time.

One of the best books I have ever read. Finally, I've experienced Doctorow. He is a master, especially the way he sets his wondrous boyhood tale against a subtly controlled background of the ominous rise of Nazism at the time.

Doctorow is a fine writer who can spin a 300-page story out of thin air. This novel introduces us to an up-and-coming Jewish family in Queens in the 1930's. The central character is a young man of about ten whose main ambition is to be able to attend the World's Fair that is going on that summer. While this may not sound like much material to work with, in the hands of a pro like Mr. Doctorow, this story sprouts wings and FLIES.