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Welcome to Hard Times: A Novel Paperback – September 11, 2007

by E.L. Doctorow (Author)

70 customer reviews

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Here is E. L. Doctorow’s debut novel, a searing allegory of frontier life that sets the stage for his subsequent classics.

Hard Times is the name of a town in the barren hills of the Dakota Territory. To this town there comes one day one of the reckless sociopaths who wander the West to kill and rape and pillage. By the time he is through and has ridden off, Hard Times is a smoking ruin. The de facto mayor, Blue, takes in two survivors of the carnage–a boy, Jimmy, and a prostitute, Molly, who has suffered unspeakably–and makes them his provisional family. Blue begins to rebuild Hard Times, welcoming new settlers, while Molly waits with vengeance in her heart for the return of the outlaw.

Praise for Welcome to Hard Times

“A forceful, credible story of cowardice and evil.”—The Washington Post

“We are caught up with these people as real human beings.”—Chicago Sun-Times

“Dramatic and exciting.”—The New York Times

“Terse and powerful.”—Newsweek

“A taut, bloodthirsty read.”—The Times Literary Supplement

“A superb piece of fiction.”—The New Republic

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A forceful, credible story of cowardice and evil.”—The Washington Post

“We are caught up with these people as real human beings.”—Chicago Sun-Times

“Dramatic and exciting.”—The New York Times

“Terse and powerful.”—Newsweek

“A taut, bloodthirsty read.”—The Times Literary Supplement

“A superb piece of fiction.”—The New Republic

About the Author

E. L. Doctorow’s works of fiction include Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, World’s Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks, City of God, The March, Homer & Langley, and Andrew’s Brain. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, honoring a writer’s lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he won the PEN/ Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, given to an author whose “scale of achievement over a sustained career places him in the highest rank of American literature.” In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Fiction. In 2014 he was honored with the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.

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Product details

Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (September 11, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0812978226
ISBN-13: 978-0812978223
Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.5 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 70 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #726,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4855 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > Romance
- #7127 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Westerns
- #40884 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

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Pamela S. Simone

Painful Read

February 26, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I am sure this was a possible scenario in the early west. There were opportunities for evil and good to flourish. From the history of incidents of violence and tales of people like Billy the kid, the Earps, John Wesley Hardin, there were probably more then enough "bad men from Bodie" to go around.
This novel addresses human frailty, evil, goodness, vengeance, cowardice, and hatred against the backdrop of the Dakota badlands that are as barren and soulless as the story's antagonist penned in the stark prose of one of America's literary geniuses.
One of the parts that stands out is the unromantic portrayal of settling the west. The winters of near starvation, unyielding soil, rickety houses were probably closer to reality than the ornate saloons, neat storefronts, and Victorian cottages we have been fed by Hollywood.
The characters have certain outstanding traits but are multidimensional and realistic that the reader can empathize with them. Blue, the antihero, who rationalizes himself into passivity and like Hamlet becomes totally ineffective to avert the coming tragedy. In his misguided efforts to retroactively correct history, Blue not only sets in motion a repeat disaster but creates the conditions that cause one on a cataclysmic scale.
Molly, in her desire for revenge against the man who ripped away the last of her humanity, breeds in Jimmy the successor of the vicious Turner.
The complacency of Zar, Isaac, and the Swede to stay with the familiar and complain rather than move on before the mine plays out drags them into the calamity.
Like all of Doctrow's works, it keeps the reader in the story. He writes realistic characters that are recognizable. Even less prominent characters have depth.
An excellent read.

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J. Jamakaya

Fast-Paced, Hard-Hitting Western

May 31, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Hard Times is the name of a struggling mining town in the Dakota Territory and also the theme of this hard-hitting, tightly constructed debut novel by E. L. Doctorow. The story is narrated throughout by Blue, an experienced but increasingly burned-out westerner who becomes the mayor of Hard Times by default. The action begins on the very first page when the Bad Man from Bodie comes into town, abusing the saloon girls and mowing down anyone else in his way. The town and its people are devastated. Blue leads the few remaining townspeople in a slow, tentative recovery and for a short time Hard Times becomes a boom town. But when the mines are played out, the miners make their noisy exit and the Man from Bodie returns to present one more great challenge to Blue.

Short, well-paced, unsparing in its depiction of violence and hard times, this book has a narrator and a story you aren't likely to forget. On the negative side, the characters are drawn very broadly, and many western novels and films since its publication in 1960 have tackled themes of evil and survival in a more nuanced way.

E. L. Doctorow went on to write Ragtime: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (my favorite), Billy Bathgate: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle),The Book of Daniel: A Novel and The March: A Novel (about Sherman's march to the sea). Doctorow is recognized as one of our great contemporary writers. "Welcome to Hard Times" was a worthy first effort that showed him honing his craft.

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jonathan briggs

Welcome to Hard Times

April 18, 2012

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

The Western has traditionally been the genre of manly men. E.L. Doctorow puts a spin on things and gives us the coward's eye view in "Welcome to Hard Times." The Bad Man from Bodie is not very welcome in Hard Times, a flyspeck town in the Dakota Territory. He's so mean, he'd shoot a man before he ever had the chance to fall asleep and start snoring. The terrified townspeople run to their sort-of mayor, Blue, asking him to do something to run the Bad Man out of their town. Blue figures attempting that would be a sure way to get killed, so his advice is to lay low until the Bad Man slakes his thirst for carnage. After the Bad Man rapes all the cattle and stampedes the whores, he burns the town to the ground. The only people who elect to stay in the smoldering ashes are Blue; a vengeful prostitute named Molly, brutalized and scarred by the Bad Man; a boy named Jimmy, orphaned in the same rampage; and John Bear, an Indian who lived on the fringes of the town when it existed and who remains there now that it doesn't. Molly and Jimmy stay with Blue, as if to provide a constant, glaring reminder of his cowardice -- a makeshift family founded on hate.

Inevitably, entrepreneurial settlers come across the scorched patch, and Hard Times begins to stir and show signs of life, rebuilding on the two cornerstones of every solid society: whores and whiskey. There's also water, a stage line, and a nearby mine to supply steady customers looking for a release on the weekend. After a bitterly harsh winter that almost kills Jimmy, spring follows (it often does), bringing more growth, more people, more development and even government recognition. The town throws huge parties, complete with banjos and mouth organs, and Blue resumes his sort-of-mayorly duties.

As you might expect of a Western that's about running away in the hopes of never having to fight another day, "Welcome to Hard Times" is not very exciting, but it's not altogether uninteresting. Doctorow is more concerned with the roots of community, how it evolves into civilization and how it eventually declines and falls. Some people don't need a Bad Man to usher them toward destruction. "Our end was in our beginning," Blue says. There's nothing wrong with an intellectual Western packing pearl-handled metaphors instead of six-shooters. But me? Call me shallow, but I woulda preferred a couple more gunfights.

Incidentally, in the movie version of "Welcome to Hard Times" (which seriously pusses out on the ending), Aldo Ray plays the Bad Man from Bodie. I can't help but wonder whether he was the inspiration for Mongo in "Blazing Saddles." I see a strong resemblance.

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