E. L. Doctorow is acclaimed internationally for such novels as
"Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, " and "The March." Now here are
Doctorow's rich, revelatory essays on the nature of imaginative
thought. In "Creationists," Doctorow considers creativity in its
many forms: from the literary (Melville and Mark Twain) to the
comic (Harpo Marx) to the cosmic (Genesis and Einstein). As he
wrestles with the subjects that have teased and fired his own
imagination, Doctorow affirms the idea that "we know by what we
create."
Just what is Melville doing in "Moby-Dick"? And how did "The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer" impel Mark Twain to radically rewrite
what we know as "Huckleberry Finn"? Can we ever trust what
novelists say about their own work? How could Franz Kafka have
written a book called Amerika without ever leaving Europe? In
posing such questions, Doctorow grapples with literary creation not
as a critic or as a scholar-but as one working writer frankly
contemplating the work of another. It's a perspective that affords
him both protean grace and profound insight.
Among the essays collected here are Doctorow's musings on the very
different Spanish Civil War novels of Ernest Hemingway and Andre
Malraux; a candid assessment of Edgar Allan Poe as our "greatest
bad writer"; a bracing analysis of the story of Genesis in which
God figures as the most complex and riveting character. Whether he
is considering how Harpo Marx opened our eyes to surrealism, the
haunting photos with which the late German writer W. G. Sebald
illustrated his texts, or the innovations of such
literary icons as Heinrich von Kleist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and
Sinclair Lewis, Doctorow is unfailingly generous, shrewd,
attentive, surprising, and precise.
In examining the creative works of different times and disciplines,
Doctorow also reveals the source and nature of his own artistry.
Rich in aphorism and anecdote, steeped in history and psychology,
informed by a lifetime of reading and writing, "Creationists" opens
a magnificent window into one of the great creative minds of our
time.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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