"When you'd read Edgar's manuscripts, it was done. Eventually, I asked of a story not only what was to happen next, but how is this done? How am I made to live from words on a page? And so I became a writer." Career When asked how he decided to become a writer, he said, "I was a child who read everything I could get my hands on. It was published to positive reviews in 1960, with Wirt Williams of The New York Times describing it as "taut and dramatic, exciting and successfully symbolic." Begun as a parody of western fiction, it evolved into a reclamation of the genre. īack in New York after military service, Doctorow worked as a reader for a motion picture company reading so many Westerns inspired his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times. In 19, he served as a corporal in the signal corps in West Germany. After graduating with honors in 1952, he completed a year of graduate work in English drama at Columbia University before being drafted into the United States Army. While at Kenyon College, Doctorow joined the Middle Kenyon Association, and befriended Richard H. ĭoctorow attended Kenyon College in Ohio, where he studied with John Crowe Ransom, acted in college theater productions and majored in philosophy. He then enrolled in a journalism class to increase his opportunities to write. He attended city public grade schools and the Bronx High School of Science where, surrounded by mathematically gifted children, he fled to the office of the school literary magazine, Dynamo, which published his first literary effort. Early life ĭoctorow was born January 6, 1931, in the Bronx, the son of Rose (Levine) and David Richard Doctorow, second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish extraction who named him after Edgar Allan Poe. Former President Barack Obama called him "one of America's greatest novelists". His most notable adaptations were for the film Ragtime (1981) and the Broadway musical of the same name (1998), which won four Tony Awards.ĭoctorow was the recipient of numerous writing awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for Ragtime, National Book Critics Circle Award for Billy Bathgate, National Book Critics Circle Award for The March, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction. Ī number of Doctorow's novels and short stories were also adapted for the screen, including Welcome to Hard Times (1967) starring Henry Fonda, Daniel (1983) starring Timothy Hutton, Billy Bathgate (1991) starring Dustin Hoffman, and Wakefield (2016) starring Bryan Cranston. His stories were recognized for their originality and versatility, and Doctorow was praised for his audacity and imagination. These, like many of his other works, placed fictional characters in recognizable historical contexts, with known historical figures, and often used different narrative styles. He wrote twelve novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama, including the award-winning novels Ragtime (1975), Billy Bathgate (1989), and The March (2005). Edgar Lawrence Doctorow (Janu– July 21, 2015) was an American novelist, editor, and professor, best known for his works of historical fiction.
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