Billy Bathgate (novel)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Billy Bathgate is a 1989 novel by the American writer E. L. Doctorow . The novel is set in the 1930s and tells the last few months in the life of gangster Dutch Schultz , a historically real figure , from the perspective of 15-year-old Billy "Bathgate" Behan .

Billy Bathgate is a multi-award winning novel. He received the William Dean Howells Medal in 1990 , awarded every five years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the most extraordinary novel, and was honored with the PEN / Faulkner Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award . After Ragtime , this was the second time E. L. Doctorow received the latter award. Billy Bathgate was also nominated for the National Book Award in 1989 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1990.

Novel plot

The narrator of the plot is Billy Behan, who calls himself Bill Bathgate during the course of the plot. Impoverished and fatherless, he grew up in the Bronx , the northernmost part of New York . His father has left his mother, they live meagerly on the wages his mother, half-mad because of the grief over the loss, earns as a laundress. The days of prohibition are over, but the members of criminal organizations are still the wealthiest people in the area. They no longer earn their money with alcohol smuggling, but with marked bets, as night club owners and with their willingness to eliminate problems through murder. In Chapter 6, Billy Bathgate witnesses, among other things, the fictitious work accident of two window cleaners, under whom their platform breaks away while they are cleaning the windows of a high-rise building. The plot begins with the preparations for the assassination of Bo Weinberg. Weinberg was a former band member of Dutch Schultz, one admired by the adolescent Mobster the Kosher Nostra . Billy - so far only an errand boy and mascot in the office from which the marked bets are arranged for Dutch Schultz - is a tolerated eyewitness when Weinberg's feet are cemented in a washtub, only to be drowned in the sea off the coast of New York.

In the following chapters, Billy Behan tells how he gained access to the inner circle around Dutch Schultz through chutzpah and agility. Dutch Schultz first noticed him as a skilled juggler and the first sentence, which introduces the second chapter, is characteristic of the style of the novel:

“Juggling got me where I was. Whenever we hung around the warehouse on Park Avenue, and I don't mean the legendary rich Park Avenue, but Park Avenue in the Bronx, a strangely characterless street with garages and one-story workshops and yards of stonemasons and the occasional one with tar paper how clinker brick should look, a clad wooden house, a boulevard paved with uneven square stones, the north and south sides of the street separated by a wide ditch, at the bottom of which the trains of the New York Central Line rushed through with a screeching roar and sometimes, ten meters below the carriageway level with gusts of wind that swayed the crooked, twisted iron spear fence at the edge of the ditch, which we were so used to that we interrupted our conversation and continued in mid-sentence when the noise subsided - and whenever we hung around there, around you To catch a glimpse of the beer trucks, the other guys threw pennies on the wall or played They snapped bottle caps on the sidewalk or just wasted their time speculating about what they'd do if Mr. Schultz ever noticed them, how they'd prove themselves to be gang members, how they got on, and the fresh hundred-dollar bills on them Would throw their mothers' kitchen tables who yelled at them, and their fathers who spanked their asses, then I always practiced juggling. "

Billy Behan becomes an admirer of Otto Berman, the accountant and mathematical genius behind fictitious bets. Under Berman's influence, Billy Behan learns how to dress and behave properly. But he also states that crime, when it works as it should, is not very exciting: He comments at one point very lucrative and very boring . Billy Behan eventually becomes a kind of mascot for Dutch Schultz. Schultz takes him with him when he retires to Onondaga County on charges of tax evasion . In the district, which was marked by the effects of the severe economic crisis , Dutch Schultz presented himself as an honest and benevolent businessman and ultimately found a jury that acquitted him of the charge of tax evasion. The young Billy Behan also plays a role in this charade - he mimes the well-bred protégé von Schultz, who is accompanied by Lola Drews as the supposed governess , and even joins the Sunday Bible study group.

Billy Behan falls increasingly in love with Lola Drew, who has been Dutch Schultz's new lover since Weinberg was murdered. Originally, the married Drew was Bo Weinberg's lover, and although she was not an eyewitness to his murder, she was kidnapped with him on the night of his murder. She would therefore be able to at least serve as a witness that Schultz is behind the disappearance of Weinberg. Only her sexual attraction to Schultz saves her from being murdered at least not immediately. She is one of the people accompanying Dutch Schultz to Onondaga. Drew, who obviously comes from a well-to-do family, seems to be increasingly distancing herself from the irascible Schultz; During a secret picnic with Billy Behan, she asks him crying about the last minutes of Weinberg's life. At the start of the Onondaga trial, Billy Behan is hired to escort Drew to Saratoga Springs to avoid the press hype during the Onondaga trial. While driving there, Drew seduces Billy Behan.

The public attention following the Onondaga jury's acquittal of Schultz soon led to prosecutor Thomas Dewey bringing a new charge against Schultz. Schultz is forced to withdraw from New York and seek refuge in the US state of New Jersey. When Billy Behan visits him and his people there, there is a final assassination attempt on the mobster by a rival gang. Only Billy Behan and the bartender survived this attack. Billy Behan, who returned to the scene of the murder before the police arrived, suspects that the last numbers that the dying Otto Bergman mumbles are the combination of numbers with the daily income. He gains access to Schultz's hotel room and steals the money.

Historical figures

The historic Thomas E. Dewey

Doctorow processed a number of historical characters in his novel:
Dutch Schultz was a Kosher Nostra mobster who was murdered in October 1935. Schultz's amassed fortune, valued at $ 7 million and kept in a safe, was never discovered. Doctorow processes some incidents around Dutch Schultz in Billy Bathgate , which are documented by witnesses. There is a testimony of the murder of Jules Modgilewskiy by Schultz 'former lawyer Richard "Dixie" Davis.

“Dutch Schultz was lousy. He had been drinking and suddenly drew his gun. Schultz carried his pistol under his vest, and had it tucked into his pants, right on his stomach. One grip in his vest and he had it in his hand. In a single swift movement he pulled it out, put it in Jules Martin's mouth, and pulled the trigger. It was that simple and undramatic. Just a quick movement of the hand. Dutch Schultz committed this murder with an indifference as if he were brushing his teeth. "

- Dixie Davis - Five Families Book.

Schultz then apologized to his lawyer for witnessing a murder. This murder is one of the key scenes in the novel, although the murder is not directly portrayed. Billy Behan hears the shot in his hotel room. He then finds the excited Schultz, Davis, covered in horror, and the dying Modgilewsky in the hotel room across the street. Billy Behan, who plays a role in the removal of the corpse, becomes finally aware through this event that one day Schultz will get rid of him in a similarly cold-blooded manner when he has lost his usefulness.
Abraham Weinberg , called Bo Weinberg , was a member of the Kosher Nostra who disappeared in an unexplained manner in 1935. The murder of Bo Weinberg is a historically unprovable invention by Doctorow, but it is the most likely cause of his disappearance.
Otto Berman : On the evening of October 23, 1935, Berman attended a meeting in a restaurant in Newark, New Jersey, along with two other members of the Dutch Schultz's gang and the latter himself. During this meeting, some heavily armed men suddenly stormed the place. The hit men who were probably acting on instructions from Lucky Luciano , including Charles Workman and Emanuel Weiss from Murder, Inc. , immediately opened fire on Dutch Schultz and his men. Berman was hit by several projectiles and seriously injured. He passed out at the scene of the attack and died a few hours later in a Newark hospital. In Billy Bathgate , however, Berman dies on the scene.
Thomas Dewey was governor of the state of New York from 1943 to 1955 and twice unsuccessful candidate for Republican in the 1944 and 1948 presidential elections. The beginning of his political career goes back to 1935, when he was appointed prosecutor to target organized crime proceed.
Lulu Rosenkranz and Abe Landau were bodyguards of Dutch Schultz, who were also murdered in October 1935.
In contrast, Billy Behan and Lola Drews are fictional people.

Reviews

The writer Daniel Kehlmann wrote in an article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about EL Doctorow and his novel Billy Bathgate :

“My first Doctorow novel was 'Billy Bathgate,' and it was through it that I understood for the first time - I was sixteen years old - what it really was: the voice of a novel. It is not identical with the style, rather it is the illusion of a person, identical neither with the narrator nor with the author, but closely related to both. "

Kehlmann continues with a comparison of the different styles of language that Doctorow uses in his novels:

“The Billy Bathgate tone, in the pendulum swing of his long, long sentences, is very different from the tone of the unreliable, because personally deeply involved, narrator Daniel Isaacson in 'The Book of Daniel', the sheriff of 'Welcome to Hard' who is struggling with his fear Times' or the weird omniscient historian of 'Ragtime'. Good literature arises from the economy of resources, but great literature from waste. It gives the impression that everything is easy and there are no limits to the imagination. "

filming

The novel was made into a film in 1991 with the same title , directed by Robert Benton , and the screenplay was written by Tom Stoppard . Nicole Kidman was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Lola Drew Preston . Bo Weinberg was portrayed by Bruce Willis and Dutch Schultz by Dustin Hoffman .

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ^ National Book Awards - 1989 . In: National Book Foundation . Retrieved January 14, 2014.
  2. ↑ 1990 Pulitzer Prize Nominated Finalists, accessed July 22, 2014.
  3. ↑ EL Doctorow: Billy Bathgate . From the American by Angela Praesent. First sentence of the 2nd chapter
  4. ^ Doctorow: Billy Bathgate . Random House Trade Paperback Edition, 2010, ISBN 978-0-307-76738-7 , p. 58. The original quote is: When crime was working as it was suppsed to it was very dull. Very lucrative and very dull.
  5. ^ Doctorow: Billy Bathgate . Random House Trade Paperback Edition, 2010, ISBN 978-0-307-76738-7 , p. 138.
  6. ↑ Digging for Dutch: The Search for the Lost Treasure of Dutch Schultz (2001) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  7. ^ Davis Bares Murder by Schultz Of Jules Martin, Gangster's Aide; Policy Racketeer Shot Victim in Mouth in Cohoes Hotel as Ex-Lawyer Looked On, Hines Witness Told Up-State Prosecutor Davis Tells How Schultz Slew Jules Martin, One of His Aides in Up-State Hotel in 1935 New York Times , September 1, 1938 (English)
  8. ↑ The Five Families . MacMillan, (Retrieved June 22, 2008).
  9. ↑ a b Daniel Kehlmann: He learned from Kleist and I from him . In: FAZ , April 7, 2011, accessed on July 23, 2014