EL Doctorow

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EL Doctorow (2014)

Edgar Lawrence "EL" Doctorow (born January 6, 1931 in New York ; † July 21, 2015 there ) was an American writer and publicist who is counted among the most important contemporary authors in the United States. Doctorow was best known in Germany for his novels Ragtime (1975) and Billy Bathgate (1989).

Life

Doctorow grew up as the child of second generation Russian-Jewish immigrants in the New York Bronx . The novel Weltausstellung , which has strong autobiographical traits, speaks about this time. His parents named him after Edgar Allan Poe . After studying at Kenyon College (graduating with honors in 1952), he edited several magazines and taught at various universities, since 1982 at New York University on a specially created chair for English and American literature . Since 1984 he has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, since 1991 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and since 2007 of the American Philosophical Society . For his books he received almost all important national prizes and awards, including the PEN / Faulkner Award in 1990 for Billy Bathgate and in 2006 for the equivalent of 12,600 euros for The March . He also received the William Dean Howells Medal in 1990 . The novel The March takes place in the final months of the American Civil War and describes the campaign of General William Tecumseh Sherman and his troops through the southern states of Georgia , North Carolina and South Carolina .

Doctorow's first novels, Welcome to Hard Times (1960), a satire on the belief in progress of his contemporaries, Big as Life (1966), a science fiction novel, and The Book of Daniel (1971), a literary processing of the history of the Rosenbergs , initially received little attention from critics and readers after their publication and only received appropriate appreciation after the great success of Ragtime (1975). In addition to his literary work, Doctorow also worked as a lecturer .

EL Doctorow died on July 21, 2015 in Manhattan of complications from lung cancer.

Awards

EL Doctorow has received prestigious literary prizes for several of his works. He received the National Book Critics Circle Award three times - for Ragtime , World's Fair and for Billy Bathgate . The latter novel was also awarded the William Dean Howells Medal . World's Fair received the National Book Award, and several works by Doctorow were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In addition, Doctorow has received several awards for his life's work.

review

The writer Daniel Kehlmann is one of Doctorow's admirers and 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 actually 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. "

Works (selection)

  • Welcome to Hard Times , Roman, 1960, German: Willkommen in Hard Times (translated by Angela Praesent ), Rowohlt (rororo 5872), Reinbek bei Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-499-15872-8 .
  • The Book of Daniel , Roman, 1971, German: Das Buch Daniel (translated by Thomas Schlück), Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-458-05352-2 (literary adaptation of the story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg , published in 1953 in executed in the United States).
  • Ragtime , Roman 1975, German: Ragtime (translated by Angela Praesent), Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1976, ISBN 3-498-01223-1 .
  • Loon Lake , Roman, 1980, German: Sterntaucher , Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1982, ISBN 3-498-01244-4 .
  • Lives of the Poets, six stories and a novella, 1984, German: Das Leben der Dichter (translated by Angela Praesent), Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-498-01259-2 .
  • World's Fair , Roman, 1985, German: World Exhibition (translated by Angela Praesent), Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-498-01267-3 .
  • Billy Bathgate , Roman, 1989, German: Billy Bathgate (translated by Angela Praesent), Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-462-02043-9 .
  • The Waterworks , Roman, 1994, German: Das Wasserwerk , (translated by Angela Praesent), Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-462-02401-9 .
  • City of God , Roman, 2000, German: City of God (translated by Angela Praesent), Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-462-03031-0
  • Sweet Land Stories , Erzählungen, 2004, German: Sweet Land Stories (translated by Angela Praesent), Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2006, ISBN 978-3-462-03681-7 .
  • The March , Roman 2005, German: The March (translated by Angela Praesent), Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-462-03917-7 .
  • Homer & Langley , Roman 2009, German: Homer & Langley (translated by Gertraude Krueger), Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-462-04298-6 .
  • All the time in the world , stories (translated by Gertraude Krueger), Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-462-30684-2 .
  • Andrew's Brain , Roman 2014, German: In Andrews Kopf (translated by Gertraude Krueger), Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-462-04812-4 .

Film adaptations

Web links

Commons : EL Doctorow  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ American Conversation EL Doctorow. (PDF; 130 kB) In: archives.gov. The National Archives Experience, September 25, 2008, accessed July 21, 2015 .
  2. ^ Member History: EL Doctorow. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 19, 2018 .
  3. ^ Bbl. Online, February 27, 2006.
  4. ↑ Verena Araghi: US author EL Doctorow: The army as a last resort. In: Spiegel Online . December 5, 2007, accessed July 21, 2015 .
  5. ↑ See Franz Link: EL Doctorow . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 - Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn u. a. 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , pp. 163–172, here p. 163. See also Martin Schulze: History of American Literature . Propylaen-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-549-05776-8 , p. 553.
  6. ↑ Bruce Weber: EL Doctorow, Literary Time Traveler Who Stirred the Past Into Fiction, Dies at 84. In: nytimes.com. The New York Times , July 21, 2015, accessed July 21, 2015 .
  7. ^ Winners of the National Humanities Medal and the Charles Frankel Prize. (No longer available online.) National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), archived from the original on July 21, 2011 ; accessed on July 21, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.neh.gov
  8. ^ Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, 2013. In: nationalbook.org. National Book Foundation, accessed July 21, 2015 .
  9. ↑ James McBride wins US National Book Award. In: bbc.co.uk. BBC News, November 21, 2013, accessed July 21, 2015 .
  10. ^ Alison Flood: The Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In: theguardian.com. The Guardian , April 17, 2014, accessed July 21, 2015 .
  11. ↑ a b Daniel Kehlmann: He learned from Kleist and I from him. In: faz.net. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 7, 2011, accessed on July 21, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Doctorow, EL
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Doctorow, Edgar Lawrence (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH New York , NY , United States
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 2015
Place of death Manhattan , New York , NY , United States