ENGLISH

E. L. Doctorow’s Skeptical Commitment

By Michelle M. Tokarczyk

Book information

Publisher
Peter Lang Inc.
Year
2000
ISBN
0820444707, 9780820444703
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
2 MB (2244807 bytes)
Series
Twentieth-Century American Jewish Writers
Pages
194\204
Time added
2016-10-22 01:18:13
Criticism & Theory;History & Criticism;Literature

Description

This book gives a political reading of E. L. Doctorow’s fiction. For Doctorow, there was a tension between the ideals of his socially aware family and those of the new critics under whom he studied as an undergraduate. This tension, making him skeptical about the possibilities of political involvement, has been beneficial because it has enabled Doctorow to avoid the excesses of both polemical writing and formalism. Through a stance Tokarczyk terms «skeptical commitment» he has written political fiction of high literary quality. In part, he has done so by adapting genres such as the western and the romance. Furthermore, Doctorow has used experimental techniques to express political and historical themes, thereby writing a kind of postmodern fiction that still maintains the possibility of establishing some truths, while acknowledging indeterminacy.

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