Creationists, E.L. Doctorow
Creationists, E.L. Doctorow
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Creationists
Selected Essays, 1993-2006

Author: E.L. Doctorow

Narrator: E.L. Doctorow

Unabridged: 4 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/19/2006


Synopsis

E. L. Doctorow is acclaimed internationally for such novels as Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and The March. Here now are his rich, revelatory essays on the nature of imaginative thought. In Creationists, Doctorow considers creativity in its many forms, from the literary to the comic to the cosmic. As he wrestles with the subjects that have teased and fired his own imagination, Doctorow affirms that “we know by what we create.”

Just what is Melville doing in Moby-Dick? How did The Adventures of Tom Sawyer impel Mark Twain to the radical rewrite that 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 André Malraux; a candid assessment of Edgar Allan Poe as our “greatest bad writer”; and a bracing analysis of the story of Genesis, in which God figures as the most complex and riveting character.

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.

About The Author

E. L. Doctorow’s works of fiction include Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, World’s Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks, City of God, The March, Homer & Langley, and Andrew’s Brain. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle awards, two PEN/Faulkner awards, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, honoring a writer’s lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he won the PEN/ Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, given to an author whose “scale of achievement over a sustained career places him in the highest rank of American literature.” In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Fiction. In 2014 he was honored with the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.


Reviews

Goodreads review by W.D. on November 10, 2023

This set of essays was never less than enlightening—sometimes (as with the final essays on Einstein and the titular "creationists" of the atom and thermo-nuclear bombs) quite surprisingly so. Though some of these essays aim for the continent (Malraux, Kafka, Sebald, and Heinrich von Kleist—all excel......more

Goodreads review by Michael on July 25, 2019

Why is there such a strong anti-intellectual strain in America? America seems forever fixated on emotion, and that fixation discourages deepening wisdom. The hurry to do something makes the delay of developing a philosophy almost sinful. It's just a hypothesis, and books like the Creationists try to......more

Goodreads review by Charles on December 17, 2009

If you pick up this book expecting E.L. Doctorow to weigh in on “intelligent design” or other anti-Darwinian controversies you’ll be disappointed. It’s a book of essays mostly about literature: Poe, Melville, Twain, Malraux, Kleist, Kafka, et al. Doctorow calls it “a modest celebration of the creati......more

Goodreads review by Sue on February 06, 2017

Beautifully written thoughts and analysis of several classic books and their authors. Can't say enough about his style - so fluid and thought-provoking. (He even makes me want to read Moby Dick - he's that convincing!). His ponderings are proof that reading a book with the intent to learn from it is......more

Goodreads review by Noreen on December 06, 2009

A collection of Doctorow's incisive and thought-provoking essays on the art of fiction, with a brilliant introduction on writing in which he asks: "Why compose fiction when you could be devoting your life to your appetites? Why wrestle with a book when you could be amassing a fortune? Why write whe......more