E.L. Doctorow - by Michael Wutz & Julian Murphet (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book gathers a suite of newly commissioned, original essays on the work of E. L. Doctorow.

Book Synopsis

Showcases the life-work of one of America's greatest contemporary novelists
Essays written by an international set of scholarsContributions by prominent fiction writers and friends of Doctorow: Don DeLillo, Victor Navasky, and Jennifer Egan Pays particular attention to the extraordinary novels of Doctorow in the last 20 years, including The Waterworks, City of God, and a set of his recent preoccupations: corporate and religious power, cognitive science, and media cultureThis book gathers a suite of newly commissioned, original essays on the work of E. L. Doctorow. It reframes our understanding of his oeuvre by engaging it in entirety, including the significant accomplishments of the late period. The book features chapters by prominent fiction writers and friends of Doctorow, such as Don DeLillo, Victor Navasky and Jennifer Egan and explores Doctorow's novels and his diverse preoccupations: corporate and religious power, cognitive science and media culture.

From the Back Cover

Showcases the life-work of one of America's greatest contemporary novelists This book gathers a suite of newly commissioned, original essays on the work of E. L. Doctorow. It reframes our understanding of his oeuvre by engaging it in entirety, including the significant accomplishments of the late period. The book features chapters by prominent fiction writers and friends of Doctorow, such as Don DeLillo, Victor Navasky and Jennifer Egan, and explores Doctorow's novels and his diverse preoccupations: corporate and religious power, cognitive science and media culture. Michael Wutz is Rodney H. Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor at Weber State University. Julian Murphet is Scientia Professor in English and Film Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Review Quotes

E. L. Doctorow once likened narrative art to the experience of driving an unlit road at night. The author apprehends the close-distance illumination of the headlamps; everything else, he suggested, would only visualise upon encounter with mechanical luminescence, as if conjured into being by the very act of forward propulsion. This collection fits out the narrative motorway of Doctorow's literary career with vivid overhead lighting. These essays are both transformative and illuminating, and together will serve as a definitive guide to the long journey of Doctorow's narrative worlds.-- "Mark Steven, University of Exeter"

About the Author

Michael Wutz is Rodney H Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor at Weber State University. His publications include: Conversations with W. S. Merwin, coedited with Hal Crimmel (Weber State University), Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015; reissued in paperback 2018.Enduring Words--Literary Narrative in Changing Media Ecology, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009, pp. 279 "Young Swiss Writers," a special double issue of the international, bilingual magazine Dimension2 co-edited and -introduced with Romey Sabalius (Cal State, San José), vol. 8 (2/3), pp. 177-455, February 2007. "Media, Materiality, Memory: Aspects of Intermediality," a special issue of Configurations, the journal of the Society for Literature & Science, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, vol. 10, no.1 (Winter 2002): pp. 201, coedited with Geoffrey Winthrop-Young, Univ. of British Columbia.

Julian Murphet is Jury Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Adelaide. He is the author, previously, of Literature and Race in Los Angeles (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Multimedia Modernism (Cambridge University Press, 2009), Faulkner's Media Romance (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Todd Solondz (Northern Illinois University Press, 2019), and of the forthcoming Modern Character: 1888-1905 (Oxford University Press, 2023) and Twentieth-Century Prison Writing: A Literary Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).