) is an American author
.
Edgar Lawrence ("E.L.") Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York City
, the son of second-generation Americans of Russia
n Jewish descent. He attended city public grade schools and the Bronx High School of Science
where, surrounded by mathematically gifted children, he fled to the office of the school literary magazine, Dynamo. There, he published his first literary effort, The Beetle, which he describes as ”a tale of etymological self-defamation inspired by my reading of Kafka.”
Doctorow attended Kenyon College
in Ohio
, where he studied with the poet
and New Critic John Crowe Ransom
, acted in college theater productions, and majored in philosophy
.
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining ...researching ...talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there’s only narrative.
Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
In the twentieth century one of the most personal relationships to have developed is that of the person and the state... It’s become a fact of life that governments have become very intimate with people, most always to their detriment.
History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.
I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.