NEW YORK. The writer THE Doctorow, who ironically formed a new concept of the American experience in novels as “Ragtime” and “The March” and applied the lessons of the past and the future in fiction and nonfiction, has died. He was 84.
His son, Richard Doctorow, confirmed that died Tuesday at a hospital in New York of complications from lung cancer. He lived in New York and Sag Harbor.
As one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Doctorow enjoyed success both among the public and among critics throughout his career of 50 years. He won the National Book Award in 1986 for “World’s Fair” and the prize of the National Critics Circle Books in 1989 for “Billy Bathgate” and in 2005 for “The March”.
In addition to its 10 novels, published two books of short stories, a play called “Drinks Before Dinner” and numerous essays and articles.
“I do not know what I intended to do,” Doctorow said in 2006 after the publication of ” The March, “his acclaimed novel about the Civil War. “Someone remarked to me a couple of years ago one could align and indeed, now with this book, 150 years of American history … And this was totally unplanned.”
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born January 6, 1931 in New York. They put their first name in honor of Edgar Allan Poe, who used to disparage as “the best bad writer” of the United States. His father, David Doctorow, ran a music store, and his mother was a pianist Rose Doctorow.
The young Edgar Doctorow read profusely and decided nine years would become a writer.
“I started it myself two questions while reading a book excited me,” he recalled. “Not only what was going to happen next, but how do you do this? How do these words on the page make me feel the way I’m feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in the mind of a child, without even know you have aspirations to be a writer. “
Doctorow graduated from the High School of Science in New York’s Bronx borough and Kenyon College in Gambler, Ohio. He attended graduate school at Columbia University but left without completing a doctorate. He also served in the US Army, located in Germany.
In the 1950s he worked as a script reader for Columbia Pictures, where he read novels and summarized for possible film version. This work took him to his first novel, “Welcome to Hard Times”, a book about the Old West published in 1960.
His second novel, a work of science fiction called “Big as Life” was published in 1966 and was unsuccessful. But the third, “The Book of Daniel”, released in 1971, catapulted him to the front rank of American writers.
Launched in 1975, “Ragtime” features a Dickensian picture of New York the golden age, in which historical figures are mixed as JP Morgan, Harry Houdini and Emma Goldman with other invented. The main character, Coalhouse Walker Jr., a black musician was victim of racism.
Helen Doctorow Setzer married in 1954. They had two daughters and a son.
He took classes creative writing at New York University and taught at several other institutions, including the School of Drama at Yale University, Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College and the University of California, Irvine.
Liberal lifetime, Doctorow was booed by students when he criticized President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq during a speech to the new students at Hofstra University on Long Island in 2004.
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