Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-vmclg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-16T16:31:46.736Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

E. L. Doctorow and the Technology of Narrative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Geoffrey Galt Harpham
Geoffrey Galt Harpham*
Affiliation:
Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The work of E. L. Doctorow is difficult to place on the map of postmodernism because he is equally concerned with narrative or representational technique and with issues of history, power, and identity. Doctorow has focused his concerns in the question of technology, representing in each of his major works technological principles that not only typify the historical epoch in which the novel is set but also characterize the representational mode of the novel itself. The differences among technologies in his novels produce an arc of development that moves from a critique of the coercive power of a system epitomized by the electrical circuit in The Book of Daniel to a celebration of the possibilities for imaginative and representational freedom created by the computer in Loon Lake. Concentrating on the technology of narrative, Doctorow has contributed striking redefinitions of the historical subject while testing and extending the resources of the contemporary novel.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 100 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 81 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Culler, Jonathan. “Commentary.” New Literary History 6.1 (1974): 219–29.Google Scholar
Doctorow, E. L. The Book of Daniel. New York: Random, 1971.Google Scholar
Doctorow, E. L. “Creators on Creating: E. L. Doctorow.” Interview with Hilary Mills. Saturday Review Oct. 1980, 44–48.Google Scholar
Doctorow, E. L. “False Documents.” American Review 26 (1977): 215–32. Rpt. in Trenner, Richard N., ed. E L. Doctorow: Essays and Conversations. Princeton: Ontario Review, 1983, 16–27.Google Scholar
Doctorow, E. L. “The Language of Theater.” Nation 2 June 1979, 637–38.Google Scholar
Doctorow, E. L. “Living in the House of Fiction.” Nation 22 April 1978, 459–62.Google Scholar
Doctorow, E. L. Loon Lake. New York: Random, 1979.Google Scholar
Doctorow, E. L. Ragtime. New York: Random, 1975.Google Scholar
Doctorow, E. L. “Ragtime the Novel.” Interview with Charlie Reilly. Philadephia City Paper Jan. 1982, 7, 15.Google Scholar
Doctorow, E. L. “The Rise of Ronald Reagan.” Nation 19–26 July 1980, 1, 82–84.Google Scholar
Doctorow, E. L. The Writer's World: E. L. Doctorow and the American Myth. Interview. Prod. WGBH, Boston. PBS, 31 Aug. 1983.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” New Left Review 146 (1984): 53–93.Google Scholar
Johnson, Diane. “Waiting for Righty.” New York Review of Books 6 Oct. 1980, 18–20.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966.Google Scholar
Prenis, John. The Running Press Glossary of Computer Terms. Philadelphia: Running, 1977.Google Scholar
Riffaterre, Michael. “Interpretation and Undecidability.” New Literary History 12.2 (1981): 227–42.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. Beginnings: Intention and Method. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Stewart, Susan, “The Pickpocket: A Study in Tradition and Allusion.” Modern Language Notes 95 (1980): 1127–54.Google Scholar
Todd, Richard. “The-Most-Overrated-Book-of-the-Year-Award and Other Literary Prizes.” Atlantic Jan. 1976, 95–96.Google Scholar
White, Hayden. “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 7 (1980): 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1965.Google Scholar