E.L. Doctorow (1931-2015) Tribute List

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow, the acclaimed novelist, died on July 21, 2015 at the age of 84. Doctorow is best known as a novelist who played with historical events in books like Ragtime and The Book of Daniel.

Doctorow was never afraid to paint on a big canvas or wrestle with big themes, and there's a wonderful sense of risk in his best work—reading it, you feel as if the next step is in doubt for everyone, even the author, even if you know the historical events being referenced. Doctorow enshrined the idea that history was once life, and because of this, that it was just as scary, and potentially hopeful, as tomorrow. Here are 12 quotes from the work of E.L. Doctorow, as well as a few words used to describe him.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. exploited
    taken advantage of
    I am often asked the question: How can the masses permit themselves to be exploited by the few. The answer is : By being persuaded to identify with them.— Ragtime
  2. degeneracy
    the state of being degenerate in mental or moral qualities
    Children died of mild colds or slight rashes. Children died on beds made from two kitchen chairs pushed together. They died on floors. Many people believed that filth and starvation and disease were what the immigrant got for his moral degeneracy.— Ragtime
  3. conflagration
    a very intense and uncontrolled fire
    The signs of the coming conflagration were everywhere. [...] The painters in Paris were doing portraits with two eyes on one side of the head. A Jewish professor in Zurich had published a paper proving that the universe was curved. None of this escaped Pierpont Morgan.— Ragtime
  4. elusive
    difficult to detect or grasp by the mind or analyze
    Of one thing we are sure. Everything is elusive. God is elusive. Revolutionary morality is elusive. Justice is elusive. Human character. Quarters for the cigarette machine.— The Book of Daniel
  5. cunning
    showing inventiveness and skill
    This is what happens to us, to the children of trials; our hearts run to cunning, our minds are as sharp as claws. Such shrewdness has to be burned into the eye's soul, it is only formed in fire.— The Book of Daniel
  6. shrewdness
    intelligence manifested by being astute
    This is what happens to us, to the children of trials; our hearts run to cunning, our minds are as sharp as claws. Such shrewdness has to be burned into the eye's soul, it is only formed in fire.— The Book of Daniel
  7. presumption
    audacious behavior that you have no right to
    It was as if God had decreed this characterless engagement of brainless forces as his answer to the human presumption.
    — The March
  8. wayward
    resistant to guidance or discipline
    Grandmamma had been the last connection to our past. I had understood her as some referent moral authority to whom we paid no heed, but by whose judgments we measured our waywardness
    — Homer and Langley
  9. dominion
    control or power through legal authority
    And so do people pass out of one's life and all you can remember of them is their humanity, a poor fitful thing of no dominion, like your own.— Homer and Langley
  10. celestial
    relating to or inhabiting a divine heaven
    The story was clearly over, as in juggling when the ball you throw up finds the moment to come down, hesitates as if it might not, and then drops at the same speed of that celestial light. And life is no longer good but just what you happen to be holding.
    — Billy Bathgate
  11. contingent
    determined by conditions or circumstances that follow
    But think of the contingent human mind, how fast it snaps onto the given subject, how easily it is introduced to an idea, an image that it had not dreamt of thinking of a millisecond before... Think of how the first line of a story yokes the mind into a place, a time, in the time it takes to read it.
    — City of God
  12. yoke
    link with or as with stable gear joining two draft animals
    But think of the contingent human mind, how fast it snaps onto the given subject, how easily it is introduced to an idea, an image that it had not dreamt of thinking of a millisecond before... Think of how the first line of a story yokes the mind into a place, a time, in the time it takes to read it.
    — City of God
  13. audacity
    aggressive or outright boldness
    The author of a dozen novels, three volumes of short fiction and a stage drama, as well as essays and commentary on literature and politics, Mr. Doctorow was widely lauded for the originality, versatility and audacity of his imagination.
    --"E. L. Doctorow, Literary Time Traveler Who Stirred the Past Into Fiction, Dies at 84," The New York Times, July 21, 2015
  14. subversive
    in opposition to an established system or government
    Subtly subversive in his fiction — less so in his left-wing political writing — he consistently upended expectations with a cocktail of fiction and fact, remixed in book after book; with clever and substantive manipulations of popular genres like the Western and the detective story; and with his myriad storytelling strategies.
    --"E. L. Doctorow, Literary Time Traveler Who Stirred the Past Into Fiction, Dies at 84," The New York Times, July 21, 2015
  15. ammoniated
    combined or treated with ammonia
    Startled awake by the ammoniated mists, I am roused in one instant from glutinous sleep to grieving awareness; I have done it again. My soaked thighs sting. I cry. I call Mama, knowing I must endure her harsh reaction, get through that, to be rescued. My crib is on the east wall of their room. Their bed is on the south wall. ‘Mama!’ From her bed she hushes me.
    -- World's Fair
  16. thrall
    the state of being under the control of another person
    His protagonists lived in the seeming thrall of history but their tales, for the convenience — or, better, the purpose — of fiction, depicted alterations in accepted versions of the past.
    --"E. L. Doctorow, Literary Time Traveler Who Stirred the Past Into Fiction, Dies at 84," The New York Times, July 21, 2015
  17. visionary
    a person with unusual powers of foresight
    Doctorow here appears not so much a reconstructor of history as a visionary who seeks in time past occasions for poetry.
    --John Updike reviewing E.L. Doctorow's "The March" for The New Yorker
Created on Tue Jul 21 21:59:41 EDT 2015 (updated Wed Jul 22 10:46:43 EDT 2015)

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