Creationists: Selected Essays 1993-2006 »

Few writers have succeeded as E. L. Doctorow has at creating stories (largely based in 1930s New York) that evoke both warm, personal memory and a grander national portrait. Doctorow doesn't always promise historical veracity, but he captures our imagination of the past flawlessly.

In follow up to the multi-award winner, The March, E.L. Doctorow focuses his brilliant mind on writers, with eloquent and surprising essays on the literary craft. These revelatory essays on the nature of creativity in writers run the gamut, from the literary, to the comic, to the cosmic. Rich with philosophical asides, personality, historical context and speculation, personal observations and literary judgments, Doctorow considers creativity from many angles. What emerges is a thoughtful and provocative portrait of art, literature and society, as well as a surprising view into one of the great literary minds of our time.

Ron Powers

Doctorow offers no apologies for the charm. His subjects, all summoned rather pointedly from the past, do have a certain radiance in my eyes, he happily admits early on, adding, "underlying all my attentions is a collegial homage, a sympathy, even a love for the aesthetic struggle as it shines with a kind of blessedness." Edgar Allan Poe (the worst writer of his, etc.) may Nevermore see this bounty of slack cut him.
« The New York Times

Introduction     ix
Genesis     1
E. A. Poe     9
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom     21
Composing Moby-Dick: What Might Have Happened     33
Sam Clemens's Two Boys     51
Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith     67
Fitzgerald's Crack-Up     77
Malraux, Hemingway, and the Spanish Civil War     83
Dos Passos: U.S.A.     97
Harpo     107
Heinrich von Kleist     115
Arthur Miller     123
Franz Kafka's Amerika     129
W.G. Sebald     143
Einstein: Seeing the Unseen     151
The Bomb     165
Publication History     177