Wednesday, September 9, 2009

On E. L. Doctorow

We've made no secret of our love of Doctorow; we recently posted a piece on Ragtime. Now Eric Alterman at the Daily Beast lets us in on his creative process and his new book, Homer & Langley.

EA: [Doctorow asks,] Didn’t your mother demand that you clean your room, lest it “turned into the Collyer brothers in there?”... The book is inspired by their incredibly odd lives, but quickly loses sight of the facts of the case and goes on a journey of, um, boundless imagination. As Edgar [Doctorow] explains over coffee and a shared muffin at the bright new cafe outside Alice Tully Hall—that’ll be $10, Tina—he did no research. “This is an American myth, and a myth has to be interpreted, not researched.” More...

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