Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Review: Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow
Writing style-7.6
Originality-7.1
Plot-7.9
Literary merit(whatever that means)-7.8
Overall-7.6
This is a really good book. Nothing to write home about, but a very entertaining, solid, smart novel.
Amy tells me I need shorter paragraphs when writing for the Web so I’m gonna try that against my better judgement.
It’s the story of a 15 year old kid who falls in with some gangsters in the depression era. He’s fatherless and poor and has a crazy mom so he’s quite aimless and in need of role models. The kids in the neighborhood all look up to mob boss Schultz. Billy gains cred and a lot of money when he becomes part of Schultz’s inner circle.
It’s got the whole 30’s gangster story feel with a good bit of Catcher in the Rye (of course, what book about a teenager maturing doesn’t get compared to Catcher?) and a dash of Theodore Dreiser’s An American tragedy (Billy, the poor street urchin, is enraptured by the money and notoriety and because of this his morals decline rapidly).
I found at times that my mind was wandering and I would have to go back and read certain paragraphs. I’m not sure why this was, maybe I was going through a low attention span cycle or something. I’m not sure why some writers like Richard Ford can write about a father picking up his kid from his ex-wife and spending time at the baseball hall of fame or James Agee can write endlessly about every tiny detail of a sharecropper’s existence and I am enthralled while others can be writing about the mob, murder, violence, political intrigues and I have trouble paying attention. E.L. Doctorow is a very accomplished, highly regarded writer… so. It’s a mystery.
Still, I’d recommend this book particularly if you like the 30’s gangster thang.
Originality-7.1
Plot-7.9
Literary merit(whatever that means)-7.8
Overall-7.6
This is a really good book. Nothing to write home about, but a very entertaining, solid, smart novel.
Amy tells me I need shorter paragraphs when writing for the Web so I’m gonna try that against my better judgement.
It’s the story of a 15 year old kid who falls in with some gangsters in the depression era. He’s fatherless and poor and has a crazy mom so he’s quite aimless and in need of role models. The kids in the neighborhood all look up to mob boss Schultz. Billy gains cred and a lot of money when he becomes part of Schultz’s inner circle.
It’s got the whole 30’s gangster story feel with a good bit of Catcher in the Rye (of course, what book about a teenager maturing doesn’t get compared to Catcher?) and a dash of Theodore Dreiser’s An American tragedy (Billy, the poor street urchin, is enraptured by the money and notoriety and because of this his morals decline rapidly).
I found at times that my mind was wandering and I would have to go back and read certain paragraphs. I’m not sure why this was, maybe I was going through a low attention span cycle or something. I’m not sure why some writers like Richard Ford can write about a father picking up his kid from his ex-wife and spending time at the baseball hall of fame or James Agee can write endlessly about every tiny detail of a sharecropper’s existence and I am enthralled while others can be writing about the mob, murder, violence, political intrigues and I have trouble paying attention. E.L. Doctorow is a very accomplished, highly regarded writer… so. It’s a mystery.
Still, I’d recommend this book particularly if you like the 30’s gangster thang.
