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Lives of the Poets: A Novella and Six Stories
An introspective narrative of the activities, attitudes, and concerns of a writer in his fiftieth year is accompanied by stories that address the same artistic and personal preoccupations
160 pages, Paperback
First published October 12, 1984
About the author
E.L. Doctorow
82 books1,070 followersHistory based known novels of American writer Edgar Laurence Doctorow. His works of fiction include Homer & Langley, The March, Billy Bathgate, Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, Loon Lake, World’s Fair, The Waterworks, and All the Time in the World. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle Awards, two PEN Faulkner Awards, The Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was short listed for the Man Booker International Prize honoring a writer’s lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he won the PEN Saul Bellow Award given to an author whose “scale of achievement over a sustained career places him in the highest rank of American Literature.” In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
April 9, 2023
Many years ago, I walked over to a small, independent bookstore, now long-gone, to hear E.L. Doctorow read from his newly released, Lives of the Poets: A Novel & 6 Stories, with the author signing copies for those on hand. I purchased a copy & afterwards got to chat briefly with Doctorow as he smoked a cigarette, never guessing that it would take me just under 40 years to wade through the book.
I'd quite enjoyed Ragtime, having read it twice + 2 other books by the author that blend fact, imagination & what might be called historical improvisation into a form of hybrid fiction. Doctorow is known for creatively fashioning new inroads in fiction and never depending on formulaic writing.
However, Lives of the Poets seems like a loosely arranged composite of literary fragments, with even the 65 page novella not very well in focus. The accompanying 6 short stories are merely brief glimpses of people, mostly middle-age men, who are adrift, without purpose--neutral & mostly colorless shapes on an unfinished canvas.
The novella features more meaningfully crafted sentences. Set within the Village area of Manhattan, we are in the midst of a personal but also a collective lament involving the narrator's quest to add meaning to his life. Among the alternatives for renewal...
The narrator's world is nothing if not diverse, featuring a cast of characters that includes:
The novella & the briefer stories represent a Kerouac-style, self-possessed monologue but without the potential for escape from Greenwich Village to the west in a classic, high-powered American automobile.
Lives of the Poets doesn't embody E.L. Doctorow at his peak but it does represent a milestone (or perhaps a literary millstone) for this reader to have finally found time to come to terms with a book that brought me into direct contact with a gifted writer whose prose was called "subtly subversive".
Perhaps, my favorite comment from E.L. "Edgar" Doctorow was the one made to his mother late in her life: "Do you & Dad know that you named me after a drug-addicted, alcoholic, delusional paranoid writer (Poe) with strong necrophiliac tendencies?" To which she responded, "Edgar, that's not funny."
*Within my review are several images of E.L. Doctorow.
I'd quite enjoyed Ragtime, having read it twice + 2 other books by the author that blend fact, imagination & what might be called historical improvisation into a form of hybrid fiction. Doctorow is known for creatively fashioning new inroads in fiction and never depending on formulaic writing.
However, Lives of the Poets seems like a loosely arranged composite of literary fragments, with even the 65 page novella not very well in focus. The accompanying 6 short stories are merely brief glimpses of people, mostly middle-age men, who are adrift, without purpose--neutral & mostly colorless shapes on an unfinished canvas.
The novella features more meaningfully crafted sentences. Set within the Village area of Manhattan, we are in the midst of a personal but also a collective lament involving the narrator's quest to add meaning to his life. Among the alternatives for renewal...
I can begin lessons in the Alexander technique, a proven method for attaining awareness, physical reeducation & postural alignment, take part in Bach Flower Remedies, look in at the Breathing Center, stop awhile at the Center for Jewish Meditation & Healing, sign up for some t'ai chi exercises in flowing motion for vitality & health or submit myself to some deep-tissue manipulation by a qualified Rolfer.There is boredom & pervasive ennui aplenty, even in this mecca of cultural & myriad other pursuits, perhaps the result of a midlife crisis when one is "neither married nor divorced but no longer together, a time when friends encounter coronaries, embolisms, aneurysms & cancerous devastations."
Beyond those possibilities, the Gurdjieff discussion group might come in handy & I could take a whack at some Functional Integration with the Feldenkrais Method, or the Vedanta Society, or perhaps drop in to the local Tranquility Tank to float in a body-temperature solution free of gravity.
The narrator's world is nothing if not diverse, featuring a cast of characters that includes:
Angel, an Irish-Catholic married to a New York Jew; Mariko, a Japanese Catholic married to Mattingly, a Western animist; Moira, an Irish Protestant, who is entangled with Brad, a Presbyterian columnist.There is some witty commentary within this latter-day Prufrockian disenchantment with life, as when the the narrator declares, "Where I'm going is down the mailbox to see if I've heard from the Dark Lady of my sonnets", this in a time prior to the Internet with its limitless distractions. We are also told that "between the artist & simple dereliction, there is a very thin line."
There's also Nick, a Greek Orthodox from Phily, who is married to Jeanie, a Methodist producer from Asheville. Rachel, a Hungarian refugee is tormented by Ralph, an Ashkenazi from Brooklyn. And Llewellyn, a Buddhist Welshman, who is in retreat from Anne, a Quaker from Swarthmore.
The novella & the briefer stories represent a Kerouac-style, self-possessed monologue but without the potential for escape from Greenwich Village to the west in a classic, high-powered American automobile.
Lives of the Poets doesn't embody E.L. Doctorow at his peak but it does represent a milestone (or perhaps a literary millstone) for this reader to have finally found time to come to terms with a book that brought me into direct contact with a gifted writer whose prose was called "subtly subversive".
Perhaps, my favorite comment from E.L. "Edgar" Doctorow was the one made to his mother late in her life: "Do you & Dad know that you named me after a drug-addicted, alcoholic, delusional paranoid writer (Poe) with strong necrophiliac tendencies?" To which she responded, "Edgar, that's not funny."
*Within my review are several images of E.L. Doctorow.
April 17, 2020
We are each aloof in our private beings,our cilia wiggingly alert to those closest to us because they may without warning do us harm. My skin is my border. I may read a newspaper, but I can't think. p107
Six rather murky short stories and one novella that is more stream of consciousness or personal diary. Even when I don't quite get what he is going on about, usually it's clear what he's getting at: the humongous task of gathering up all the remnants of humanity under the same sky for an all encompassing hug. ELD's genius is rambling and shabby until he pulls off his raincoat and he is naked, dripping in the rain, shining his flashlight in the darkest recesses of our hidden and cherished collective neurosis.
I turn around and around and I'm alone....You cross some invisible limit, in logic and in faith, and a nameless universe blows across your eyes. It is possible I have crossed. p132
Six rather murky short stories and one novella that is more stream of consciousness or personal diary. Even when I don't quite get what he is going on about, usually it's clear what he's getting at: the humongous task of gathering up all the remnants of humanity under the same sky for an all encompassing hug. ELD's genius is rambling and shabby until he pulls off his raincoat and he is naked, dripping in the rain, shining his flashlight in the darkest recesses of our hidden and cherished collective neurosis.
I turn around and around and I'm alone....You cross some invisible limit, in logic and in faith, and a nameless universe blows across your eyes. It is possible I have crossed. p132
July 9, 2017
A collection of mediocre stories followed by a failed novella. If you really feel the need to tackle this book save yourself some time and only read "Willi," "The Writer in the Family," and "The Hunter."
February 24, 2016
I picked up this work after finishing Ragtime and enjoyed the short stories but was disappointed with the novella. I thought it would never end.
July 20, 2019
The novella and six short stories in Lives of the Poets vary widely in the quotient of autobiography Doctorow put into them.
Estrangement is the real substance of "The Hunter." The tale is set in winter in a dying factory town in upstate New York, and the nameless young woman who is the town's new schoolteacher "has been here just long enough for her immodest wish to transform these children to have turned to awe at what they are." Doctorow gives his flower-child teacher just the sort of imagination, vitality, and narcissism that such a young woman of her generation might be likely to possess. Instead of boring her children with spelling and long division, for example, she leads them all through the big, echoing, near-empty school building, telling them they are a "lost patrol in the caves of a planet far out in space"--and of course, in the deepest sense, they are.
The teacher is not simply a cheery and sympathetic persona who does somersaults along with her students. Doctorow hints at her half-hidden, half-humiliating sexual frustration. She finds herself attracted to a new schoolbus driver, a blond young man, but there is a vexing social and intellectual gulf between them. The driver is just an underemployed, ignorant Joe, and the teacher is put off almost against her will by the fact that he is common. In fact, she seems offended that the town is not trying to make itself good enough for her. She performs an act of smug noblesse oblige, reading aloud at the old people's home, and finds herself shocked and repulsed by the vicious egotism of the senior citizens, who mock each other and vie for her attention.
The last passage has a beauty difficult to paraphrase. Avoiding the driver she has rejected when he made a clumsy pass at her, the teacher announces to the children that today is a special day: the town photographer has been summoned to take a picture of the class. "I don't get these school calls till spring," the potbellied man in his string tie complains. "Why, these children ain't fixed up for their picture ... they ain't got on their ties and their new shoes. You got girls here wearing trousers...." The picture is taken anyway, the teacher holding as many of the children as she can get her arms around, her heart seeming to cry out in secret near hysteria, at least I have these!
The title novella, "Lives of the Poets," seems to anticipate his 1985 novel-memoir, World's Fair, in its contagious fascination with that which is only there. The reader feels that almost everything here and in World's Fair is recovered rather than invented, and the play of intelligence on reality is both the motive and the delight of the piece.
A man alone is in bad company, said Paul Valéry. Doctorow's persona "Jonathan" is not only alone with himself in his new Greenwich Village writer's lair, but he has also just turned fifty, and the dismal occasion of his birthday seems to have forced him into a discussion--if not quite an assessment--of his art and his life, of his successes, his failures, and his feelings. He has left his wife and children in Connecticut and gone to New York, ostensibly to write. Yet his wife has a host of suspicions about the real uses to which the apartment is being put, and the novella confirms the worst of them: Jonathan has a mistress: "I took it for her. I took it for our New York place."
The title of the novella comes from Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1779-1781), but Jonathan's "poets" are the writers and intellectuals, both men and women, who constitute the dramatis personae of his life: wife, lover, friends. Most of them seem to be "couples not entirely together," and Jonathan's own marriage seems to be tottering. Even his success as a writer has something hollow in it: "each book has taken me further and further out so that the occasion itself is extenuated, no more than a weak distant signal from the home station, and even that may be fading." And his social conscience troubles him; he is a guilty success in a Manhattan full of desperate failures.
In depicting the Manhattan of immigrants and aliens Doctorow expresses his "radical Jewish humanism," creating for Jonathan's five-thousand-year-old Jewish conscience the humane, charming, mildly dangerous act that climaxes the novella and lifts his guilt over his success. Brenda, an activist, radical-chic actress, takes Jonathan to an activist church on the Upper West Side, where he sees wretched illegal aliens being cared for by the parish. Jonathan takes a mestizo family into his bohemian writer's digs--complete with diapers, tortilla mix, and dried beans. Though he worries about how long they will stay, he has finally worked out some sort of truce with his social conscience, a way to atone for what the United States is doing in Latin America, "what I have to do to live with myself." Jewish liberal guilt has seldom been so charmingly assuaged.
Estrangement is the real substance of "The Hunter." The tale is set in winter in a dying factory town in upstate New York, and the nameless young woman who is the town's new schoolteacher "has been here just long enough for her immodest wish to transform these children to have turned to awe at what they are." Doctorow gives his flower-child teacher just the sort of imagination, vitality, and narcissism that such a young woman of her generation might be likely to possess. Instead of boring her children with spelling and long division, for example, she leads them all through the big, echoing, near-empty school building, telling them they are a "lost patrol in the caves of a planet far out in space"--and of course, in the deepest sense, they are.
The teacher is not simply a cheery and sympathetic persona who does somersaults along with her students. Doctorow hints at her half-hidden, half-humiliating sexual frustration. She finds herself attracted to a new schoolbus driver, a blond young man, but there is a vexing social and intellectual gulf between them. The driver is just an underemployed, ignorant Joe, and the teacher is put off almost against her will by the fact that he is common. In fact, she seems offended that the town is not trying to make itself good enough for her. She performs an act of smug noblesse oblige, reading aloud at the old people's home, and finds herself shocked and repulsed by the vicious egotism of the senior citizens, who mock each other and vie for her attention.
The last passage has a beauty difficult to paraphrase. Avoiding the driver she has rejected when he made a clumsy pass at her, the teacher announces to the children that today is a special day: the town photographer has been summoned to take a picture of the class. "I don't get these school calls till spring," the potbellied man in his string tie complains. "Why, these children ain't fixed up for their picture ... they ain't got on their ties and their new shoes. You got girls here wearing trousers...." The picture is taken anyway, the teacher holding as many of the children as she can get her arms around, her heart seeming to cry out in secret near hysteria, at least I have these!
The title novella, "Lives of the Poets," seems to anticipate his 1985 novel-memoir, World's Fair, in its contagious fascination with that which is only there. The reader feels that almost everything here and in World's Fair is recovered rather than invented, and the play of intelligence on reality is both the motive and the delight of the piece.
A man alone is in bad company, said Paul Valéry. Doctorow's persona "Jonathan" is not only alone with himself in his new Greenwich Village writer's lair, but he has also just turned fifty, and the dismal occasion of his birthday seems to have forced him into a discussion--if not quite an assessment--of his art and his life, of his successes, his failures, and his feelings. He has left his wife and children in Connecticut and gone to New York, ostensibly to write. Yet his wife has a host of suspicions about the real uses to which the apartment is being put, and the novella confirms the worst of them: Jonathan has a mistress: "I took it for her. I took it for our New York place."
The title of the novella comes from Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1779-1781), but Jonathan's "poets" are the writers and intellectuals, both men and women, who constitute the dramatis personae of his life: wife, lover, friends. Most of them seem to be "couples not entirely together," and Jonathan's own marriage seems to be tottering. Even his success as a writer has something hollow in it: "each book has taken me further and further out so that the occasion itself is extenuated, no more than a weak distant signal from the home station, and even that may be fading." And his social conscience troubles him; he is a guilty success in a Manhattan full of desperate failures.
In depicting the Manhattan of immigrants and aliens Doctorow expresses his "radical Jewish humanism," creating for Jonathan's five-thousand-year-old Jewish conscience the humane, charming, mildly dangerous act that climaxes the novella and lifts his guilt over his success. Brenda, an activist, radical-chic actress, takes Jonathan to an activist church on the Upper West Side, where he sees wretched illegal aliens being cared for by the parish. Jonathan takes a mestizo family into his bohemian writer's digs--complete with diapers, tortilla mix, and dried beans. Though he worries about how long they will stay, he has finally worked out some sort of truce with his social conscience, a way to atone for what the United States is doing in Latin America, "what I have to do to live with myself." Jewish liberal guilt has seldom been so charmingly assuaged.
December 6, 2022
One great story. Five stores of confusion and a novella that seems to pick up where the first story left us just further along in time, confusing but still has all the E.L. Doctorow traits that make it worthwhile to read. "Lives of the Poets' (1984) is not his best work but not every writer is going to write a masterpiece every time. In the first story, called ''The Writer in the Family,'' a youth named Jonathan, whose father has just died, is enlisted by his aunts to write letters to their aged mother, his grandmother, to create the illusion that her son isn't dead but has only moved to Arizona. Jonathan complies for a while, with spectacular success - the immigrant grandmother sees the move to fabled Arizona as a redemption of her son's failed career. But eventually Jonathan rebels, and in the act of doing so he not only achieves a deeper understanding of his father, he also takes a significant step toward becoming a true writer. This is followed by five short pieces, ''The Water Works,'' ''Willi,'' ''The Hunter,'' ''The Foreign Legation,'' and ''The Leather Man.'' These are not as easily understood or explained. Though each is arresting in its way, as a group they are uneven in quality and confusing. The fog disperses, however, when we come upon the book, the novella called ''Lives of the Poets.'' Here we encounter a writer in his 50's who has recently moved out of the Connecticut house he shares with his wife, Angel, and installed himself in a small apartment in the SoHo section of Manhattan. As he broods with wit and eloquence on the increasing absurdity of his own life and the world in general, we begin to recognize his relationship to the earlier stories in the volume. We discover, for instance, that he is Jonathan, the writer in the earlier story, grown older and successful. It is a hard story to follow with the exception of the entry and exit from the story.
October 17, 2020
I was going through old Library of Congress cards, trying to organize and clear up, and I found this card. I read this book on August 23, 1985. Even though I read Doctorow's novels, I probably read this around the time I met him at a lecture at what was then called The Woodrow Wilson Center for Foreign Policy and is now simply called The Wilson Center. The book contains six short stories and one novella. The short stories have nothing in common, except they are snapshots of various characters and events that only capture a moment in time. Going nowhere, doing nothing. As for the novella, "Lives of the Poets," the narrator of this tale, a poet, tells us about a number of his friends, who are also poets and, like the storyteller, all have wrecked marriages. You would expect Doctorow to tie this all together and explain how the poetic mind contributes to busted relationships, but no, the narrator just lays it out without rhyme or reason. In retrospect, maybe Doctorow is subtly, or not so subtly, bragging about his marriage which has been very successful. Doctorow has written many masterpieces, "Loon Lake" being my personal favorite, but this seems way below his standard of craftsmanship.
January 5, 2022
I was disappointed with this one. I've really liked some of Doctorow's other books. Ragtime (pretty good, just a story), Loon Lake (very good, had a great line, "money means isolation"), Welcome to Hard Times (western, pretty good), Homer and Langley (very good). I might have read Billy Bathgate but not 100% sure.
Anyway, this is a collection of stories and a short novel. A couple of the shorts are good and some
are bad. The longer one (Lives of the Poets) is a stream of consciousness glide with a man who may or may not be leaving his wife. Nearly all of their Connecticut friends have had affairs, most often the husbands, so there's a lot of divorce and 2nd and 3rd marriages. Lotta fooling around up there. The story jumps every few pages to a variety of thoughts or visits with friends or stuff in his life. It got a little better as it went along. But the main character is smug and self-important, so it's grating. Maybe that's what Doctorow wanted?
Anyway, read his other books instead.
Anyway, this is a collection of stories and a short novel. A couple of the shorts are good and some
are bad. The longer one (Lives of the Poets) is a stream of consciousness glide with a man who may or may not be leaving his wife. Nearly all of their Connecticut friends have had affairs, most often the husbands, so there's a lot of divorce and 2nd and 3rd marriages. Lotta fooling around up there. The story jumps every few pages to a variety of thoughts or visits with friends or stuff in his life. It got a little better as it went along. But the main character is smug and self-important, so it's grating. Maybe that's what Doctorow wanted?
Anyway, read his other books instead.
September 14, 2018
Hmm....I don't know about this book. Every year, I try to read something by authors that are considered "important" (whatever that means) just for enrichment. So, I thought I'd try this because it wasn't too long. I liked it, then I hated it, then I hated it then I liked it again. It's a perfect example of why I choose to never quit a book- sometimes the ending is worth the struggle and sometimes it redeems itself. The last "story" is just kind of stream of consciousness bitching and rambling, more than once I was reminded of those curmudgeonly, grumpy monologues by Andy Rooney on 60 minutes. But then, as I sort of removed my expectations for it and just resigned myself to hating it- I started to like it. So I'm just not sure how I feel about it. I do want to try one of his proper novels, but not anytime soon.
October 4, 2017
*Finishes first story, sets book down*
*Opens Youtube, finds video*
*Glances at book sitting on my desk*
*Pauses video 1 minute in*
*Picks book back up and reads the next story all the way through*
This was how my day went, from 5 until now, just after midnight. I rarely finish a book in a day, even slim ones like this. But the stories were (for the most part) compulsively readable and engaging. A sign of a great book is when my usual distractions seem suddenly dull in comparison.
I docked a star for one story I didn't care for and DNFing the titular novella at the end.
However, I still recommend this for anyone looking for some good short stories. I'll be checking out more E.L. Doctorow in the future.
*Opens Youtube, finds video*
*Glances at book sitting on my desk*
*Pauses video 1 minute in*
*Picks book back up and reads the next story all the way through*
This was how my day went, from 5 until now, just after midnight. I rarely finish a book in a day, even slim ones like this. But the stories were (for the most part) compulsively readable and engaging. A sign of a great book is when my usual distractions seem suddenly dull in comparison.
I docked a star for one story I didn't care for and DNFing the titular novella at the end.
However, I still recommend this for anyone looking for some good short stories. I'll be checking out more E.L. Doctorow in the future.
January 6, 2021
As the title says - six short stories and a novella. Ugh.
Story one: The Writer in the Family - a good little story. It showed promise for the rest of the book. The book is so short, only 145 pages, that I thought it would have some redeeming quality if I read it all the way through. I literally forced myself. The third story was OK. The Novella might have merit if I had read it slowly and leisurely, but by the time I got to it, I didn't see the point of this book anymore and I skimmed just to get finished and say I was done.
The novella has many interesting vignettes, but on the whole I found it dull and tedious.
I read this book because I have heard of the author and knew nothing about him or his works.
Story one: The Writer in the Family - a good little story. It showed promise for the rest of the book. The book is so short, only 145 pages, that I thought it would have some redeeming quality if I read it all the way through. I literally forced myself. The third story was OK. The Novella might have merit if I had read it slowly and leisurely, but by the time I got to it, I didn't see the point of this book anymore and I skimmed just to get finished and say I was done.
The novella has many interesting vignettes, but on the whole I found it dull and tedious.
I read this book because I have heard of the author and knew nothing about him or his works.
December 22, 2019
Lives of the poets
One of my favorite short stories is in this book. A young man is coerced by his aunt to write to his grandmother, who is dying, letters fraudulently written by his dad. The young man's father had recently died & of course couldn't write to his dying mother. Pretending to have moved away for his health. After writing several letters, he wanted it to stop. After all, his aunt could write the letters... listen, there are details I won't explain - but the price of the book was worth having this story. As for other stories in this book, I didn't especially like them.
One of my favorite short stories is in this book. A young man is coerced by his aunt to write to his grandmother, who is dying, letters fraudulently written by his dad. The young man's father had recently died & of course couldn't write to his dying mother. Pretending to have moved away for his health. After writing several letters, he wanted it to stop. After all, his aunt could write the letters... listen, there are details I won't explain - but the price of the book was worth having this story. As for other stories in this book, I didn't especially like them.
September 9, 2019
Didn’t really feel like Doctorow’s writing, although I had only read Ragtime before that, so maybe I don’t know the writing style well enough. Was a mix of some weird stories and stream of consciousness novella. Worth a read in some parts of the stories and novella, and other times I was itching to put it down. But it’s a quick one.
October 10, 2017
Quite good, I think it will get better with age. Short and fun, I'm happy I picked it up, I've never read anything by Doctorow I have not enjoyed.
October 18, 2017
This collection of short stories give you a lot to think about and many issues are brought to light.
December 16, 2018
Wanted to like this because of the title, but it turned out to be nothing like what I expected. Kind of an odd, lesser-known piece of work, but not really in a good way.
September 2, 2020
A brilliant work. I liked very much the soul of the man which is put into this work. You can easily identify with this writing, especially if you are a middle-aged man.
December 19, 2020
Loved the short stories, but the novella was the experience of spending far too much time inside the head of a privileged white male.
Read
August 2, 2020En pidä novellikokoelmista kovinkaan paljon. Usein ne tuntuvat hajanaisilta, ristiriitaisilta ja jotenkin hermostuneilta. Sama päteen Doctorowin Kynämieheen. Ensimmäinen novelli, joka antoi tälle kirjalle sen nimen, on riemastuttavan hauska ja nokkela pieni kertomus. Mutta sitten mennäänkin edestakaisin kuin vaihtaisi televisiokanavaa nopeaan tahtiin. Olen vanhanaikainen romaani-ihminen, haluan makustella kertomusta, haluan, että henkilöhahmot rakennetaan huolellisesti ja haluan tietää missä ja milloin kaikki tapahtuu. Kuuden novellin jälkeen tilanteen pelastaakin pitempi kertomus. En tiedä onko New Yorkin alueen juutalaiskirjailijoilla kuinka tiivis yhteinen kulttuurinen tausta, mutta jos Kynämiestä vertaa toiseen saman ajan ja alueen juutalaiskirjailijaan James Salteriin, yhtäläisyyksiä on löydettävissä aika helposti. Salter ja Doctorow asuivat jopa samassa Sag Harborin kylässä New Yorkin osavaltiossa muutaman muun kirjailijan ohella. Oli miten oli, minulle Kynämiehen palkitsevuus tuli kirjan lopussa olevasta pienoisromaanista Runoilijoiden elämänkertoja. Ajatusvirran mukana näkee kiivaan omakuvan miehestä, joka kirjoittaa elääkseen, mutta myös elää tunteella. Oudon mosaiikkimainen yksinpuhelu jäsentyy erikoiseksi kokonaisuudeksi muistoja, kokemuksia ja ihmistä itseään. Siinä ei ole minkäänlaista juonta, kaukana siitä, mutta hyvin kirjoitettuna tempaa mukaansa ja loppujen lopuksi tuntuu, kuin olisi istunut kirjoittajan kanssa pitkän illan keskustellen ja kuunnellen ja nyt ei täysin selvin päin on tullut aika mennä kotiin.
April 14, 2010
To my surprise I did not hate this book, because man oh man did I hate Ragtime, which was smug, arrogant and ridiculous (but very easy-to-read and engaging). Doctrow really seems to think good sex was invented in 1967. Never have I felt more sorry for fictional characters, or wanted to rescue them from their dastardly author than I did while reading Ragtime.
Which is to say I had no interest in reading anything else by Doctrow. But a really nice copy of Lives of the Poets turned up in a local thrift store (first edition with dust jacket, woo hoo), so I dug in. I was pleasantly, if mildly surprised. I didn’t hate it. This was some months ago, and now much really stuck to me, so I don’t have much to say specifically. There were one or two outright dogs, and one or two things that were surprisingly good. The title story was in the middle somewhere. As I recall, “Lives of the Poets” full of fantastically self-indulgent, selfish artistic-academic-intellectual types, circa 1974, ditching spouses and making up fantastic excuses for their piggy lives. Doctrow reports it all pretty straight, poking at the pretense here and there, but not really criticizing it. He’s an establishment writer of an obsolete type, one of those tadpoles swimming in the shallows while Saul Bellow and John Gardner breach the surface out in deeper waters. Or something like that. Read this if you like “quality” 2nd rate short fiction from the ‘70s.
Which is to say I had no interest in reading anything else by Doctrow. But a really nice copy of Lives of the Poets turned up in a local thrift store (first edition with dust jacket, woo hoo), so I dug in. I was pleasantly, if mildly surprised. I didn’t hate it. This was some months ago, and now much really stuck to me, so I don’t have much to say specifically. There were one or two outright dogs, and one or two things that were surprisingly good. The title story was in the middle somewhere. As I recall, “Lives of the Poets” full of fantastically self-indulgent, selfish artistic-academic-intellectual types, circa 1974, ditching spouses and making up fantastic excuses for their piggy lives. Doctrow reports it all pretty straight, poking at the pretense here and there, but not really criticizing it. He’s an establishment writer of an obsolete type, one of those tadpoles swimming in the shallows while Saul Bellow and John Gardner breach the surface out in deeper waters. Or something like that. Read this if you like “quality” 2nd rate short fiction from the ‘70s.
January 15, 2013
Originally published on my blog here in January 2002.
This collection, one novella and six short stories, is connected because all its contents are written in the first person and read as though they are selections from autobiographies. (The plural is because they are mutually contradictory, even though they share details and anecdotes.)
The title story is the novella, and is a memoir of the New York literary scene, all about the marital difficulties of middle aged couples in the late seventies. The narrator of the story is one of the few who fave remained faithful to their partners though this seems to be more because of his absorption in his hypochondria than for any moral scruples.
Of the other stories, The Waterworks deserves mention because it was later adapted into an episode in the novel of the same name. It is the most individual member of this collection, being the only one with a setting in a past not within living memory. It also seems less real than the other stories, as Doctorow tries out a rather different voice.
The general standard is nevertheless high, as might be expected from Doctorow. He doesn't have so much to say in the short story form, with the result that the collection is a little purposeless; but each story is exquisitely crafted.
This collection, one novella and six short stories, is connected because all its contents are written in the first person and read as though they are selections from autobiographies. (The plural is because they are mutually contradictory, even though they share details and anecdotes.)
The title story is the novella, and is a memoir of the New York literary scene, all about the marital difficulties of middle aged couples in the late seventies. The narrator of the story is one of the few who fave remained faithful to their partners though this seems to be more because of his absorption in his hypochondria than for any moral scruples.
Of the other stories, The Waterworks deserves mention because it was later adapted into an episode in the novel of the same name. It is the most individual member of this collection, being the only one with a setting in a past not within living memory. It also seems less real than the other stories, as Doctorow tries out a rather different voice.
The general standard is nevertheless high, as might be expected from Doctorow. He doesn't have so much to say in the short story form, with the result that the collection is a little purposeless; but each story is exquisitely crafted.
December 4, 2016
I agree with most of the comments here (which I had unfortunately not read when I picked up this book, in a 2nd-hand book-store in Chiang Mai!) that the first story is wonderful, but the rest not so much. The other 5 stories, with varying degrees of postmodernity, are stylishly beautiful but hard to understand, sometimes even, I'd say, there isn't much to understand. Still, I dog-eared enough pages for quotations and ideas that I liked for you to not trust me on this.
The novel I found interesting, both in the way that's written and the people it talks about--the poets, the writer friends of the narrator, and their wives. He was too unlikeable for me though: Not only the narrator (which is clearly an alter ego of the author, though I don't know to which degree is he based on himself), which was the worst, but the author--which I differentiate by the way he's chosen his narrator to speak about others. I perceived 0 empathy on him, but more of a condescending tone. Specially condescending when talking about women and particularly his wife, which made the fact that some of his points were sound just superfluous, because I really couldn't take anything he said seriously. Just the fact of agreeing with him, sort of repulsive. Also a bit uncomfortable with the way he tagged everybody by their race, ethnicity or religious belief, although there was a point to it, it sort of escaped me.
The novel I found interesting, both in the way that's written and the people it talks about--the poets, the writer friends of the narrator, and their wives. He was too unlikeable for me though: Not only the narrator (which is clearly an alter ego of the author, though I don't know to which degree is he based on himself), which was the worst, but the author--which I differentiate by the way he's chosen his narrator to speak about others. I perceived 0 empathy on him, but more of a condescending tone. Specially condescending when talking about women and particularly his wife, which made the fact that some of his points were sound just superfluous, because I really couldn't take anything he said seriously. Just the fact of agreeing with him, sort of repulsive. Also a bit uncomfortable with the way he tagged everybody by their race, ethnicity or religious belief, although there was a point to it, it sort of escaped me.
March 28, 2021
Like all Doctorow's books I enjoyed it. He gives us so much to think about and there is simply some very brilliant writing; for that matter, there are a couple of paragraphs that are some of the best writing I have ever read. That being said, the reason for my rating is this is one those Doctorow books that is so frustrating due to, what I have to call, experimental writing. Some flows, some elevates the reader and some forces you to think and reread sections to be able to get your mind around it. Finally there is a certain unevenness about it that spoils the beauty you find. It is distracting and, to me, spoils the reading experience. Maybe my problem is I am reading his books in the reverse order they were written
In many ways it feels almost like the precursor to City of God and leaves me feeling not quite satisfied but not disappointed. No matter what, Doctorow is a true author: not a writer, not a story-teller, but one of the best authors of his time. To me, author and is the highest praise that can be given to any writer and Doctorow's death was a loss to all of us who relish a good book.
In many ways it feels almost like the precursor to City of God and leaves me feeling not quite satisfied but not disappointed. No matter what, Doctorow is a true author: not a writer, not a story-teller, but one of the best authors of his time. To me, author and is the highest praise that can be given to any writer and Doctorow's death was a loss to all of us who relish a good book.
December 15, 2016
The Writer in the Family (9)
The Water Works (8)
Willi (9)
The Hunter (7)
The Foreign Legation (10)
The Leather Man (7)
The Lives of the Poets (10) is fantastic and hilarious.
The Water Works (8)
Willi (9)
The Hunter (7)
The Foreign Legation (10)
The Leather Man (7)
The Lives of the Poets (10) is fantastic and hilarious.
September 3, 2016
1993 notebook: boy who writes letters supposedly from his dead father to his grandmother. Sitting in the car with Aunt France's, the kids on the street, his realisation about their mother - 'her hair was undistinguished'. Then a stunning and mysterious 3 pages about someone witnessing the aftermath of an accident - a child caught in the machinery of a great reservoir. Horses, carts - is it the 19 th C.? Who is the narrator? Then another equally breathtaking one about a boy in a field. An almost mystical experience of sunshine - 'an Egyptian eye that.. lights up one side only.' Then standing at the barn door, spotting his mother in flagrante.
April 23, 2014
I'm a big fan of Doctorow's novels, and the short stories just do not come up to that gold standard. Probably the wrong genre for him -- too confining for his sprawling, complex works about key moments/characters in U.S. history. The title novella, Lives of the Poets, however, is a fascinating look at the rambling mind of middle-aged, white, male academic poet and his friends of exactly the same ilk. Lots of sexist talk, drinking, ambition, comfort in privilege. Very revealing and I bet his fellow male literati were squirming, and yelling "ouch!" when this was published in 1984.
March 24, 2015
As a collection, this is ambitious, but uneven. Early on, the title novella courts dismissal as one more trip to the well chronicled land of white people's problems, upper middle-class, middle-aged men's division. It somehow manages to transcend this well-trod terrain and deliver something of genuine interest and engagement, only to fumble the whole thing in the last few pages (but don't let that stop you from reading it).
June 1, 2008
Not "Ragtime" or "The March," perhaps, but close enough. ELD balances head and heart, smile, nod of recogniton and eyebrow raiser as well as any modern fictionista. Even a head scratcher from time to time. Here, a series of stories and the title novella, is mostly about writers and writing. (And,as always, being human.) Not surpisingly, he gets it and gives it up.
December 30, 2015
Not awful, just not great either. I wish the stories were a little more fleshed out, they end too abruptly and the characters mostly fail to make an impression. This book may have suffered by being read directly after I finished Alice Munro's Open Secrets.
Marina
Marina
August 6, 2009
the novella was the book's big-hitting highlight for me. some things are so true that they crack me open and leave me wavering on the brink gazing at the tragicomedy of life, all teary-eyed and easily heart-broken.
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