- Paperback: 160 pages
- Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (Jun 29 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0812981189
- ISBN-13: 978-0812981186
- Product Dimensions: 13 x 1 x 20.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 113 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #673,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“Extraordinary beauty and power . . . a book to fall in love with.”—Chicago Tribune Book World
“Better than any fiction I know, Lives of the Poets illuminates the sources from which fiction springs.”—Newsweek
“Doctorow is an impeccable stylist, a man who writes with exceptional clarity and precision.”—Publishers Weekly
“Invaluable . . . Doctorow’s subtlest work of fiction.”—New York Times Book Review
“Better than any fiction I know, Lives of the Poets illuminates the sources from which fiction springs.”—Newsweek
“Doctorow is an impeccable stylist, a man who writes with exceptional clarity and precision.”—Publishers Weekly
“Invaluable . . . Doctorow’s subtlest work of fiction.”—New York Times Book Review
Book Description
Innocence is lost to unforgettable experience in these brilliant stories by E. L. Doctorow, as full of mystery and meaning as any of the longer works by this American master. In “The Writer in the Family,” a young man learns the difference between lying and literature after he is induced into deceiving a relative through letters. In “Wili,” an early-twentieth-century idyll is destroyed by infidelity. In “The Foreign Legation,” a girl and an act of political anarchy collide with devastating results. These and other stories flow into the novella “Lives of the Poets,” in which the images and themes of the earlier stories become part of the narrator’s unsparing confessions about his own mind, offering a rare look at the creative process and its connection to the heart.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Anomie, Dec 31 2006
By Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Lives Of The Poets (Mass Market Paperback)
Everything that Doctorow writes shows his mastery, but I cannot say that I enjoyed this slim collection; indeed, if it had not been so slim I doubt I'd have finished it. The novella which gives its title to the collection is virtually plotless, seeming more like a memoir than a story. In apparently random manner, Doctorow describes the social lives, affairs, and marriages of a group of his fellow writers. "I am not talking about divorced couples, you understand, but couples not entirely together." Everybody seems to be floating in a social limbo where personal ties are transitory and superficial, and upon which the outside world impinges only as a distant annoyance. In a word, anomie.The novella is given a little more weight by the addition of six very short stories, most of which are also virtually plotless and portray the same qualities of social isolation. In several instances, images from the novella crop up again in the stories, or vice-versa. Doctorow has always been fond of cross-connecting his works, but several of the stories have the air of being discarded fragments from one of his novels; one even shares almost the same title, THE WATERWORKS. As I say, nothing that Doctorow writes is without interest, but these fragments might better have been left on the cutting-room floor.
1.0 out of 5 stars
What's it all about, Edgar?, May 21 2012
By Tom Bruce - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Lives of the Poets: A Novella and Six Stories (Paperback)
E.L. Doctorow is a favorite author of mine, but after reading this book I have to ponder why? Not why is he a favorite writer of mine, but why did he bother to write it. 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. Thankfully, it is a small book and I didn't waste much time in its reading.
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