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Doctorow, E(dgar) L(awrence) 1931–

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for 1976, Doctorow, an American novelist, is one of the year's most widely discussed writers. Paperback rights to his fourth novel, Ragtime, recently brought the highest price in paperback publishing history, and Robert Altman, director of "Nashville," plans to film that novel in 1977. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 45-48.)

E. L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel is a brilliant achievement and the best contemporary novel I've read since reading Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes. (Which is remaindered all over New York.) Mr. Doctorow's book is about the son and daughter of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, a couple who died in the electric chair not for committing espionage, but for conspiring to commit espionage. If Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had never existed, the book would be just as good as it is, but we would, of course, not then have...

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1. Doctorow, E(dgar) L(awrence) 1931–
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1. E. L. Doctorow