Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Doctorow, E. L. - Andrew Delbanco (review date 18 July 1994)

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Andrew Delbanco (review date 18 July 1994)

SOURCE: "Necropolis News," in New Republic, Vol. 211, Nos. 3 & 4, July 18, 1994, pp. 44, 46-8.

[In the following review, Delbanco presents an appreciation of the symbolic features of The Waterworks and comments briefly on the essay collection Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution.]

Everybody's favorite stage set this year has been old New York. It first turned up in Martin Scorsese's movie of The Age of Innocence, which made viewers feel as if they were inside a meticulously accurate diorama of Edith Wharton's fashionable Manhattan in the 1870s. Then Caleb Carr enlarged the set for his murder mystery of the 1890s. The Alienist, to include the wharves and the dark alleys where Wharton's grandees would never venture. Now E. L. Doctorow has returned to the immediate post-Civil War period for his own New York tale.

If the setting of The Waterworks is similar,...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Wirt Williams (review date 25 September 1960)
   2. Gwendolyn Brooks (review date 10 July 1966)
   3. Stanley Kauffman (review date 5 June 1971)
   4. Joseph Catinella (review date 17 July 1971)
   5. Patrick Parrinder (review date 4 April 1985)
   6. Richard D. Beards (review date Summer 1985)
   7. Marvin J. LaHood (review date Winter 1987)
   8. Michelle M. Tokarczyk (essay date Fall 1987)
   9. John G. Parks (essay date Winter 1991)
   10. Derek Wright (essay date 1993)
   11. Stephen Matterson (essay date Winter 1993)
   12. Stephen Cooper (essay date May 1993)
   13. Ann V. Miller (essay date Summer 1993)
   14. Stephen Fender (review date 27 May 1994)
   15. John Whitworth (review date 28 May 1994)
   16. Jonathan Franzen (review date 19 June 1994)
   17. Simon Schama (review date 19 June 1994)
   18. Mark Shechner (review date 10 July 1994)
   19. Andrew Delbanco (review date 18 July 1994)
   20. William Hutchings (review date Winter 1995)
   21. E. L. Doctorow with Michelle M. Tokarczyk (interview date Winter 1995)
   22. Michael Wutz (review date Spring 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. E. L. Doctorow