Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Doctorow, E. L. - Mark Shechner (review date 10 July 1994)

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Mark Shechner (review date 10 July 1994)

SOURCE: "A 'Gothic Fantasia' from E. L. Doctorow," in Chicago Tribune Books, July 10, 1994, p. 3.

[In the following review of The Waterworks, Shechner takes account of the novel's strengths and failings.]

The germ of The Waterworks is a four-page vignette of the same title that appeared in E. L. Doctorow's Lives of the Poets (1984). In that sketch the body of a drowned child is plucked from a reservoir, presumably the Croton in New York's Central Park, and whisked away in a horse-drawn carriage, while the silent narrator looks on.

I am fond of Lives of the Poets, the least celebrated of Doctorow's books, because it pretends to be nothing more than it is, a book of etudes for the left hand. Doctorow's troubles begin where the ambition swells and etudes get inflated into historical novels—mournful fanfares given a social/historical spin. That was the problem with...

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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