Doctorow, E. L. - Stanley Kauffman (review date 5 June 1971)
Stanley Kauffman (review date 5 June 1971)
SOURCE: "Wrestling Society for a Soul," in New Republic, June 5, 1971, pp. 25-7.
[In the following review, Kauffman explains the intricacies of The Book of Daniel, revealing it as "a work of historic and psychic currents."]
This is less a review than a celebration. [With The Book of Daniel,] E. L. Doctorow has written the political novel of our age, the best American work of its kind that I know since Lionel Trilling's The Middle of the Journey. Doctorow could hardly be less like Trilling in style or temper, but that's part of the point; it helps to make this novel the quintessence of the '60s, as Trilling, in 1947, fixed the political '30s.
The time of the book, the "present" time, is mostly 1967, between Memorial Day and Christmas. Daniel Lewin, twenty-seven, is a graduate student at Columbia, and this book is (and is not!) what he writes instead of a dissertation....
[The entire page is 1827 words long]
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