Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Doctorow, E. L. - Stephen Fender (review date 27 May 1994)

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Stephen Fender (review date 27 May 1994)

SOURCE: "The Novelist as Liar," in Times Literary Supplement, May 27, 1994, p. 20.

[In the following review, Fender considers points raised in essays in Poets and Presidents and discusses the thematic and aesthetic aspects of The Waterworks in relation to Doctorow's previous fiction.]

"The development of civilizations", writes E. L. Doctorow in the earliest of the essays in Poets and Presidents, "is essentially a progression of metaphors." At this level of abstraction, the narratives of history and fiction are indistinguishable. On a more specific level, they diverge. The difference is that novelists are "born liars", who are to be trusted precisely because they admit to lying. Their documents are false, whereas the historians' can be verified. "History is a kind of fiction in which we live and hope to survive, and fiction is a kind of speculative history … by which the...

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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