Loon Lake (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: E. L. Doctorow
- First Published: 1980
- Type of Plot: Bildungsroman
- Time of Work: The 1930’s
- Setting: New York and Indiana
- Principal Characters: Joseph Korzeniowski, Warren Penfield, F. W. Bennett, Lucinda Bennett, Clara Zukacs, Red James, Sandy James, Sim Hearne, Fanny
- Genres: Long fiction, Bildungsroman, Character study
- Subjects: Depression, economic, Class consciousness, American Dream, Identity, Capitalism
- Locales: New York, Indiana
The Novel
In many ways, E. L. Doctorow’s Loon Lake is a Bildungsroman, a book about a young person’s adventures in moving from childhood to adulthood. After his 1918 birth in Paterson, New Jersey, the protagonist, Joseph Korzeniowski, becomes a young hoodlum alienated from his parents. He moves to New York City, where he becomes a grocery boy, but after hearing about idyllic life in California he hops on a freight train with other impoverished youths and heads west. He does not go far before he leaps from the train and finds employment at a broken-down...
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