The Waterworks (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: E. L. Doctorow
- First Published: 1994
- Type of Plot: Postmodern
- Time of Work: 1871
- Setting: New York City
- Principal Characters: McIlvaine, Martin Pemberton, Augustus Pemberton, Sarah Pemberton, Emily Tisdale, Edmund Donne, Wrede Sartorius, Eustace Simmons, Harry Wheelwright
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction, Mystery and detective literature
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Journalism or journalists, Parents and children, Power, personal or social, New York City, Science or scientists, Ghosts or apparitions, Poverty or poor people, Fathers, Death or dying, Ethics, Human behavior, Corruption, Captivity, Industrialization, Mad scientists
- Locales: New York, NY
The Novel
The Waterworks is twenty-eight chapters of disjointed recollection in which McIlvaine, an elderly former news editor, recalls from some indeterminate time in the future incidents of 1871 in New York: his search for a missing freelance book reviewer, Martin Pemberton, and Martin’s tycoon father, Augustus Pemberton. First, the cynical Martin announces that he has seen his supposedly dead father in a horse-drawn omnibus with other stupefied old men. When Martin is missing, McIlvaine summons Edmund Donne, one of the only honest policemen in the New York run by...
[The entire page is 2117 words long]
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