Description

Due to rights issues, the audio of this interview is not available online. Please contact San Diego State University, Special Collections and Archives if you wish to be granted access to the original audio. Larry McCaffery interviews E.L. Doctorow in Doctorow’s house in New Rochelle, New York. They begin with a discussion of Doctorow’s early career as an editor at New American Library and Dial Press. Doctorow explains how that work helped inspire him to write his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times. Doctorow notes that he doesn’t feel he is part of any literary movement. Doctorow talks about the germination for the concepts of his novels. Doctorow discusses the influence of film on his writing and his disinterest in writing realistic fiction. Doctorow discusses both his use and the use by other authors of actual historical figures in works of fiction. Doctorow discusses how he became interested in the Rosenberg case that lead to him writing The Book of Daniel. The interview concludes with several questions concerning the novel Ragtime, including the debt it owes to the von Kleist novel Michael Kohlhaas. An edited version of this interview appears on pages 91 to 105 of Anything Can Happen: Interview with Contemporary American Novelists, ed. Tom LeClair and Larry McCaffery, University of Illinois Press, 1983.