Why I Read This Book
This book was a recommendation from Whisky Prajer. Back in December, I had posted a video of Christopher Hitchens talking about the legacy of the American Left,
and Whisky Prajer wrote in the comments section: Similar note: did you ever read Doctorow’s “The Book of Daniel”? I think you’d dig it. His best novel, IMO, by quite a margin.
I
had never even heard of The Book of Daniel before, but I dutifully went
to the Wikipedia page to read up on it.
Wikipedia
gives this description:
The Book of Daniel (1971) is semi-historical novel by E. L. Doctorow, loosely based on the lives, trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Doctorow tells the story of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson (corollaries to the Rosenbergs) through the persons of their older son, Daniel, and his sister, Susan, who are college students deeply involved in 1960s politics
Now,
I don’t read most of the books that people recommend to me*. However, this description caught my interest,
because the book was (according to Wikipedia) about the Rosenberg children’s
involvement in the student movement, and I had actually read a book on this
exact same subject.
When
the Rosenberg’s were executed for treason (W), they left behind two
surviving children: Michael Meeropol (W) and Robert Meeropol (W). (Meeropol being the name
of their adopted parents). As these two
boys grew up during the 1960s, they became leaders in the student movement—they
never reached the level of national prominence like Mario Savio or
Mark Rudd, etc, but they were local leaders at their universities. And they wrote about all this in their joint
autobiography: We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (A)—a book which I actually read back in my college days.
…Well,
I sort of read it anyways. Truth be
told, in my younger days, before I started this book review project,
I was a lot less anal-retentive about finishing books cover to cover. I used to pick up books, graze through the
parts I was interested in, ignore the other parts, and then just move on to
something else. (In fact part of the
reason I started doing this book review project in the first place was to
introduce more discipline to my reading.)
In particular, I
used to have the bad habit of going into the college library to
research a paper, and then start procrastinating by
browsing through all sorts of material not connected to my studies. And so one school night I found myself
reading through the autobiography of the Rosenberg children when I was supposed
to be researching something else.
I
was in those days primarily - interested - in the student movements of the 1960s, so I zeroed in on those parts of the book and largely ignored
the 1950s treason trial and execution.
And although I probably missed out on the most interesting part of the
book, I still remember well the parts I did read some 15 years later.**
The
awkwardness of being living martyrs to the communist cause comes through very
clearly in the book. Even after their
parents had been executed, they continued to stick to the communist ideals of
their parents. The Rosenberg children
recounted the arguments they used to have with their elementary school teachers—their
teachers would tell them that Soviet Russia had no freedom of the press, and
they would respond by pointing out that in America the press was completely
controlled by corporations.
It’s
no wonder the Rosenburg children became such enthusiastic participants in the
1960s student movement. (I don’t
remember this being explicitly mentioned in the book, but it must have been
strange for them to witness the change in American public attitudes—from the
rabid anti-Communism that killed their parents in the 1950s to socialism once
again becoming fashionable at American universities in the 1960s.)
But with the new
generation of radicals comes an ignorance of the past. At some point in the late 1960s, one of the
Rosenberg children works up the courage to tell his girlfriend that he is
actually the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
He expects that she already secretly knows. (In the past, many of his acquaintances and
friends had worked out his secret long before he actually told them.) But he discovers instead that not only does
she not know his secret, she has no idea who the Rosenburg’s even were, and he
has to fill her in on the whole story.
In
short, I thought it was a fascinating story about the martyrs of the old left
being caught up in the struggles of the new left. So when I realized the entire premise of The
Book of Daniel was about the Rosenburg children in student movement of the
1960s, I was pretty much sold on it.***
But if I had needed extra persuasion, Whisky Prajer’s glowing review of
the book pushed me firmly into the interested camp. “…what Doctorow best conveys is the dark energy of aspirations betrayed, specifically the American Left. Funny, my heart-rate jumps just thinking about some of those scenes. Highly recommended.”
Footnotes
* Oh and by the way, a blanket apology to
everyone who’s recommended books to me over the years. I appreciate the recommendations, I just
never get around to most of the books I intend to get around to.
** That is to say, I think I remember these
parts well. But I am going off of
memories of a book I encountered when I was about 20, and a book I didn’t even
read completely at that, so apologies if I’m mis-remembering any of it.
*** Actually as it turns out, Wikipedia
slightly misstated the premise of this book.
Wikipedia states (as of this writing) that the main characters, the
corollaries to the Rosenberg children, were “deeply involved in 1960s
politics”. Indeed the real Rosenberg
children actually were deeply involved in 1960s politics, but their
fictional counterparts in this novel are much more ambivalent about the peace
movement, and the older sibling especially is portrayed as being at times
deeply cynical about the movement, at least at the beginning. Which brings me to my next point…
Separating Truth from Fiction
Since
I began my review of this book by mentioning my interest in the real Rosenberg
children, I now need to make clear that this book is not about the real life Rosenbergs. It’s a fictional book that takes the
Rosenberg case as its loose inspiration.
But it deviates quite a bit from actual history, and indeed the children
in this book are nothing like the actual Rosenberg children.
To be fair, Whisky Prajer tried
to warn me of this: The prof who introduced me to this book told me the Rosenberg kids were decidedly NOT fans of the novel, for reasons that will likely be clear in the early pages
And after having read this book,
I have to say I don’t blame him one bit.
I would hate this book too if I were him. Both of the children in this book are
mentally unstable. The main character
and narrator of the book, Daniel Isaacson (the fictional stand-in for the
oldest Rosenberg child) has become a sexual sadist, and also in his narration
has a fixation with bodily functions.
The actual real-life Michael and
Robert Meeropol, by contrast, appear to be quite well adjusted and to have none
of these short-comings.
It’s notable that The Book of
Daniel was published in 1971, and that the Meeropol brothers’ autobiography
didn’t come out until 1975. Perhaps in
the days before the Meeropol brothers had gone public with their own version of
their story, the outcome of the Rosenberg children and their psychological
state was left up more to the imagination.
And although E.L. Doctorow’s version of events is not the real one, on one
level it is the more believable version—if you didn’t know any better, how easy
it would be to imagine that the trauma of the Rosenberg trial must have screwed
up those children. You wouldn’t expect
healthy well-adjusted adults to come out of that kind of childhood experience,
and E.L. Doctorow does not portray healthy well-adjusted adults.
(I also half-wonder if the
publication and subsequent fame of The Book of Daniel was one of the
reasons prompting the Meeropol brothers to write their autobiography and set
the record straight?)
All that being said, however, I
am going to (with apologies) contradict Whisky slightly here. A Google search of the Meeropol brothers and The
Book of Daniel reveals that the Meeropols are not actually against this
book. (If they ever were against it,
they must have made their peace with it.)
This link here [LINK HERE], for example, tells of the
Meeropol brothers at a screening of the film version (W) of The
Book of Daniel, and not seeming opposed to the attention the film has
brought to their parents’ case.
Another link here [LINK HERE] is the text of a lecture that Michael Meeropol himself gave on The
Book of Daniel. Although he takes
care to emphasize repeatedly that the book is fiction, he does not seem opposed
to the book or its message. As he says
of the book: “Remember Dr. Beagle’s quote: History tells you how it
was—Historical fiction tells you how it felt.”
And for his part, E.L. Doctorow
goes through a lot of lengths to change enough of the details of the story to
make it clear that his book is supposed to be fiction, and not fact. Most obviously, he’s changed the sex of the
younger sibling to a little girl instead of a little boy.
The
Review
Right,
now that I got all that set-up out of the way, let’s talk about the actual
novel itself.
The first thing to note is that
this book is properly Literature with a capital “L”. It experiments with changes in perspective in
the narrative, an unreliable narrator, symbolism, word play—the whole bit.
If you’re the kind of literary
person that’s into this kind of book, you’ll probably love it.
A bit of flavor of the type of
book this is can probably be gleamed from the contemporary New York Times
review, which said of this book:
As for me, my interests are more
historical than literary, and I’m not smart enough to fully analyze a book like
this, or catch all the clever things the author is doing. (I did enjoy my literature classes in
college, but I always needed the professor to explain to me all the symbolism
in the books before I could fully appreciate them. I could never catch these things on my own.)
So, as always, take my opinion
with a grain of salt. I’m not smart
enough to give this book a full analysis, but I’ll comment on the few things that
I did notice.
There are a lot of tangents and
digressions going on in this book, but it’s primarily about the history of the
American left. The frame story takes
place during the student movement of the 1960s.
The flashbacks to the trial and execution of the Isaacsons (the
fictional stand-ins for the Rosenbergs) happen during the Red Scare of the
1950s. Further flashbacks to the earlier
life of the Rosenbergs cover the Communist movement of the 1930s and 40s: for
example the Scottsboro Boys trial, the Paul Robeson
Concert and Peeskill ritots (W). Beyond that,
references are made to earlier heroes: Thomas Paine, John Brown, W.E.B. Dubois, Eugene Debs, et cetera.
This is mixed in with a lot of
religious imagery—as should be evident right from the very title of the
book. Within E.L Doctorow’s The Book
of Daniel, many references are made to the biblical book of Daniel.
For me, the most powerful scene
from the book is when the narrator Daniel recounts the moment his younger
sister told him about God. It is the
night that their parents are executed.
The children are at home watching baseball, deliberately trying not to
think about what is happening to their parents.
But then the television chimes to mark the changing of the hour, and
they know their parents are dead. The
passage is powerful enough that it probably deserves to be quoted in full:
In Susan resides the fateful
family gift for having definite feelings.
Always taking stands, even as a kid.
A moralist, a judge. This is
right, that is wrong, this is good, that is bad. Her personal life carelessly displayed, her
wants unashamed, not managed discreetly like most people’s. With her aggressive moral openness, with her
loud and intelligent and repugnantly honest girlness. And all wrong. Always wrong.
From politics back to drugs, and from drugs back to sex, and before sex,
tantrums, and before tantrums, a faith in God.
Here is a cheap effect: A long time ago, on an evening in June, 1954,
June 22 to be exact, at exactly ten P.M., Susan gave me the word about
God. It was during a night game between
the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.
Allie Reynolds was pitching for the Yanks and it was nothing-nothing in
the top of the seventh. Boston had one
out and a man on first. Jim Piersall was
up and the count was three and one.
Reynolds picked up the rosin bag.
Mel Allen was saying how a base on balls is always trouble and as he
spoke there was a short beep over his voice the way it happens on television to
indicate that a new hour has begun. At
that moment Susan, age eight, and I, thirteen, could not look at each
other. Allie Reynolds dropped the rosin
bag, pulled at the peak of his cap, and leaned forward for the sign. And that’s when Susan told me there was a
God.
“He’ll get them all,” she
whispered. “He’ll get every one of
them.” (p.9-10)
From this, the narrator goes
into an exploration of God’s role in the Bible, which is probably also worth
quoting. Also from page 9:
THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF
GOD AS REPRESENTED IN THE BIBLE
Actually that’s what God does in
the Bible—like the little girl says, he gets people. He takes care of them. He lays on this monumental justice. Oh the curses, the admonitions; the plagues,
the scatterings, the ruminations, the strikings dead, the renderings unto and
tearings asunder. The floods. The fires.
It is interesting to note that God as a character
in the Bible seems almost always concerned with the idea of his recognition by
mankind. He is constantly declaring His
authority, with rewards for those who recognize it and punishment for those who
don’t. He performs fancy tricks. He enlists the help of naturally righteous
humans who become messengers or carriers of his miracles, or who deliver their
people. Each age has by trial to achieve
its recognition of Him—or to put it another way, every generation has to learn
anew the lessons of His Existence. The
drama in the Bible is always in the conflict of those who have learned with
those who have not learned. Or in the
testing of those who might be able to learn. In this context it is instructive to pause for
a moment over the career of Daniel, a definitely minor, if not totally
apocryphal figure (or figures) who worked with no particular delight for a few
of the Kings in the post-Alexandrine Empires…. (p. 9-10) […Here, the narrator transitions into an
analysis of the biblical book of Daniel, which I’ll come back to later in this
review…]
In addition to the biblical
imagery and the history of the American Left, there are some brief sections
where the book flirts with an analysis of the failure of the American
Left. (Much of this analysis is borrowed
from other writers.) For example from
pages 278-279, where the narrator says: “Shannon, in THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN
COMMUNISM, shows us the immense contribution made by the American Communist
Party to its own destruction within a few years after the war. They had all the haughty, shrewd instincts of
a successful suicide. It is no wonder in
this club of ideologues of the working class, self-designed martyrs, Stalinist
tuning forks, sentimentalists, visionaries, misfits, hysterics, fantasists, and
dreamers of justice—no wonder that a myth would spring out of their awe for
someone truly potent. It is ironic that
such a myth would arise without planning or intent from their laboriously
induced collective mythic self. But they
were helpless before it.”
And not surprisingly given the
topic of the book, the idea of martyrdom is also a theme. At one point, the status of the Isaacsons
(the fictionalized Rosenbergs) as martyrs is being discussed. Artie Sternlicht (a fictionalized Abbie Hoffman) is discussing it with his girlfriend Baby and with Daniel
Isaacson.
“Your folks didn’t know
shit. The way they handled themselves at
their trial was pathetic. I mean they
played it by their rules. The
government’s rules. You know what I
mean? Instead of standing up and saying
fuck you, do what you want, I can’t get an honest trial anyway with you
fuckers—they made motions, they pleaded innocent, they spoke only when spoken
to, they played the game. All
right? The whole frame of reference
brought them down because they acted like defendants at a trial. You dig?”
…
“And Susan disagreed?”
“Yeah.”
“She said nevertheless they were
martyrs,” Baby said from the kitchen.
“Sure they were martyrs. But the revolution has more martyrs than it
needs. Like all the spades you never
heard of murdered in their beds, and in every jail in the world, and like the
millions of kids murdered in their schools, and like the people starved to
death or shot or burned in Vietnam.
We’ve got martyrs up the ass.” (p.151-152).
However, for the most part the
main thrust of this book is emotional instead of analytical. The Isaacson children in this book, like
their real-life counterparts the Rosenberg children, go through something no
child should ever have to go through.
And it’s all narrated in heart-wrenching detail: the arrest of their
parents, visiting their parents in jail, hearing rumors on the playground of
their parents imminent execution, being taunted by the other kids, and finally
having their parents executed.
The scenes, for example, of the
kids visiting their parents in jail is sad enough. But then of course it all culminates with the
execution. The narrator (the oldest
child looking back) directly addresses the reader at this point. “I suppose you think I can’t do the
electrocution. I know there is a
you. There has always been a you. YOU: I will show you that I can do the
electrocution” (p. 295-296). The
narrator then proceeds to graphically describe the electrocution of first his
father, and then his mother.
These poignant scenes leave the
reader feeling in a highly emotional state, which the author then exploits to
transition to the violent repression of the 1960s peace movement. After having already been left emotional
vulnerable by the trauma of the Rosenberg case, the reader is thus hit all the
harder by passages which describe the repression of the anti-war demonstrators.
When describing the police
breaking up a peaceful anti-war march, the narrator writes: “And suddenly he
is there, locked arm in arm with the real people of now, sitting in close
passive rank with linked arms as the boots approach, highly polished, and the
clubs, highly polished, and the brass highly polished, wading through our
linkage, this many-helmeted beast of our nation, coming through our flesh with
boot and club and gun butt, through our sick stubbornness, through our blood it
comes. My country. And it swats and kicks, and kicks and
clubs—you raise the club high and bring it down, you follow through, you keep
your head down, you remember to snap the wrist, complete the swing, raise high
bring down, think of a groove in the air, groove into the groove, keep your eye
on the ball, eye on balls, eye on cunts, eye on the point of skull, up and
down, put your whole body into it, bring everything you’ve got into your swing,
up from your toes, up down, turn around, up high down hard, hard as you can,
hard as you can, harder harder: FOLLOW THROUGH!” (p. 256)
******************************
There’s a lot more going on in
this book than I’ve written about. But
someone smarter and more literary than me is going to have to tackle all the other
themes and symbols and everything else in the book. All I can really do is engage with this book
at a surface level, and I’ve written all of the main things that struck me
about its surface.
I’ll wrap things up by just
making a few more notes on odds and ends.
Notes
* After
having read this book, I’m now beginning to regret that I only read the second
half of the Rosenberg children’s autobiography, and more or less skipped over
all their reminiscings on their parents and on their parents’ trial. At some point I may again try to track down We
Are Your Sons and read it properly this time.
* This is
actually the second E.L. Doctorow book I’ve read. The first book, Ragtime, I read and reviewed on this blog 9 years ago. I’m embarrassed to
say that I remember absolutely nothing of it now.
It’s funny how some stuff stays
in your memory over the years, and other stuff doesn’t.
Most of the books I’ve read in my life I at least remember something
off, but for whatever reason Ragtime is a complete black hole. Were it not for the fact that I blogged about
the book at the time, and that I now have that blog post to look back on, I
might not even remember that I had ever read it.
* Michael
Meeropol’s lecture on this book is worth reading (link, once again, HERE). He picks up on a lot of
things in this book that I would not have picked up on my own: particularly the
scenes in this book in which the differences between the Old Left and the New
Left are brought into stark contrast, and the narrative techniques E.L.
Doctorow uses to do this.
Also, among other things, he
mentions that the Boston Anti-War group that the fictional Susan Isaacson
became involved with in the book was the same one that the real life Noam Chomsky was involved with.
*
Connections with other books I’ve read: The Iron Heel by Jack London is mentioned as one of the many leftist books on the bookshelves of
the Isaacson family.
* I
suspect someone smarter than me will be able to analyze why bodily functions
play such a large role in this book—I’m sure there is some symbolic or literary
purpose—but I can’t figure it out myself.
All I can say is that the focus did leave me somewhat disgusted with the
narrative, and would make me hesitate before recommending this book to someone
else.
Thoughts
on the Biblical Book of Daniel—A Slight Digression
Okay,
so I’m going to make a digression here to something only tangentially
related—the Biblical book of Daniel. And
because this is only tangentially related, I’ve purposely put it down here at
the very bottom of the review, so you can stop reading here if you want to.
Although I now consider myself
an agnostic, I still retain a fascination with the Bible, and in
particular find the intersection of mythology and history in the Old Testament
to be fascinating. In that regard, the
Biblical book of Daniel is one of the most fascinating books.
The book of Daniel is unique in
that it’s one of the few books in the Bible to take a larger historical
perspective. Most of the historical
narrative in the Old Testament focuses myopically on the small nation of
Israel, largely ignoring all the other, more significant, empires and cultures
of the ancient world—except of course when they impact directly on Israel.
(It’s not surprising that the
Israelites would focus on their own history, but what is ironic is that since
Christianity has become the religion of the Western World, the history of the
small little provincial nation of Judah is seen as being the most significant
in ancient history, and the accomplishments of all the other, much larger,
empires have been regulated to historical footnotes. At least that was my experience growing up in
the Christian schools.)
The Book of Daniel, however,
breaks this pattern, and suddenly the scope of the Biblical Narrative is
widened to include world history—the great Babylonian Kings, the fall of the
Babylonian Empire, the rise of the Persians.
And then, through thinly veiled metaphorical prophecies, the conquests
of Alexander the Great, and the dissolution of Alexander’s empire
into warring miniature kingdoms is also covered.
But despite being about
an apocalyptic Jewish prophet in the Persian Empire, there is evidence that the
Book of Daniel was actually written much later.
The book of Daniel is the only Old Testament book to be written partly
in Aramaic (the colloquial language of Jesus’s time) rather than in ancient
Hebrew.
Furthermore, as Dale Martin points out in his lectures on the New Testament, the writer of the
book of Daniel gets all of his historical predictions right up until the year
164 BC, and all his historical predictions wrong after 164 BC. Which, as Dale Martin says makes it pretty
easy for scholars to date the writing of the Book of Daniel to 164 BC—which
would make it the latest document to be included in the Old Testament, despite
the fact that the chronology of its story takes place before the books of Ezra
and Nehemiah. (In fact, as Dale Martin
also points out, the worldview contained in the Book of Daniel is more in line
with the apocalyptic view of the New Testament writers than it is with the much
older books of the rest of the Old Testament, and which is the reason Dale
Martin includes an analysis the book of Daniel in his lectures on the New
Testament.)
Then there are also all the
historical inaccuracies in the book of Daniel.
Christine Hayes says in her lectures on the Old Testament:
In actual history, it was the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great which conquered the Babylonian Empire. But in the book of Daniel, there is this odd historical inaccuracy, where it was the Median King Darius who conquered Babylon.
These chapters tell of Daniel's adventures under two Babylonian kings, Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar; the text says two Babylonian kings, Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar; a Median king Darius who happens to be unknown to history, a Persian king Cyrus — that's a whole lot of years!
The historical inaccuracy of the work, right? You have the chronology of more than a century being telescoped here! There're other inaccuracies. Belshazzar was actually never a king; he was sort of a prince regent. He was defeated by Cyrus, not by Darius, so there are tremendous historical inaccuracies and this is a sign that this was written at a much later time, looking back when the history of a period 300 years ago was very confused. There's no clear historical knowledge of the Babylonian and Persian period. So the book, we know, was written quite late, perhaps the end of the third century, those first six chapters.
In actual history, it was the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great which conquered the Babylonian Empire. But in the book of Daniel, there is this odd historical inaccuracy, where it was the Median King Darius who conquered Babylon.
In actual history the Median
Empire had been absorbed by the Persians before the Persians conquered Babylon,
and the figure of “Darius the Mede” is completely unknown to history, making it
somewhat of a mystery where the author of the book of Daniel got this idea of
“Darius the Mede”.
Anyway, I bring this up for two
reasons: (1) this general historical nitpicking is of interest to me, and this
is my blog, so I allow myself a certain amount of leeway on my digressions, and
(2), it leads into some nitpicking about all the details E.L. Doctorow got wrong
on the book of Daniel. To return to the
passage I mentioned earlier:
“In this context it is
instructive to pause for a moment over the career of Daniel, a definitely
minor, if not totally apocryphal figure (or figures) who worked with no
particular delight for a few of the kings in the post-Alexandrine Empires.”
(p.11)
Post-Alexandrine Empires??? The Babylonian Empire and the Persian Empire
described in the book of Daniel were before the conquests of Alexander
the Great.
Jumping down a bit further on
the same page, we find this description of the biblical book of Daniel: “Typically,
the King (Nebuchadnezzar, or Belshazzar, or Cyrus) suffers a dream which he cannot
understand. (p. 11)
Okay,
now as we mentioned above, Cyrus probably should have been the Persian King
Daniel interacted with, if the writer of the book of Daniel had actually known
their history. But instead it’s Darius
the Mede who pops up, not Cyrus. (Cyrus
only really enters Daniel’s story as kind of a footnote at the end, when the
author mentions in passing that Daniel also prospered during the reign Cyrus as
well. But there are no specific stories
about Daniel interacting with Cyrus.)
Jumping down a bit further on
yet the same page, we find more inaccuracies: “For this wisdom Daniel is
accorded ministerial rank in the tradition of Joseph and Moses before him”
(p. 11).
Putting aside Hollywood versions
of the story, there’s no indication in the Biblical story that Moses had any
sort of ministerial rank. He was adopted
by an Egyptian princess, but that’s as much as the Bible tells us.
And a bit further down: “At
one point, Daniel’s three brothers are accused of sacrilege by the cunning
Chaldeans and the King sentences them to death in a fiery furnace” (p. 11)
The three men sentenced to death
in the fiery furnace, Shradrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were Daniel’s friends
and fellow-exiles, but they were not his brothers.
So, what to make about all these
mistakes? The charitable explanation is
that E.L. Doctorow knew that his narrator was getting the details wrong, but
that this was part of his literary device of using an untrustworthy narrator.
The uncharitable explanation is
that E.L. Doctorow got sloppy and did shockingly little research on the
Biblical book of Daniel, despite having made this such a major point of
reference for his novel.
I am genuinely unsure of which
explanation is correct, so anyone feel free to chime in in the comments section
if you have an opinion.
And On
More Historical Nitpick…
On
page 35, the narrator Daniel recounts his father’s historical passions. “He told me about using imported Chinese
labor like cattle to build the West, and of breeding Negroes and working them
to death in the South. Of their
torture. Of John Brown and Nat Turner. Of Thomas Paine, whose atheism made him an
embarrassment to the leaders of the American Revolution.”
This is a common misconception
(perhaps ever since Teddy Roosevelt referred to Thomas Paine as a “dirty little
atheist”.) But Thomas Paine was actually
a Deist, not an atheist, as he makes very clear in his book The Age of Reason.
By going so publically with his
arguments against the Bible, he did actually make himself somewhat of an
embarrassment to the American government at the time, but in his deism he was
in very good company with many of the other founding fathers including Benjamin
Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson.
As with the preceding Biblical
inaccuracies I mentioned, I’m not sure whether to chalk this one up to E.L. Doctorow’s
sloppy research, or to a literary device of an unreliable narrator.
Link of the Day
The Emerging World Order: It's Roots, Our Legacy
Link of the Day
The Emerging World Order: It's Roots, Our Legacy
10 comments:
I'm glad you dug the book, Joel, and entirely honoured to be one of those rare folk whose book recommendations succeed in capturing your attention.
I initially thought I'd give your digressional reactions to the Doctorow-or-Daniel? scriptural explication a pass, but then reconsidered, as they (in my view) crucially distract from what Doctorow is trying to achieve.
The first thing to note is that Jewish interaction with their scriptures is varied and entirely distinct from that of the goyim who so recently appropriated them (and never mind the semi-literate Protestant peasants who later pored through Gutenberg's product). There very well may be a Hasidic traditional reading of Daniel that counts Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego as brothers to Daniel -- or as metaphorical brothers, what have you. Similarly for Moses' ministerial status.
I'm no authority on these traditions, so whether these particular response modes exist is a matter of conjecture. I'm inclined to give Daniel the benefit of the doubt, however, because the notion that the scripture in question was written during, and tacitly refers to, life under post-Alexandrian conquest does in fact have a lineage -- one that fundamentalist Christian readers get very uppity about. Doctorow is clearly aware of this, and his Daniel lances that particular intellectual boil almost off-handedly -- pouring scorn and contempt not just on the people who appropriated his people's scripture, but on his people's traditional approaches to their own scripture. Daniel's loathing is deep, and absolute, and informs the narrative much more than any of the actual facts on which the narrative ought to hinge.
Just putting this out: I'm sure Doctorow could care less, but I certainly bristle at "sloppy research."
Thanks for the comment.
I suppose the bad thing about blogging my reading list is that I occasionally embarrass myself by misunderstanding a book, but the good thing about it is it brings about these kind of dialogues that help me get a better understanding of what I'm reading.
I completely did not even think about the Jewish tradition on the book of Daniel when I read this book. Like it wasn't even on my radar. Which I guess it should have been, given all the Jewish-American experience themes in E.L. Doctorow's "The Book of Daniel".
Of course, that still wouldn't excuse what is my major pet peeve--that the narrator described the prophet Daniel as living in Post-Alexandrine empires.
This could just be a typo, but if I'm interpreting you right, this goes not to Doctorow, but to the fact that his narrator is less concerned with facts and more about emotions.
Now that I think of it, my prof made a big deal of highlighting those discrepancies as well (and she was Jewish). Man, that was 30 years ago. Back then, if you were accepted into the Honours program in English, you were expected to read the bulk of the Bible. And the grilling we got on our textual reading was of a higher calibre than anything I received in my first (and only) year of Bible College. I have to wonder if any of that has changed.
Oh right, so those same discrepancies I pointed out actually made it into your prof's discussion of this book? And I thought I was just being needlessly nitpicky. What did your prof have to say about those discrepancies?
To her mind, Doctorow was very consciously messing with the reader -- seems to me that by the late-80s the "unreliable narrator" was just becoming the golden-haired darling of the ascendant wave of po-mo academia. Reader Response Theory, Lacan, Auerbach, the mimetic continuum, etc. *Shudder* Mind you, I was introduced to some wonderful books I'd otherwise have passed by -- like this one, most likely.
If you want to go toe-to-toe with Doctorow (from mimetic to phonetic -- yikes) on research, I'd recommend his essays. He is, as you might expect, a vitriolic lefty, so I suspect you'd enjoy some of his analysis. Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution roasts the Reagan years. Creationists the reign of W.
Well I'm always up for a good take down of W.
I searched the Internet trying to find Creationists online, but I couldn't find an essay by that name--at least not freely available online. It looks like that's the name of a collection of essays published in book form, so I guess I'll have to put that on hold until I can track down a copy of the book.
It does sound like the kind of thing I would enjoy though.
I suppose I should add the caveat: lots of literary exploration. One review. It's all slickly readable stuff.
Hmmm... It looks like it might be a little bit too literary for my tastes...and yet, I'm intrigued. I might or might not dig it, but if I ever see it in a bookstore, I'll snatch it up and take the gamble. (Now that I'm back in Southeast Asia, I'm back to taking my books as I find them and don't have free reign of English libraries. But I'll keep my eyes open.)
I note with interest that review you linked to says that E.L. Doctorow writes about Andre Malraux in Creationists. Since I've recently - blogged about Malraux, I'd be curious to read Doctorow's take on him.
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