| REVIEW: E.L. DOCTOROW, CITY OF GOD |
E. L. Doctorow’s City of God…what a book this is. It takes you from the beginning of the universe to the end of one man’s spiritual search. From Einstein to Sinatra. From immorality to salvation. From a Jewish ghetto to Central Park. From Wittgenstein's search for meaning in the relationship of thought to lanugage to "Shine on, shine on Harvest moon." This is not a novel for the faint of heart. It has the feel of a challenge--”Are you up to it?” Doctorow asks. Page one drops you into a consciousness mulling what science has most newly learned about the beginning—the big bang, creation. And from there, like a pin ball, Doctorow shoots you along with essentially no guides, no flashlight, and little chance to engage with a trustworthy voice. It’s an odd feeling. You resist it. You have the urge to take notes, to flip back a few pages and see what you’ve missed, to search for the tiniest formatting clue. You need context, for heaven's sake, sense, a structure you recognize. But that’s Doctorow’s point. This is a book about how we manage to create sense out of the chaos, to impose meaning, to build a structure we can then live at least somewhat comfortably within. And so, too, out of this diverse, seemingly messy and disordered book emerges a brilliant synthesis. Art. Nature. Intelligence. Curiosity. Evil. Good. Imagination. Humor. Love. All the things we impose on the world and often choose to believe are somehow imposed on us. There are many characters inhabiting this novel, but not even one you’ll get to know very well. All of them, perhaps, nothing more than figments of one imagination, an imagination that belongs to someone whose bio goes stubbornly unwritten, who refuses, really, to construct himself. But it doesn’t matter. Whatever the book refuses to deliver in emotional fulfillment, it more than makes up for in cerebral stimulation. This is a giant of a book. And Doctorow is a giant of a writer. Still. And that's especially satisfying, that a septuagenarian brain can produce such brilliance, such challenge, such excitement.
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