Dutch Schultz and Show Choirs

Multi-page paragraphs are the enemy of the bus reader (e.g. pp 58ff, Billy Bathgate) because you're a block or two from your stop, and you'd like to get to the end of the paragraph, someplace neat and memorable to leave off, but the paragraph just goes on and on and on and you have to stop in mid-thought. Or miss your stop, which is never going to happen. So please: if you are writing a book that is going to end up on a Goodwill bookshelf where I might buy it to read on my bus trips to and from work (oooo - a neat capsulizing of the raison d'etre of this blog, that was!), be considerate enough to use short paragraphs. We'll say no more than half page long. Okay?

So: Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow. This is the first Doctorow book I've read in which the main character wasn't the era. By which I mean, he sets his stories in the past, mostly in NYC, and that they are in the past is what they are about. Is that clear? Anyway, BB is set in the past, in the mid 1930s, but it's actually more about the characters than the era. Billy's a street kid who falls in, by design, with Dutch Schultz, a few months before Dutch Schultz's famous murder. He escapes harm, profits mightily from his association with the racketeers,financially and sexually and, mostly, in self esteem. I guess he could have turned out a cynical and violent man himself, but evidently does not.

I think this may be a better book than the more famous Ragtime, maybe because Doctorow focuses on one character and fully develops him and as a result fully develops those circling around him. The writing, too is less annoying than usual, less pastoral, not as nostalgic-for-a-less-smoggy-sky as the other books of his I've encountered. (Though there a number of passages that begin "I will now tell you...", which is okay once but they just kept on coming). As it got going I got more involved, which is just what you want from a book.

Meanwhile, it's been years (or so) since I've written here. In the interim Lost has answered some questions, we got Super Mario Galaxy, and Samie's show choir keeps winning competitions. Also, it appears Spring might be coming to Omaha.