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The Resource The waterworks, E.L. Doctorow

The waterworks, E.L. Doctorow

Creator
Summary
One rainy morning in 1871 young Martin Pemberton, walking down Broadway in lower Manhattan, sees in a passing horse-drawn omnibus several old men in black, one of whom he recognizes as his supposedly dead and buried father. So begins E. L. Doctorow's astounding new novel of post-Civil War New York, where maimed veterans beg in the streets, newsboys fight for their corners, the Tweed Ring operates the city for its own profit, and a conspicuously self-satisfied class of new wealth and weak intellect is all a glitter in a setting of mass misery. As Pemberton tries in vain to track the strange omnibus of old men, he leads us into a city we know and recognize and yet don't know, a ghost city that stands to contemporary New York like a panoramic negative print, reversed in its lights and shadows, its seasons turned round. The increasingly ominous tale is narrated by Pemberton's sometime employer, McIlvaine, the editor of the newspaper for which the young man writes occasional reviews. When Pemberton himself disappears, McIlvaine goes in pursuit of the truth of his freelance's bizarre fate. Layer by layer, he reveals to us a New York more deadly, more creative, more of a genius society than it is now. New technologies transport water to its reservoirs and gaslight to its streetlamps. Locomotives thunder down its streets. Telegraphy sings in its overhead wires, and its high-speed printing presses turn out tens of thousands of newspapers for a penny or two. It is a proudly, heedlessly modern city, and yet...the scene of ancient, primordial urges and transgressions, a companion city of our dreams...a moral hologram generated from this celebrated author's electrifying historical imagination. The Waterworks is a haunting tale of genius and madness in a metropolis that is itself a product of these qualities. Masterfully written and promising to be unforgettable, it is a triumphant addition to E. L. Doctorow's remarkable body of work
Language
eng
Work
Instance
Label
The waterworks
Title
The waterworks
Statement of responsibility
E.L. Doctorow
Creator
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
One rainy morning in 1871 young Martin Pemberton, walking down Broadway in lower Manhattan, sees in a passing horse-drawn omnibus several old men in black, one of whom he recognizes as his supposedly dead and buried father. So begins E. L. Doctorow's astounding new novel of post-Civil War New York, where maimed veterans beg in the streets, newsboys fight for their corners, the Tweed Ring operates the city for its own profit, and a conspicuously self-satisfied class of new wealth and weak intellect is all a glitter in a setting of mass misery. As Pemberton tries in vain to track the strange omnibus of old men, he leads us into a city we know and recognize and yet don't know, a ghost city that stands to contemporary New York like a panoramic negative print, reversed in its lights and shadows, its seasons turned round. The increasingly ominous tale is narrated by Pemberton's sometime employer, McIlvaine, the editor of the newspaper for which the young man writes occasional reviews. When Pemberton himself disappears, McIlvaine goes in pursuit of the truth of his freelance's bizarre fate. Layer by layer, he reveals to us a New York more deadly, more creative, more of a genius society than it is now. New technologies transport water to its reservoirs and gaslight to its streetlamps. Locomotives thunder down its streets. Telegraphy sings in its overhead wires, and its high-speed printing presses turn out tens of thousands of newspapers for a penny or two. It is a proudly, heedlessly modern city, and yet...the scene of ancient, primordial urges and transgressions, a companion city of our dreams...a moral hologram generated from this celebrated author's electrifying historical imagination. The Waterworks is a haunting tale of genius and madness in a metropolis that is itself a product of these qualities. Masterfully written and promising to be unforgettable, it is a triumphant addition to E. L. Doctorow's remarkable body of work
Additional physical form
Also issued online.
Cataloging source
DLC
http://library.link/vocab/creatorDate
1931-
http://library.link/vocab/creatorName
Doctorow, E. L.
Dewey number
813/.54
Index
no index present
LC call number
PS3554.O3
LC item number
W3 1994
Literary form
fiction
http://library.link/vocab/subjectName
  • City and town life
  • Young men
  • Historical fiction
  • City and town life
  • Young men
  • New York (N.Y.)
  • New York (State)
Label
The waterworks, E.L. Doctorow
Instantiates
Publication
Control code
ocm29548564
Isbn
9780394587547
Lccn
93044735
Label
The waterworks, E.L. Doctorow
Publication
Control code
ocm29548564
Isbn
9780394587547
Lccn
93044735

Subject

Genre

Library Locations

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