[ book tip by Barnaby Smith ] Every person I know who has finished this novel has had to ‘take a moment’. Tears often ensue. Yet that fact only conveys one aspect of this extraordinary novel. E.L Doctorow is not quite in the annals of American literature (yet), indeed is perhaps worthy of the cursed mantle of a ‘writer’s writer’, but his 1971 novel perfectly emphasizes the direct consequences of seemingly large, abstract political ideas and events on the personal and emotional lives of individuals. Sure, he tugs at the heartstrings with the deeply sad tale of Daniel and his sister Susan, but Doctorow is also a scholar of American thought.

The Book of Daniel is based on the Rosenbergs, the communist couple who in 1953 were executed for conspiracy to pass information to Russia. Daniel’s parents were killed before we find him on Memorial Day, 1967. A typical counterculture scene, he is longhaired and hitchhiking with his family. The plot continues at a frenetic pace as Daniel discovers details of his parents’ lives and deaths against a backdrop of his own generation waking up to ‘consciousness’ in the late 60s. Doctorow deals with weighty issues of freedom, dogma and arguably most importantly, control, all concentrated in the travails of Daniel and his tragic sister.

Doctorow is also experimenting with form in his finest novel. The prose is manic, evoking the beat generation or Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, yet sometimes lurches into dream-like spontaneous prose and even, now and then, poetry. Such ambition recalls James Joyce, or a more measured William Burroughs.

The intensity of The Book Of Daniel dictates that this is not an uplifting book to be enjoyed, nor even one to be revisited, for this is an open wound. Along with DeLillo and Rushdie, Doctorow marries form and storytelling with ideology to devastating effect.

[ Favourite quote ] 'My mother did not allow me to delay going to school just because the FBI had come to the door.'

[ book info ] Doctorow, EL: The Book Of Daniel. (Book language: English) Plume, New York, 1996 (1971). ISBN: 0-452-27566-0.