“Through books of great beauty and power, and characters I’ll never forget, he showed us America’s great flaws and its astonishing promise, and our own”, Medina said.
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The cause of death was complications from lung cancer, the novelist’s son, Richard Doctorow, told the paper. His best known novel, Ragtime, has been said to be about “a nation struggling with modernity”, according to book critic David L. Ulin, and fuses fictional and historical figures, events and characters important in American history. “This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child’s mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer”.
Doctorow studied at Kenyon College in Ohio, and then did a year in the graduate program in drama at Columbia University. He also served in the U.S. Army, stationed in Germany. In the 1950s, Doctorow worked as a script reader for Columbia Pictures, reading novels and summarising them for possible film treatment.
Doctorow’s first book, 1960’s “Welcome to Hard Times” was a Western, and his 1966 follow-up “Big as Life” borrowed from science fiction. He published works by Norman Mailer, James Baldwin and others, the publishing house said.
A Guardian reviewer called his 1971 book, The Book of Daniel – his fictionalised account of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg during the Cold War – a “masterpiece”.
“The March” depicted William Tecumseh Sherman’s march through Georgia and the Carolinas from the vantage points of Sherman himself, a mixed-race freed slave girl, a brilliant but dispassionate battlefield surgeon, two Confederate prisoners who adopt various disguises and others.
The movie version of the non-musical “Ragtime” – again, not adapted by Doctorow – was nominated for eight Academy Awards.
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In addition to his son, E.L.is survived by his wife, Helen Setzer, daughters Jenny and Caroline, along with four grandchildren.
