E. L. Doctorow

Edgar Laurence "E. L." Doctorow (January 6, 1931 — July 21, 2015) was an American author. He is known internationally for his works of historical fiction.

Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Rose (Levine) and David Richard Doctorow, second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent who named him after Edgar Allan Poe. He attended city public grade schools and the Bronx High School of Science where, surrounded by mathematically gifted children, he fled to the office of the school literary magazine, Dynamo. He published his first literary effort, "The Beetle," in it, which he describes as ”a tale of etymological self-defamation inspired by my reading of Kafka.”

Doctorow attended Kenyon College in Ohio, where he studied with the poet and New Critic John Crowe Ransom, acted in college theater productions, and majored in philosophy. After graduating with honors in 1952, he completed a year of graduate work in English drama at Columbia University before being drafted into the United States Army. He served as a corporal in the signal corps, in Germany 1954–55 during the Allied occupation.

He returned to New York after his military service and took a job as a reader for a motion picture company, where he said he had to read so many Westerns that he was inspired to write what became his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times. He began it as a parody of western fiction, but it evolved to be a serious reclamation of the genre before he was finished. It was published to positive reviews in 1960.

In 1953, Doctorow married a fellow Columbia University drama student, Helen Esther Setzer, while in Germany. By the time he had moved on from his reader's job in 1960 to become editor at the New American Library (NAL), a mass-market paperback publisher, they were the parents of three children.

To support his family, Doctorow spent nine years as a book editor, first at NAL working with Ian Fleming and Ayn Rand among others; and from 1964, as editor-in-chief at The Dial Press, publishing work by James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Ernest J. Gaines and William Kennedy, among others.

In 1969, Doctorow left publishing in order to write, accepting a position as Visiting Writer at the University of California, Irvine, where he completed The Book of Daniel (1971), a freely fictionalized consideration of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was widely acclaimed, called a "masterpiece" by The Guardian, and said by The New York Times to launch the author into "the first rank of American writers" according to Christopher Lehmann-Haupt.

Doctorow's next book, written in his home in New Rochelle, New York, was Ragtime (1975), later named one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library editorial board.

His subsequent work includes the award-winning novels World's Fair (1985), Billy Bathgate (1989) and The March (2005); two volumes of short fiction, Lives of the Poets I (1984) and Sweetland Stories (2004); and two volumes of essays, Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution (1993) and Creationists (2006).

He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Yale School of Drama, the University of Utah, the University of California, Irvine, and Princeton University. He is the Loretta and Lewis Glucksman Professor of English and American Letters at New York University. He has donated his papers to the Fales Library of New York University.

Doctorow died of complications from lung cancer on July 21, 2015, in Manhattan, at the age of 84.

(from Wikipedia 7/21/2015 - let's see if they change the u to a w in his middle name)

אֶדְגָר לוֹרֵנְס דוֹקְטוֹרוֹב

' (באנגלית: Edgar Lawrence Doctorow;‏ 6 בינואר 1931–21 ביולי 2015) היה סופר יהודי אמריקאי. נהג לשלב ברומנים שלו דמויות היסטוריות ואירועים מההיסטוריה של ארצות הברית, בעיקר מן המאה ה-20.

קורות חיים דוקטורוב נולד ברובע הברונקס, ניו יורק. הוריו, דוד ורוז דוקטורוב, נולדו בארצות הברית והיו בנים למהגרים יהודים מרוסיה. למד בתיכון ברונקס למדעים.

ספריו שתורגמו לעברית ספר דניאל (1971), תרגם חיים גליקשטיין, זמורה-ביתן-מודן, 1971. רומן היסטורי על יוליוס ואתל רוזנברג. רגטיים (1975), תרגם אהרן אמיר, זמורה-ביתן-מודן, 1976. אגם הטבלנים (1980), תרגם אהרן אמיר, זמורה-ביתן, 1984. חיי המשוררים (1984), תרגם גדעון תלפז, זמורה-ביתן, 1988. היריד העולמי (1985), תרגמה שרה ריפין, זמורה-ביתן, 2001. בילי באתגייט (1989), תרגמה צילה אלעזר, הוצאת כנרת, 1992. רשת המים (1994), תרגם משה דור, זמורה-ביתן, 1998. עיר האלוהים (2000), תרגמה מרים יחיל-וקס, זמורה-ביתן, 2002. סיפורי הארץ המתוקה (2004), תרגמה דינה מרקון, זמורה-ביתן, 2007. הומר ולנגלי (2009), תרגמה ניצה פלד, הוצאת סימנים, 2010. אצל אנדרו במוח (2014), תרגמה ניצה פלד, הוצאת סימנים ומשכל הוצאה לאור, 2015. קישורים חיצוניים ויקישיתוף מדיה וקבצים בנושא א"ל דוקטורוב בוויקישיתוף Green globe.svg אתר האינטרנט הרשמי

של א"ל דוקטורוב מאשה צור-גלוזמן, א.ל. דוקטורוב לוקח סיפורים מההיסטוריה והופך אותם למיתולוגיה , באתר הארץ, 13 בינואר 2011, על "הומר ולנגלי" איתמר זהר, מת הסופר א"ל דוקטורוב, מחבר "רגטיים ו"בילי בתגייט" , באתר הארץ, 22 ביולי 2015 https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%90%22%D7%9C_%D7%93%D7%95%D7%A7%D7...	

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Edgar Laurence "E. L." Doctorow (January 6, 1931 — July 21, 2015) was an American author. He is known internationally for his works of historical fiction.

Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Rose (Levine) and David Richard Doctorow, second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent who named him after Edgar Allan Poe. He attended city public grade schools and the Bronx High School of Science where, surrounded by mathematically gifted children, he fled to the office of the school literary magazine, Dynamo. He published his first literary effort, "The Beetle," in it, which he describes as ”a tale of etymological self-defamation inspired by my reading of Kafka.”

Doctorow attended Kenyon College in Ohio, where he studied with the poet and New Critic John Crowe Ransom, acted in college theater productions, and majored in philosophy. After graduating with honors in 1952, he completed a year of graduate work in English drama at Columbia University before being drafted into the United States Army. He served as a corporal in the signal corps, in Germany 1954–55 during the Allied occupation.

He returned to New York after his military service and took a job as a reader for a motion picture company, where he said he had to read so many Westerns that he was inspired to write what became his first novel, Welcome to Hard Times. He began it as a parody of western fiction, but it evolved to be a serious reclamation of the genre before he was finished. It was published to positive reviews in 1960.

In 1953, Doctorow married a fellow Columbia University drama student, Helen Esther Setzer, while in Germany. By the time he had moved on from his reader's job in 1960 to become editor at the New American Library (NAL), a mass-market paperback publisher, they were the parents of three children.

To support his family, Doctorow spent nine years as a book editor, first at NAL working with Ian Fleming and Ayn Rand among others; and from 1964, as editor-in-chief at The Dial Press, publishing work by James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Ernest J. Gaines and William Kennedy, among others.

In 1969, Doctorow left publishing in order to write, accepting a position as Visiting Writer at the University of California, Irvine, where he completed The Book of Daniel (1971), a freely fictionalized consideration of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It was widely acclaimed, called a "masterpiece" by The Guardian, and said by The New York Times to launch the author into "the first rank of American writers" according to Christopher Lehmann-Haupt.

Doctorow's next book, written in his home in New Rochelle, New York, was Ragtime (1975), later named one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library editorial board.

His subsequent work includes the award-winning novels World's Fair (1985), Billy Bathgate (1989) and The March (2005); two volumes of short fiction, Lives of the Poets I (1984) and Sweetland Stories (2004); and two volumes of essays, Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution (1993) and Creationists (2006).

He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Yale School of Drama, the University of Utah, the University of California, Irvine, and Princeton University. He is the Loretta and Lewis Glucksman Professor of English and American Letters at New York University. He has donated his papers to the Fales Library of New York University.

Doctorow died of complications from lung cancer on July 21, 2015, in Manhattan, at the age of 84.

(from Wikipedia 7/21/2015 - let's see if they change the u to a w in his middle name)