Billy Bathgate
Ratings5
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings5
Average rating3.8
To open this book is to enter the perilous, thrilling world of Billy Bathgate, the brazen boy who is accepted into the inner circle of the notorious Dutch Schultz gang. Like an urban Tom Sawyer, Billy takes us along on his fateful adventures as he becomes good-luck charm, apprentice, and finally protégé to one of the great murdering gangsters of the Depression-era underworld in New York City. The luminous transformation of fact into fiction that is E. L. Doctorow’s trademark comes to triumphant fruition in Billy Bathgate, a peerless coming-of-age tale and one of Doctorow’s boldest and most beloved bestsellers.
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The Good: Doctorow is clearly a master wordsmith. When it is well suited to the purpose of a particular scene, his skill flows in a rising and falling motion. His characters were vivid and believable. And the scene setting/world building engaged all of the senses with a fastidious attention to detail which he delivers almost carelessly. Billy's introspection makes room for Doctorow's philosophies and the man is as much a philosopher poet as a dealer in fiction. Fiction is often described as a lie used as a vehicle to convey truth; that is what you will get in this tale.
The Bad: Billy continually works to reconcile his natural innocence with his ever-increasing reality of, at first moral ambiguity, and progressively a criminal bent. Therefore, his streams of consciousness make dramatic leaps from rich prose to absolute crass vocabulary in an instant. While I am not thick skinned, it was arresting more often than I would have liked. I do not impune the use of vulgarity and many of the characters are well suited to it. Yet, despite the illustration of Billy's development, I repeatedly struggled with the particular descriptions (and Billy's perceptions) of almost all things sexual.
Overall, it was a good read but not my favorite yarn. Doctorow's philosophies and vocabulary, however, were masterful.
