by E. L. Doctorow
An experimental novel concerned with the mysteries of
creation and human destiny at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
Reviewed by: Joan Prefontaine
About Joan Prefontaine
This book demonstrates that there is still some highly intelligent life on
Planet Earth.
The novel's title links it to Augustine's City of God, suggesting a
preoccupation with belief, faith, and the human relationship with the
Divine. What is remarkable is that, while exploring numerous complex
theological questions, E. L. Doctorow manages to give us considerable
entertainment along the way. We encounter, among other things, a variety of
fascinating characters (including author-as-character), a detective story
and romance, memorable cameo appearances by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albert
Einstein and Frank Sinatra, plus penetrating reflections on city life and
culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
The plot is fairly simple, but it is only the skeleton upon which many
thematic elements hang. The large brass cross from St Timothy's Episcopal
Church in lower Manhattan has disappeared, and the church's rector, the
Reverend Dr. Thomas Pemberton, appoints himself as Divinity Detective to try
to find it. When Pem (as he is known to us) locates the cross on the roof of
the synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism, on the Upper West Side, he
encounters a pair of progressive rabbis, Sarah Blumenthal and her husband
Joshua Gruen. As he spends time with them, Pem's life is radically altered
and he begins to search for his own authentic faith.
Pem comes to believes that we must remake ourselves, and remake God as well.
He says: "We are weak and puny, and totter here in our civilization.We have
only our love for each other for our footing, our marriages, the children we
hold in our arms, it is only this wavery sensation, flowing and ebbing, that
justifies our consciousness and keeps us from plunging out of the universe."
Doctorow, who has characterized his writing here as "kitchen sink" prose
style, experiments with literary forms and voices, jazz improvisations,
prayers, Homeric verse and popular songs, working in descriptions of the
Holocaust, Big Bang cosmology and the sights and sounds of New York City. No
review can begin to convey the feeling of such a book. As Doctorow writes:
"Fiction goes everywhere, inside, outside, it stops, it goes, its action can
be mental.Novels can do anything in the dark horrors of consciousness." Yes,
they can, and City of God is an awesome testimony to that fact.
Click here to buy this book, or read more about it at Amazon.com: City of God
Copyright © by Joan Prefontaine, 2003
Reviewed by Joan Prefontaine:
-- The Secret Life of Dust - by Hannah Holmes
-- Lying Awake: - by Mark Salzman
-- The Art & Craft of Playwriting - by Jeffrey Hatcher
-- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - by Stephen King
-- Earth Prayers From Around the World - Edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon
-- The Beauty of the Beast - Selected by Jack Prelutsky, Illustrated by Meilo So
-- The Intimate Merton - Edited by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo
-- Plainsong - by Kent Haruf
-- The Stone Diaries
- by Carol Shields
-- City of God - by E. L. Doctorow
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