Edgar Lawrence Doctorow; a Political Novelist?

Abstract

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is generally regarded as a postmodern historical novelist who mingles the marvelous with
the real. His novels are mainly set in the American past. The novels are greatly indebted to historical events and personages but
engagement with documentary history is not Doctorow's prime obsession. Critics are at odds in deciding upon the paradox in
Doctorow's novels; whether he is a politically minded novelist or an aesthetically obsessed one. Acknowledging the strong
political tendencies in Doctorow's novels, many critics claim his enthusiasm and passion for the act of writing finally outweighs
the political inclination of the novels. Identifying Historigraphic metafiction as Doctorow's favorite and repeated technique in
virtually all his novels, the present reading wishes to observe the novellas from a contrasting perspective.