2. E.L. Doctorow was a bridge, a link between our moment and an older world, the memory of which had been willfully suppressed.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
3. The older world was, as Jameson said, "the American radical past" -- the period running from the Civil War (The March) to McCarthyism
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Replying to @HeerJeet
4. The Book of Daniel -- his book on the Rosenberg case -- is central to his oeuvre, even though polorizing.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
5. There are many -- including the estimable
@samtanenhaus who dismiss Daniel as "kitsch" -- yet that's where Doctorow found History.2 replies 5 retweets 3 likes -
Replying to @HeerJeet
6. It was in Daniel that Doctorow first discovered how electrifying the return of the repressed could be as a fictional subject.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
7. Key to understanding Doctorow is that he was no nostalgist, even though his most popular fiction flourished in 1970s nostalgia boom.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
8. Doctorow himself actually helped instigate the nostalgia boom as book editor at Dial Press.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
9. In his capacity as book editor, Doctorow encouraged Jules Feiffer to put together his "Great Comic Book Heroes" (1965)
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Replying to @HeerJeet
10. Feiffer's volume, the first hardcover book reprinting "Golden Age" comics, helped ignite the nostalgia boom of the 1960s & 1970s.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
11. Feiffer's Doctorow-edited text in that book was actually anti-nostalgia (i.e. harshness of Depression world that created superheroes).
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12. Popular nostalgia that flourished in the 1960s/1970s focused on the artifacts of the past but forgot the political strife. Not Doctorow.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
13. Compare the movie The Sting (1973) to Doctorow's Ragtime (1975). Everything forgotten in The Sting remembered in Doctorow's novel.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
14. Doctorow's renovation of the historical novel, his ability to write about the past with a modern tempo, inspired countless other writers
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