I can tell just how much I love an author's writing mostly the days after I've finished reading one of his books. When I start writing an e-mail to a friend and after a couple of sentences think"wait a minute, this is not my style, where did I get this from?". When an author is that good, his way of using punctuation or syntax, his unusual metaphors or sentences or a certain attitude and tone behind the words inevitably work their way into your own writing style. Doctorow is that kind of author. His voice stuck inside your head for days and days. Using language and writing in a way that constantly undermines the reliability o language and writing. "The early morning traffic was wondering - I mean the early morning traffic was light, but not many drivers could pass them without wondering who they were and they were going" Or if you prefer: "In any event, my mother and father, standing in for them, went to their deaths for crimes they did not commit. Or maybe they did commit them. Or maybe my mother and father got away with false passports for crimes they didn’t committ. How do you spell comit?" And if you think all this is postmodern mumble-jumble and where's the plot, the story? The story, I will let you know, is wonderful. Wonderful and sad and infuriating and thought-provoking and suspenseful and everything you could wish for. This is the story of the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (renamed in the book Paul & Rochelle Isaacson) seen from the point of view of their son - Daniel in the book. Our protagonist. Trying to make sense of something that could not and should not make sense for any person calling himself/herself a human being. I could go on with this review but I find that all I want to do is not describe the book (which would be doing it an injustice) but quote passages from it. So I'll just say for me this is a must-read. And stop there.

"The difference between Socrates and Jesus is that no one has ever been put to death in Socrates’ name. And that is because Socrates’ ideas were never made law." ( )

This is not a Biblical story. It’s about the execution of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, but even so, it’s not much of a political story either. It’s more about history; how history’s made, written, who tells it, its helping to cope and make sense of actions, the events around us, which is exactly Daniel Isaacson’s reason for sitting down at his university library in 1967 to look back 14 years to his early bar mitzvah: the death of his parents Paul & Rachel, attempting to write his metahistorical thesis for Ronald Sukenick and understand just what the hell happened to him, his sister and his parents in 1953, why his parents were taken from him as part of the infamous McCarthy hunt for the Red American.

Daniel employs every obnoxious literary trick he can to dig and shift through his own history whether it be addressing directly the reader, even straight out yelling at us, the prick, taking Faulknerian liberties with the use of pronouns, throwing in some very real details on the history of torture and death, the tools used by societies up to modern times, how they worked, &c., or going back and forth in time from the present to his childhood, often even midsentence, from his own fucked up ‘60s life and disturbing attempts to feel anything at all for his teenage wife and child to his own fucked up childhood starting from before his father’s arrest and the night his very innocent mother vanished talking often of his father’s naïve political beliefs, his unwavering trust in justice especially, and his backwards relationship with the government even after their hopes to pin treasonous charges on him become transparent; both these story threads go side by side, ending together in The Book’s last few pages, with Daniel finally finding (sort of) a sense of peace and understanding with the former family friend that pointed his finger at the Isaacson’s in order to get a lax prison sentence and the death of his parents, the actual action presented to the reader in gruesome unwanted detail, down to Rachel/Ethel not exactly dying on the first go…

Daniel’s day deconstructing Disneyland was the novel’s highlight. I mean, damn, those nine pages provide one of the most powerful postmodern passages these eyes have seen. Daniel’s here at Anaheim's Disneyland to meet—finally—the indirect executioner of his parents, the man whose finger pointed the Isaacsons to their electric deaths in June ’53 to satisfy the socially predominant America v. Russia Cold War Hysteria. Disneyland’s used to, despite the intense and obvious change of colors/scenery, work alongside the rest of TBOD’s bleakness, extending both the antagonistic personification of electricity and the idea of social simulation. Disneyland’s womb is cut into numerous zones—Adventureland, with a plasticized imagining of Mark Twain’s river boat “Life on the Mississippi” experience, Frontierland, Fantasyland, Main Street USA, and, where Mindish, mind now far gone from SDAT, spends his remaining days, Tomorrowland—each with its own individual concentrated sentimental focus of simulation.

Everything’s a simulation. The Cold feud between the Red White & Blue and the just Red is a simulation of war, both sides holding the other at bay threatening and boasting their own nuclear arms supply. The trial Daniel’s parents were pushed through was a simulation of a trial, a bullshit stage show put on by our own government to appease the social demand for justice. The whole American way of life, man, consuming and seeking out entertainment, it’s a sham, an illusion, transparent in its banality and its unreal hunt for that particular sentimental high. No one even reads Carroll or Twain anymore, they just watch Disney’s romanticized vision—a technique Doctorow refers to as an “abbrieviated shorthand culture for the masses”—anything as long as it has the Disney stamp of approval, an ounce of that cultural respectability that makes this harvesting of icons so worthwhile on behalf of the Corporation…

I only wish I got the chance to spend more time with Doctorow’s brilliant novel, a lot more time with that trip to Disneyland. I’m going to cut this short here. Highly recommended, &c.&c.&c.

80%
[619] ( )

interesting mish-mash of voices, some cool stylistic moments (the disneyland analysis near the end is so Baudrillard-before-he-even-wrote-about-that it's amazing) but also ends up sounding preachy at points even while it's trying to avoid that. A little dated but still good. ( )

A wonderful evocation of living with a liberal sensibility and a social conscience in a conservative leaning open democratic society. This is a thoughtful, deep and admirable novel about the American McCarthy years. The book is based loosely around the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were executed in 1953 after having been found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. How the state should deal with those whose consciences lead them to work against it is a thorny problem. The state often has to wrestle with a morass of conflicting ethical issues, things can seem much more clear cut to individuals with a narrower insight. But the mechanics of high politics can and does blur and fudge, critical rights of freedom and fundamental pillars of the democratic world can be at threat. There should always be a dialogue and continuous review and check between the power of the state and the individual. The problem is that no one agrees where the ethically correct fulcrum lies, nor where the best point of stability is achieved. And I suspect that both are variable and highly susceptible to differing political circumstances and priorities. ( )

The first of his books that I read - it inspired me to read many more! ( )