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Loading... The book of Danielby E.L. Doctorow
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. 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. (  ) phette23 | Oct 19, 2009 |  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. (  ) dylanwolf | Jul 11, 2009 | The first of his books that I read - it inspired me to read many more! (  ) zojo | Dec 30, 2006 | "The Book of Daniel" is a brilliant evocation of 1950s and 1960s America, from McCarthy-era Red Scare to hippie culture and anti-war movement. Narrated by Daniel Isaacson, whose parents are tried and executed for stealing atomic secrets in a loose recreation of the historical Rosenburgs, the novel is a masterpiece of characterization and narrative: you won't want to put it down. The keenest moments are Daniel's flashback memories to life as a child with his parents, not yet notorious, who lead a recognizable and all too accesible existence. ( ) twallace | Nov 15, 2006 | Interesting novel based on the Rosenbergs. Not my favorite book, but worth reading. (  ) NicholasPayne | Jul 26, 2006 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0452275660, Paperback)The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia.His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted. Out of the shambles of his childhood, he has constructed a new life—marriage to an adoring girl who gives him a son of his own, and a career in scholarship. It is a life that enrages him. In the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he is supposedly writing a Ph.D. dissertation, Daniel composes something quite different. It is a confession of his most intimate relationships—with his wife, his foster parents, and his kid sister Susan, whose own radicalism so reproaches him. It is a book of memories: riding a bus with his parents to the ill-fated Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill; watching the FBI take his father away; appearing with Susan at rallies protesting their parents’ innocence; visiting his mother and father in the Death House. It is a book of investigation: transcribing Daniel’s interviews with people who knew his parents, or who knew about them; and logging his strange researches and discoveries in the library stacks. It is a book of judgments of everyone involved in the case—lawyers, police, informers, friends, and the Isaacson family itself. It is a book rich in characters, from elderly grand- mothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pen-tagon. It is a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since World War II. It is a book about the nature of Left politics in this country—its sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It is a book about some of the beautiful and terrible feelings of childhood. It is about the nature of guilt and innocence, and about the relations of people to nations. It is The Book of Daniel. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:57 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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