Billy Bathgate

Es curioso lo que pasa con el escritor E.L. Doctorow. Me da la impresión de que es más conocido que leído, y no conozco a nadie que tenga a Doctorow como su escritor favorito. A mí me ha gustado prácticamente todo lo que he leído de él, algunos libros incluso me parecen magistrales, y sin embargo, si tuviese que dar diez nombres de escritores favoritos, por decir una cifra, no creo que apareciese en mi lista. Doctorow es un escritor con oficio, con multitud de premios a sus espaldas y varias nominaciones al Nobel, y sin duda se trata de uno de los mejores autores del siglo XX.

’Billy Bathgate’ empieza con un primer capítulo deslumbrante, de esos que deberían enseñar en las clases de literatura. Doctorow hace uso de frases show more larguísimas, que fluyen sin problemas y se leen de forma amena. Transcurren los años 30 del siglo XX en Nueva York. Billy, un joven de quince años, sueña con ser admitido como gangster en la banda de Dutch Schultz, una de las más poderosas de la ciudad. Billy, procedente de uno de los barrios más sórdidos del Bronx, vive fascinado con la figura de Schultz y el ambiente en el que se mueve. Narrada en primera persona años después por el propio protagonista, ’Billy Bathgate’ le debe mucho a aquéllos clásicos de Herman Melville y Mark Twain. Doctorow lleva a su personaje con mano segura, profundizando en su carácter y en el de los personajes que le rodean, resultando todo un acierto la creación de la atmósfera de la época y el escenario que nos propone, en plena Gran Depresión, donde la corrupción estaba a la orden del día. La novela contiene grandes escenas, tanto en descripciones ambientales, como en personajes. Es imposible leer la novela sin que vengan a la mente películas como ‘El padrino’, ‘Uno de los nuestros’ o ‘Los intocables de Eliot Ness’, así como aquéllos clásicos de James Cagney o Edward G. Robinson, y donde Doctorow mezcla a la perfección crudeza y sensibilidad.

’Billy Bathgate’ se puede leer como novela histórica pero sobre todo como una estupenda novela negra. show less

I really like this one, even if there were some disturbing scenes that had me starting to second guess why I wanted to read this, my first exposure to E. L. Doctorow's novels. What worked for me is the well drawn setting and the pitch perfect voice of our young Billy. Boy, does Billy think fast on his feet and grow up fast for a street smart middle teen kid from a fatherless, East Bronx childhood! I get that the Depression era was a hard scrabble on its own. Add in a strong, gangster element as Doctorow has done here, and the end result is a fast-reading peerless (and perilous) coming-of-age story. Doctorow provides enough detail about 1930s New York life (from the view of the city's notorious underground crime economy) that it was easy show more for me to visualize life in those times, from that perspective.

What can I say... an easy flowing, captivating read, with some interesting jolts along the way. show less

I have to say, as a first-time reader of Doctorow, I picked up Billy Bathgate expecting your typical gangster novel. Guns, molls, bullets, blood, etc. What I found was a really sweet story about a kid who falls in love with Dutch Schultz's girlfriend and ends up saving her life. That's the spine of the novel. That's it's heart. There's a lot of exciting, wonderful things mixed in there, but that's the story. And it is absolutley beautiful and stirring.

Personally, I don't think I will ever forget Billy Bathgate. He is too engaging to be forgotten, too understandable, human, and too deserving of just the right amounts of sympathy and exasperation. His narrative invokes memories of Holden Caulfield, Nick Carraway, and strangely enough, show more Dr. Watson.

Doctorow peppers his text with delightful run-ons, sentence fragments, and old-fashioned American profanity. I say delightful because all three of these classic no-no's are incorporated perfectly into the words coming out of Billy's mouth and from his memory. Perfect grammar would be undesirable in this case, because Billy thinks in fragments and acts in run-ons. I think we would miss out on half of his personality and being if he didn't come across as a boy made out of the broken pieces of one big, dangling participle. Don't let reviews dissing the grammar deter you from reading this book, I suppose I'm trying to say. The imagery is beautiful, the descriptions (especially of people, but also of places, smells, buildings, scenes,) are sheer perfection. They hit the nail on the head. Sit back and watch the mental movie your mind will unfold for you.

I know it seems odd to refer to a "gangster" novel as "beautiful," but Billy Bathgate is just that. Gorgeous imagery, writing more poetry than prose, with beautiful human touches that stand outside the storyline itself, much like Nabokov's work.

This is one of those books that will give you End-Of-Book-Withdrawal. show less

An absolutely brilliant mix of fact and fancy. The story of the downfall of the Dutch Schultz gang as told by a young hanger-on who manages to insinuate himself into the club. Excellent full characterizations, intricate plot and wonderful use of the English language. After reading it, I looked at the real story of Dutch Schultz on Wikipedia. Doctorow did a fabulous job of using the known details and weaving Billy's story into it. Excellent story and writing.

Doctorow’s fictional account of the journey of Billy Bathgate is an exceptional examination of what it means to grow into a man. After wowing his way into working for the infamous Dutch Schultz gang, Bathgate witnesses the ugly side of the world. He is a narrator who is, at times, both confident in and scared of his new-found profession. The book is an elegant view into the mind of a boy who is coping with the loss of innocence that comes with knowledge of the real world--only he does so under some violent circumstances.

Tells the story of the last days of Dutch Schulz, through the eyes of a youngster who admiried him and was a hanger-on in the entourage. Great voice for narrator. Excellent pacing and plotting. Highly recommend for the writing and for the deft way the history never overtakes the plot.

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