Man's best friend outside of a dog, 11: World's Fair, by E.L. Doctorow

Last week I said I liked two out of the three final books I had read during the trip to Aruba. Oddly enough, this was the one I didn't think much of at all. I have nothing against Doctorow, and rather liked Ragtime, but there must be something up with him that rubs people the wrong way. Suffice it to say, among major literary authors, he has more copies of his works sitting in the $2 rack at used bookstores than anyone else I can think of. Janet Evanovich, Clive Cussler, sure, and about every mystery author who has ever lived, but also a constant stream of Doctorow. I haven't been able to find a single Vintage press copy of anything by Nabokov for less than 3/4 the retail price for years, but I could have owned 10 copies of Water Works or Billy Bathgate had I wanted to. In some ways, it takes some of the fun out of finding them in bookstores, since there's no excitement in the find. A nice copy of Vonnegut is impossible, Calvino a rare treat, and we've found John Irving from just about every printing through years of work, but Doctorow is just too easy.

Anyway, on to the actual review. World's Fair is a fictionalization of what I have to assume is Doctorow's own childhood growing up in New York. Unfortunately, Doctorow seems to have had a childhood much like most of ours, full of events that are only passingly memorable and the rare moment that rises to the level of minor excitement. Unfortunately, that is about the extent of it. In theory, I am supposed to suggest that New York City in the 1930's is itself a character, but the narrator is much too young to really have experienced much of it at all. As a result, the novel is more than a bit flat. The emotion ranges from kind of happy to kind of sad, and even though our narrator's parents certainly have a troubled marriage, nothing ever really comes of it to spark some real dramatic tension. The dramatic ending, in which he sees both the magic but also the tawdriness of the New York World's Fair, similarly fails to inspire, breaking no new ground whatsoever. If you want to really read about the magic and horror of a World's Fair, try Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson.