SOURCE: "Why Not Say What Happened? E. L. Doctorow's Lives of the Poets," in Critique, Vol. 34, No. 2, Winter, 1993, pp. 113-25.

In the following essay, Matterson addresses the ideas about writing suggested by the stories in Doctorow's Lives of the Poets.

Lives of the Poets, E. L. Doctorow's seventh work, first published in 1984, occupies a unique space in his writings. Its most obvious difference from the other work is announced in its subtitle, A Novella and Six Stories, because, apart from the 1979 play, Drinks before Dinner, Doctorow's previous work had been in the novel form. A case could be made for considering Lives of the Poets almost an aberration within the Doctorow canon. Among its diverse themes and settings the collection becomes an exploration of the nature of writing itself and of the relation of writing to the life of its author. Doctorow had never before treated this issue...