The narrative strategy of Billy Bathgate is to present everything through the memory of Billy himself. When this recollection takes place, however, or what Billy has become as an adult is never revealed. The point of view thus hovers somewhere between the author's vision in 1989 and the narrator's memory of himself as a boy in the 1930s. In this way Doctorow achieves a double sense of time lived and remembered.

What literary technique will render the underworld of Dutch Schultz in convincing detail? Doctorow typically chooses to combine history and fiction.

When facts are available to support his view of the 1930s, Doctorow includes them in the narrative. When other details are needed, however, he does not hesitate to invent them. The result is a seamless narrative that appears to convey a realistic picture of history as it is remembered by a particular observer and participant.

The language...