ABSTRACT
In the work of Dos Passos, historical circumstances tend to stifle human potential; in Don DeLillo they tend to gasify into all-permeating media representations; but in E. L. Doctorow they create a network of defining possibilities along which characters can advance. Doctorow's new novel shares several elements with Ragtime. There is a black jazz musician, a Model T Ford and a narrative done more in the manner of a chronicle than of a story. But in pace, tone and setting, Homer and Langley is the opposite of the chilly, energetic earlier book, and a departure from the bulk of Doctorow's earlier work. Ragtime, Doctorow's most enjoyable, most successful and still best book, is also the one in which most miles are covered in most machines at highest speed. Yet the vigorous multitudinousness of Doctorow's earlier novels has always been tempered by other virtues: a tender ear for voices, and great vividness in the composition of vignettes.
