Volume 41, Number 12 · June 23, 1994
The Cabinet of Dr. Sartorius
By Luc Sante
The Waterworks
by E.L. Doctorow
Random House, 253 pp., $23.00
In the course of his career E.L. Doctorow has made a subspecialty of constructing New York Cities, varied by historical setting as well as by architecture of genre and psychological weather. In Ragtime and World's Fair and Billy Bathgate, for example, the city is carnival and mountain range and obstacle course by turns, brilliantly colored and dangerous and exhilarating. The city he has erected in The Waterworks is in most regards the Manhattan of 1871, the oyster of the Tweed Ring, still fat from war profits but possibly hollow within, lurching its way into the modern era.
Review, 2674 words
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