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Sweet Land Stories, by E. L. Doctorow
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One of America’s premier writers, the bestselling author of Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, The Book of Daniel, and World’s Fair turns his astonishing narrative powers to the short story in five dazzling explorations of who we are as a people and how we live.
Ranging over the American continent from Alaska to Washington, D.C., these superb short works are crafted with all the weight and resonance of the novels for which E. L. Doctorow is famous. You will find yourself set down in a mysterious redbrick townhouse in rural Illinois (“A House on the Plains”), working things out with a baby-kidnapping couple in California (“Baby Wilson”), living on a religious-cult commune in Kansas (“Walter John Harmon”), and sharing the heartrending cross-country journey of a young woman navigating her way through three bad marriages to a kind of bruised but resolute independence (“Jolene: A Life”). And in the stunning “Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden,” you will witness a special agent of the FBI finding himself at a personal crossroads while investigating a grave breach of White House security.
Two of these stories have already won awards as the best fiction of the year published in American periodicals, and two have been chosen for annual best-story anthologies.
Composed in a variety of moods and voices, these remarkable portrayals of the American spiritual landscape show a modern master at the height of his powers.
- Sales Rank: #1951226 in Books
- Published on: 2004-05-04
- Released on: 2004-05-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.53" h x .73" w x 6.52" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 160 pages
From Publishers Weekly
As one might expect of Doctorow, the title is ironic. In settings that range across the U.S., most of the alienated characters in the five stories here find life anything but sweet as they struggle to surmount the stigmas of poverty, lack of education and their instincts to gamble against the odds. Three of the male protagonists are passive and amoral; attempting to defend their irrational behavior, each reminds himself that he is not stupid. All of them�€"a young grifter who dutifully abets his mother's murderous greed on a farm near Chicago ("A House on the Plains"); a love-besotted accessory to a kidnapping in California (the slyly humorous "Baby Wilson"); and a cuckolded member of a religious cult commune in Kansas ("Walter John Harmon")�€"share a capacity for self-delusion and self-preservation. The two female protagonists attempt to alter fate and find themselves buffeted by the inescapable force of male power. The protagonist of "Jolene: A Life" is forced into a cross-country hegira in pursuit of a sweet land where she won't be an outsider. Scared and desperate despite her cool facade, Jolene becomes a victim in every relationship. If the story's denouement veers too close to soap opera, Doctorow's empathetic character portrayal redeems the plot twists. The most riveting narrative, "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden," describes a presidential administration that is secretive, arrogant and contemptuous of ordinary citizens. In this knowing treatment of the cynical abuse of power, Doctorow uses the spare, laconic style endemic to thrillers and builds suspense with sure strokes. Boring like a laser into the failures of the American dream, he captures the resilience of those who won't accept defeat.
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Each critic professes great respect for Doctorow, who, at age 73 and many awards later, has earned it. However, there the split begins. Many critics hail these stories, four of which were published previously in The New Yorker, as an achievement that perfectly captures the American nation’s mood, its aberrant characters, and dark underbelly. But others dismiss the book as a slim, shallow effort that does not live up to Doctorow’s past work. Common complaints? “A House on the Plains” doesn’t fit in with the other four stories, and “Child, Found Dead in the Rose Garden,” which could have been a powerful political piece, doesn’t live up to its promise.
Copyright � 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Doctorow is at once a supremely entertaining storyteller and a profound writer of conscience, and he forges an extraordinarily potent blend of artistry, compassion, and covert outrage in his new short story collection, the first since the indelible Lives of the Poets (1984). Here are five perfectly honed and sharp-edged stories about faith, love, and the abuse of power. Five ambushing and hair-raising tales featuring intensely compelling characters and impossible situations that unveil key paradoxes intrinsic to American society. Set in the horse-and-buggy era, "A House on the Plains" charts the adventures of an enterprising woman and her grown son, who reluctantly leaves Chicago to accompany her on what turns out to be a diabolical mission in a small Illinois town. The criminal mind fascinates Doctorow, as does the law and its failings, and men's cruelty toward women, tragic realities he sure-handedly explores to powerful effect in "Jolene: A Life," a classic hard-luck, white-trash tale with universal implications. Doctorow boldly takes on the enigma of religious cults in the eerie "Walter John Harmon," and in the scorching story, "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden," he shrewdly and devastatingly uncloaks the workings of an utterly corrupt White House, and the drastic consequences of such a colossal betrayal. At base, what Doctorow's unique and electrifying stories grapple with is our longing to trust authority and our realization that, instead, we must always question it. Donna Seaman
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Doctorow Delivers Gripping Stories about the Ordinary Man
By Grady Harp
SWEET LAND STORIES is another superlative venture for E.L. Doctorow, one of the very finest writers in the country. Though known best for his larger tomes that mingle history and fiction as well as anyone has ever done, this small book of five stories reveals a master in creating characters and stories in a few pages that become indelible in the reader's mind. In his hands the most apparently simple settings become backdrops for complex, extensive tapestries that reveal how the 'little man/woman' can be pitched and tossed into the most bizarre tangle of events and yet somehow survive. In a time when many of us worry about the spiritual vacuum of life in the 21st Century, when the individual seems buried in the media pile of homogenation, look to Doctorow's fertile mind to remember and perhaps redefine the role of the Everyman. These stories are varied and extraordinarily well written: 'A House on the Plains' seems to be a tale of survival found in fleeing an urban center to a new life for a family on the plains, only to become a wholly different surprising macabre tale in the end: 'Baby Wilson' focuses on a couple who walk out a hospital with someone else's baby, flee, and watch their lives mutate; 'Walter John Harmon' concerns a community of brainwashed folk under the influence of a Spiritual Leader and the consequences of manipulation in the religion realm; 'Jolene: A Life' follows the course of an abused orphan through the country as she moves from one bad husband to the next - holding our hearts in her hand; 'Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden' is Doctorow's indictment of the credibility gap in the White House management of Intelligence sharing - a different and terrifying aside on terrorism so much in focus today. Doctorow tells these stories with elegant prose, terse and delicate economy, and once again proves he can spin a yarn better than most writers active today. A Brilliant Collection!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Doctorow's Sweet Land
By Robin Friedman
I read and enjoyed Doctorow's current historical novel of Sherman's march, "The March," and wanted to read more. Doctorow's "Sweet Land Stories" (2004) lacks the sweep of his Civil War novel. But it excells in its picture of American down-and-outers, loners, losers, grifters, and wanderers. It includes short but unforgettable scenes of a varied and almost timeless American, in rural Illinois, Chicago, Alaska, a religious commune, Las Vegas, and elsewhere.
The book consists of five short stories, four of which appeared initially in the New Yorker while the fifth story, "Child, Dead in the Rose Garden" appeared first in the Virginia Quarterly Review. Each of the stories is faced-paced, draws the reader into the action, and can be read easily in a single sitting. The stories reminded me of Hubert Selby's "Last Exit to Brooklyn" and of the novels of Charles Bukowski without their rawness. Doctorow's is the voice of a polished literary artist.
Three of the stories are told in the first person by male narrators. The first story "A House on the Plains" is recounted by Earle and tells of his conniving and murderous mother on a small farm in Illinois. For all the brutality and irony of the story, the characters come alive sympathetically. "Baby Wilson" is told in the voice of a young man with nowhere particular to go whose girlfriend has kidnapped a baby claiming it is the couple's. We are treated to a picturesque ride through dusty roads and small towns as the two loners truly become a couple and parents as well as they struggle to resolve the situation.
"Walter John Harmon" tells the story of its namesake, a former garage mechanic and thief, and current alcoholic and philanderer, who becomes the leader of a religious commune. But the narrator is an attorney who has given up a staid if successful law practice and, with his wife Betty has joined the commune. The tone of the story is set by its first sentence: "When Betty told me she would go that night to Walter John Harmon, I didn't think I reacted." Doctorow shows the credulous, unresolved needs of many people, including highly educated individuals, for belief and spiritual support, as the narrator is cuckolded by Walter John Harmon who runs off with Betty and abandons the commune to its fate.
The story "Jolene:A Life" tells of a young woman with three bad marriages and other affairs who works through a life of trouble and attains a degree of peace at the end. This is a tawdry story with tawdry scenes, tattoo parlors, topless bars, sexual abuse, gangster-style killings,convincingly portrayed. Jolene struggles throughout all this to develop her talent as an artist.
The final story, "Child Dead, in the Rose Garden" seems to me weaker than the others in that it is too overtly political. I had the same problem with Doctorow's "The Book of Daniel" which is a fictionalized account of the Rosenbergs. This story also differs from its companions in that the protagonist is not a down-and-outer but a respectable person in a responsible job. The story is about the adventures of a retired special agent named B.W. Molloy who, over official resistance, solves a mystery about how the body of a dead child was found in the White House Rose Garden and in the process learns a good deal about himself.
Doctorow has made his reputation, and deservedly so, as a writer of American historical fiction. This book is smaller in scope than novels such as "The March" but perhaps digs deeper into the hearts of its characters. This book together with Doctorow's difficult modern novel "City of God" which to me shows the promise of a secular, open America, are thoughtful, spiritual works which I have greatly enjoyed.
Robin Friedman
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Gripping Tales of Life on the Fringes
By Donald Mitchell
Short stories are quite a challenge. You have to establish characters, mood, setting, conflict and context quickly. Then you have to move forward surely to your target with little wasted effort. If you accomplish all that, you only succeed if the story teaches you something that you find compelling. By those standards, the five stories in Sweet Land Stories are a tour de force.
I was surprised to find this because I find Mr. Doctorow's novels to move in a very leisurely pace. But here, that pace turns into just the right speed.
What the stories have in common is that you enter into worlds that operate at the fringes of society rather than near their center. So your characters have different problems than you and I think about every day. They also have unique solutions to their problems. The shift in focus is so complete that it's almost like reading science fiction. But the shift has a tether back to our lives . . . a tether that makes the lessons universal for us all. It's very impressive.
In the first story, A House on the Plains, we have an attractive mother and her son who find themselves living on a farm they don't know how to operate after the mother's husband died in Chicago. The mother likes men. What they do next will surprise you with its chilling elements. The story is told from the perspective of the son which makes it quite macabre. What is our responsibility to our parents . . . and to our fellow humans?
Baby Wilson will haunt you. A young woman decides to kidnap a baby. She's convinced the baby is hers. How will her boyfriend deal with this? You will find yourself in the shoes of the boyfriend as you share his dilemma. How do you protect the baby and your girlfriend?
Walter John Harmon takes you deeply into the spiritual life of a cult whose messianic leader is under siege. How will the challenges of that siege affect the leader and the cult? You experience the story from the perspective of a cult member who is a lawyer trying to protect the cult. The story raises fine questions about self-deception that we all practice.
Jolene: A Life is a very sad story. Born with beauty but few other advantages, Jolene floats like a wood chip atop the roiling waters of life. As her beauty is used up, she finds herself falling below the water line. And ultimately, she finds out what it is to love and lose. You see life as Jolene sees it.
Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden is a cynical look at the ethics of powerful politicians and business people that will leave you gasping with its pain. You see this from the perspective of an investigator into the unexplained death of a child in the White House's Rose Garden.
I don't remember a more compelling set of short stories written since the turn of the century. Don't miss them!
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