literature. "Critics marveled at Doctorows vivid description of New York City in the 1930s and of the horrific murders committed by Dutch and his gang."(CLC volume 65 Author Overview) "Billy Bathgate is intended as pure myth, a sort of Robin Hood for grown-ups. Other novels may be more psychologically subtle or emotionally resonant. But few of those celebrate, as well as Billy Bathgate does, the raw, sometimes amoral energy of life, so often feared by the timid and the primly virtuousBilly Bathgate, with its driving rhythms and hair-trigger images, is as bracing as a shot of Dutch Schultzs bootleg scotch." (Bemrose p. 58-9) Having read the first chapter of the novel, any reader would know exactly what Mr. Bemrose is talking about. The novel kind of grabs you and dares you to put it down because it knows that you cant. Bemrose continues by saying "Billy Bathgate is a celebration of life as well, particularly the life of youth, with its boundless resilience and illusions of immortality." (Bemrose 58-9) "He (Doctorow) is interested not in the abstractions of corruption, but in the simple, emotional things of the criminal existence-what it feels like to be a gangster, what moral and psychological universe one inhabit. Its day to day mechanics and, perhaps most importantly, how one survives a life of violence. Thus, underneath the soft prose of Billys voice, we are given glimpses of the murderous danger of the criminal life, and how the people who live it, particularly its leaders, keep their heads above water." (Clifford p.29)SettingDoctorow accomplishes the task of recreating the Bronx in the 1930s with perfection. Everything from the attitude of the depression to the realness of the gang scene is more than vividly expressed throughout the novel. Its almost like Doctorow paints the picture of the 1930s in such an explicit manner that the reader can smell the tension of financial burden in the air. "Critics marveled at Doctorow...
