E.L. Doctorow and the Doorman Who Didn’t Exist

Remembering a telling anecdote from the great novelist who died this week.

Joel Landau/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


E.L. Doctorow, who died on Tuesday, was one of the great storytellers of American literature. With Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, The March, Billy Bathgate, and other novels, Doctorow was able to interweave US history with worlds of his own concoction so that readers could barely discern the seams. He was a master of historical fibbing that explored universal human dilemmas. And he was, as far as I could tell, a lovely man. Doctorow was for decades a contributor to and supporter of The Nation, where I once worked, and I had the thrill to be in his company on several occasions. I don’t recall whether he told me this or I heard or read it in an interview, but Doctorow once remarked that when he initiated a novel he usually did not know how it would unfold—an astounding comment given the intricacies and strength of his narratives.

My most meaningful encounter with Doctorow occurred several years ago, when my family had the chance to spend the afternoon with Doctorow, who at the time was living in a house next to the home of our mutual friend, Marc Siegel, a writer and doctor. At some point, Doctorow told us a story of his earliest days as a writer, when he was a boy growing up in the Bronx (very close to where my mother had lived at the same time). Some of the details are now hazy, but it went something like this:

Young Edgar Lawrence Doctorow, when he was in middle or high school, was given an assignment in English class: interview and write a profile of the most interesting person you know. His fellow students focused on the obvious: their parents or, if they were fortunate enough to know one, a police office, a soldier, or a firefighter. Edgar discovered a more compelling subject. His essay told the story of the doorman at his building. The fellow had been in a concentration camp in Germany. He had somehow survived and found his way to the United States. After witnessing so much evil, he now stood watch in front of a Bronx apartment building and each day took in a much different different world. Edgar’s tale of the doorman’s harrowing experience with the Holocaust and his journey to America so moved his teacher and school officials that they decided that other students would benefit from direct interaction with this witness to recent history. A teacher or administrator called Edgar’s home and asked one of his parents if they could arrange for the doorman to come to the school for an assembly where he would be honored by the school and share his story with all. “Doorman?” Mr. or Mrs. Doctorow replied. “There is no doorman in our building.”

Doctorow had made it all up.

I don’t recall if Doctorow shared with us the consequences of this particular fiction. Did his teacher punish him with an F? Did he face any disciplining at home? But this story, which left a strong impression on my then-impressionable young daughters, did become part of my own family’s lore. In subsequent years, when my girls had to produce essays for school’s assignments, they often wondered whether they could embellish. And in these instances, they could conveniently recall Doctorow’s youthful exploit. After all, look where Doctorow’s rule-bending got him—and us. This might have been the beginning of his decades-long project to blend history with the wonders of his fertile imagination, and millions of readers have benefited from this process.

I should say that after all this time I might be mistaken about some specifics of this account, and it is possible that I have re-arranged them to improve the actual story. But surely Doctorow wouldn’t mind.

UPDATE: It’s fitting that the New York Times has a different version of the doorman story.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate