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raychelreads's review against another edition
5.0
My favorite part of this book is the mode in which it is written, as it jumps narratives between first and third person and often feels like we are reading Daniel's most intimate journal or even his mind. This has to be in my top selection of books ever read for its delicate imagery, its refusal of the conventional, and its ability to transport the reader through this historical era through fiction.
bucket's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed the premise here - that Daniel is procrastinating on his dissertation and what we're reading is what he is writing instead. It's clear that he's reliving his and his sister's childhood because it's the only thing he can write while his sister is fading. He unconsciously switches from 3rd person to 1st in his writing and he holds places for vignettes and scenes he wants to add later. He also gets a little meta about the reader, especially when discussing things that make him look bad or weak, and this strikes me as pretty cutting edge in when Doctorow published the book in 1971.
Daniel is struggling to come to terms with not knowing the truth about what his parents did. He wants to believe they're innocent, and just victims of circumstance:
"In a world divided in two, the radical is free to choose one side or the other. That's the radical choice. The halves of the world are like the two hemispheres of Mengleburg. My mother and father fell through an open seam one day and then the hemispheres pressed shut."
He also is struggling with his need for complete control - over his wife, his sister, and his family's story. He needs to know the truth and be in control, even when it hurts those he loves. Along those lines, Daniel is not a nice person. He's pompous and abusive, especially toward his wife and infant son. But he is saved from being unsympathetic by the innocent child version of himself who lives through a nightmare.
Doctorow includes many asides in the novel, which are part of who Daniel is, and document his obsessions with the past through a tendency to wax philosophical. They feel like lectures.
A man in Daniel's youth talks a while about television: "Look there, what do you see? Little blue squares in every window. Right? Everyone digging the commercials. That is today's school, man. In less than a minute a TV commercial can carry you through a lifetime...commercials are learning units."
There is also a long lecture on the downfalls of Disneyland which isn't worth quoting. I did, however, enjoy a musing on technology:
"Technology is the making of metaphors from the natural world. Flight is the metaphor of air, wheels are the metaphor of water, food is the metaphor of earth. The metaphor of fire is electricity."
Finally, there's a long quotation about prison as a metaphor for death that I want to hold on to:
"Who wrote that Russian story, was it Babel or maybe Yuri Olesha, about a man dying in his bed. His death is described as a progressive deterioration of possibilities, a methodical constriction of options available to him. First he cannot leave the room, so that a railroad ticket, for instance, has no more meaning for his life. Then he cannot get out of bed. Then he cannot lift his head. Then he cannot see out the window. Then he cannot see his hand in front of him. Life moves inward, the sensations close in, the horizons diminish to point zero. And that is his death. A kind of prison cell concept of death, the man being locked in smaller and smaller cells, his own consciousness depleted of sensations being the last and smallest cell. It is a point of light. If this is true of death, then a real prison is death's metaphor and when you put a man in prison you are suggesting to him the degrees of death that are possible before life is actually gone. You are forcing him to begin his dying. All constraints on freedom enforce conditions of death. The punishment of prison inflicts the corruption of death on life"
Themes: 1950s, 1960s, American communism, family, innocence, Cold War, sex, family legacy, destruction of childhood, sibling love, the obscurity of truth
Daniel is struggling to come to terms with not knowing the truth about what his parents did. He wants to believe they're innocent, and just victims of circumstance:
"In a world divided in two, the radical is free to choose one side or the other. That's the radical choice. The halves of the world are like the two hemispheres of Mengleburg. My mother and father fell through an open seam one day and then the hemispheres pressed shut."
He also is struggling with his need for complete control - over his wife, his sister, and his family's story. He needs to know the truth and be in control, even when it hurts those he loves. Along those lines, Daniel is not a nice person. He's pompous and abusive, especially toward his wife and infant son. But he is saved from being unsympathetic by the innocent child version of himself who lives through a nightmare.
Doctorow includes many asides in the novel, which are part of who Daniel is, and document his obsessions with the past through a tendency to wax philosophical. They feel like lectures.
A man in Daniel's youth talks a while about television: "Look there, what do you see? Little blue squares in every window. Right? Everyone digging the commercials. That is today's school, man. In less than a minute a TV commercial can carry you through a lifetime...commercials are learning units."
There is also a long lecture on the downfalls of Disneyland which isn't worth quoting. I did, however, enjoy a musing on technology:
"Technology is the making of metaphors from the natural world. Flight is the metaphor of air, wheels are the metaphor of water, food is the metaphor of earth. The metaphor of fire is electricity."
Finally, there's a long quotation about prison as a metaphor for death that I want to hold on to:
"Who wrote that Russian story, was it Babel or maybe Yuri Olesha, about a man dying in his bed. His death is described as a progressive deterioration of possibilities, a methodical constriction of options available to him. First he cannot leave the room, so that a railroad ticket, for instance, has no more meaning for his life. Then he cannot get out of bed. Then he cannot lift his head. Then he cannot see out the window. Then he cannot see his hand in front of him. Life moves inward, the sensations close in, the horizons diminish to point zero. And that is his death. A kind of prison cell concept of death, the man being locked in smaller and smaller cells, his own consciousness depleted of sensations being the last and smallest cell. It is a point of light. If this is true of death, then a real prison is death's metaphor and when you put a man in prison you are suggesting to him the degrees of death that are possible before life is actually gone. You are forcing him to begin his dying. All constraints on freedom enforce conditions of death. The punishment of prison inflicts the corruption of death on life"
Themes: 1950s, 1960s, American communism, family, innocence, Cold War, sex, family legacy, destruction of childhood, sibling love, the obscurity of truth
kierajwilson's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
seance's review against another edition
4.0
i am... conflicted about this book.
the writing is stunning. i cannot bring myself to rate this lower than 4 stars. and the exploration of history, the weaving together of fragments of cold war america to create a sprawling, convoluted image – it's done spectacularly. but this book grapples on so many different fronts that it is remarkably easy to get lost in them. even now, i am struggling to create a single picture of it in my mind. it would have been easier to tell a single story, the story of the isaacsons (or the rosenbergs), but that is not what this book does: it uses the trial and execution as the central point in an exploration that envelops themes of identity, legacy, history, personal and political struggle and how they are interweaved. there is not one single ideology in this book; there is not one single verdict. were they guilty or innocent? that's not what matters.
this is not an easy book to read. i would also say this is not a particularly enjoyable book either. but i suppose enjoying it is not the point; the reader, more than receiving the text passively, has become another criminal of perception. why are you here? why are you reading this? and what effect does the fact that you are reading this have on what is being told? there is a multiplicity of perspectives in the narrative voice as well as in the story: it goes back and forth, past and present, first and third person, history and daniel's reconstruction of it. but here is the thing: i do not particularly enjoy reading books that feel like they are doing their best to confuse me. is this confusion a part of the story? who knows. perhaps i am not smart enough for this book. i certainly feel like i have missed a fair amount of what it is trying to say.
(also – i understand that we are to view daniel's character and actions as "damaged" by his family history. but i feel like i have to say that daniel's general asshole-ness and violently degrading attitude to his wife were kind of… uncomfortable to read. even though the way this book is written makes an unlikeable narrator much more bearable.)
so. what else? i would consider this a good book, albeit a confusing and not very enjoyable one. is this review all over the place? it seems kind of fitting.
the writing is stunning. i cannot bring myself to rate this lower than 4 stars. and the exploration of history, the weaving together of fragments of cold war america to create a sprawling, convoluted image – it's done spectacularly. but this book grapples on so many different fronts that it is remarkably easy to get lost in them. even now, i am struggling to create a single picture of it in my mind. it would have been easier to tell a single story, the story of the isaacsons (or the rosenbergs), but that is not what this book does: it uses the trial and execution as the central point in an exploration that envelops themes of identity, legacy, history, personal and political struggle and how they are interweaved. there is not one single ideology in this book; there is not one single verdict. were they guilty or innocent? that's not what matters.
this is not an easy book to read. i would also say this is not a particularly enjoyable book either. but i suppose enjoying it is not the point; the reader, more than receiving the text passively, has become another criminal of perception. why are you here? why are you reading this? and what effect does the fact that you are reading this have on what is being told? there is a multiplicity of perspectives in the narrative voice as well as in the story: it goes back and forth, past and present, first and third person, history and daniel's reconstruction of it. but here is the thing: i do not particularly enjoy reading books that feel like they are doing their best to confuse me. is this confusion a part of the story? who knows. perhaps i am not smart enough for this book. i certainly feel like i have missed a fair amount of what it is trying to say.
(also – i understand that we are to view daniel's character and actions as "damaged" by his family history. but i feel like i have to say that daniel's general asshole-ness and violently degrading attitude to his wife were kind of… uncomfortable to read. even though the way this book is written makes an unlikeable narrator much more bearable.)
so. what else? i would consider this a good book, albeit a confusing and not very enjoyable one. is this review all over the place? it seems kind of fitting.
donifaber's review against another edition
5.0
This book was so good, it made my teeth hurt! What bumped it up to a five for me was the scene/analysis of Disneyland. I particularly appreciated Doctorow's use of different levels of recall to increase the realism. At a pivotal moment, the protagonist zeroes in on the details of a peripheral character, while at another moment, he can't recall what number of school house he attended.
chaostalking's review against another edition
1.5
Sometimes, a book just doesn't click with you. Sometimes, you peruse Goodreads, trying to find a review that will help communicate these feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration that you felt throughout the reading experience that you personally cannot put into words. And sometimes, what you end up finding instead is a whole group of people who praise the book in question, and you end up feeling even less satisfied and more frustrated.
That has been my experience with The Book of Daniel, and as a result, I've been struggling to talk about this book for a long time. In fact, for a time, I completely gave up on it. Even now, I don't imagine that this review will be very helpful. I have found the language to describe this book's pitfalls, but I don't think this review is indicative of the experience everyone will have with the book. I think the best thing you can do for a book like this is open up its Amazon page and read the free preview. If you find yourself meshing with it, I say carry on. But if you're apprehensive, my perspective on The Book of Daniel will hopefully offer some food for thought on whether or not to keep going.
First and foremost, a lot of this book felt like reading a series of essays with characters ham-fisted into them. Doctorow writes pages and pages to provide historical context on, for instance, Disney as a corporation, even though the amusement park only features in one scene and really isn't that important to focus on. So many times, I thought I could trim about five to seven pages of the book and not miss out on a thing because it's all unnecessary historical context and needlessly long lamentations on the human condition masquerading as story. It just tired me out. Worst of all, I failed to see how most of these long chunks of word vomit were relevant to the central themes—or if this book even had any themes at all.
You see, in spite of how many essays were stuffed into this book, I couldn't figure out what it was that The Book of Daniel was actually trying to say. And that's not to say that every single book needs a central message, but throughout this reading experience, it very much felt like The Book of Daniel was trying to say something, but couldn't figure out its own message. The book's subject matter largely concerns two versions of the American Left: it follows a young man called Daniel, very much a 1960s hippie, as he tries to make sense of the lives of his biological parents, two communists fashioned after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, throughout the 40s and 50s up until their eventual execution for spying against the American government. That setup absolutely had to be deliberate, but Doctorow never really dives into that.
In a similar vein is Daniel's relationships with women, especially that with his wife Phyllis. I don't think Daniel is written to be a likeable guy, so when it's established (fairly early on, mind you, so I don't consider this a spoiler) that he is abusive towards Phyllis, it feels very natural. At the beginning of the novel, Daniel describes having sex with his wife before pausing and commenting directly to the reader that by showing us this scene, he paints himself in a deeply unsympathetic light. But Doctorow doesn't do much with this idea other than introducing it. Later on, there's another moment where Daniel contemplates having sex with his sister and it, too, goes nowhere. Sure, Daniel is a raging sexist who objectifies pretty much every single woman he comes across, including his own sister—but why? Why does that need to be there? Why does anything about the American Left need to be there? So much of this book feels like it stands without a purpose, and I found that to be deeply frustrating.
I also could not connect with Doctorow's decision to switch POVs. The Book of Daniel is told in a strange blend of first- and third-person narrative, and many have pointed to this quality as part of the great literary genius of E. L. Doctorow. But I just don't agree. The technique is used to show Daniel's futile attempts to distance himself from his past. As an academic, Daniel understands that his use of the third person will help establish him as a credible, objective lens through which to understand the events he lays out. But the first person always creeps back in, reminding the reader that Daniel is incapable of describing these deeply personal events in a purely objective manner. Unfortunately, while I can appreciate Doctorow's efforts here, I thought the whole attempt came off as rather gimmicky, with Doctorow arbitrarily switching POVs to the point where I felt the technique lacked any literary substance. In fact, given that Doctorow's writing is already quite clinical, this novel could have been told entirely in the first person and made even stronger for it. In one of the most heart-wrenching scenes of the book, Daniel describes his parents’ executions, and you can see this beautiful play of Daniel attempting to distance himself from their deaths through how he is writing being contrasted with the pure emotion inherent in what he’s writing—and it's a scene told entirely in the first person. Though a fascinating risk to take, the blend of first and third person didn’t work at all, more often than not making The Book of Daniel a battle to read.
That's not to say that The Book of Daniel is not completely devoid of value. Daniel's narration when reflecting on his younger self is executed quite well, and the aforementioned scene in which Daniel's parents are actually executed is a haunting accomplishment in writing. But more often than not, this book is an ambitious disaster. Ultimately, there are some interesting ideas here, but The Book of Daniel suffers because Doctorow either doesn't know how to or just doesn't approach these themes. I'm still interested in reading Doctorow's more famous work, Ragtime, but this first foray into his bibliography just wasn't for me.
That has been my experience with The Book of Daniel, and as a result, I've been struggling to talk about this book for a long time. In fact, for a time, I completely gave up on it. Even now, I don't imagine that this review will be very helpful. I have found the language to describe this book's pitfalls, but I don't think this review is indicative of the experience everyone will have with the book. I think the best thing you can do for a book like this is open up its Amazon page and read the free preview. If you find yourself meshing with it, I say carry on. But if you're apprehensive, my perspective on The Book of Daniel will hopefully offer some food for thought on whether or not to keep going.
First and foremost, a lot of this book felt like reading a series of essays with characters ham-fisted into them. Doctorow writes pages and pages to provide historical context on, for instance, Disney as a corporation, even though the amusement park only features in one scene and really isn't that important to focus on. So many times, I thought I could trim about five to seven pages of the book and not miss out on a thing because it's all unnecessary historical context and needlessly long lamentations on the human condition masquerading as story. It just tired me out. Worst of all, I failed to see how most of these long chunks of word vomit were relevant to the central themes—or if this book even had any themes at all.
You see, in spite of how many essays were stuffed into this book, I couldn't figure out what it was that The Book of Daniel was actually trying to say. And that's not to say that every single book needs a central message, but throughout this reading experience, it very much felt like The Book of Daniel was trying to say something, but couldn't figure out its own message. The book's subject matter largely concerns two versions of the American Left: it follows a young man called Daniel, very much a 1960s hippie, as he tries to make sense of the lives of his biological parents, two communists fashioned after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, throughout the 40s and 50s up until their eventual execution for spying against the American government. That setup absolutely had to be deliberate, but Doctorow never really dives into that.
In a similar vein is Daniel's relationships with women, especially that with his wife Phyllis. I don't think Daniel is written to be a likeable guy, so when it's established (fairly early on, mind you, so I don't consider this a spoiler) that he is abusive towards Phyllis, it feels very natural. At the beginning of the novel, Daniel describes having sex with his wife before pausing and commenting directly to the reader that by showing us this scene, he paints himself in a deeply unsympathetic light. But Doctorow doesn't do much with this idea other than introducing it. Later on, there's another moment where Daniel contemplates having sex with his sister and it, too, goes nowhere. Sure, Daniel is a raging sexist who objectifies pretty much every single woman he comes across, including his own sister—but why? Why does that need to be there? Why does anything about the American Left need to be there? So much of this book feels like it stands without a purpose, and I found that to be deeply frustrating.
I also could not connect with Doctorow's decision to switch POVs. The Book of Daniel is told in a strange blend of first- and third-person narrative, and many have pointed to this quality as part of the great literary genius of E. L. Doctorow. But I just don't agree. The technique is used to show Daniel's futile attempts to distance himself from his past. As an academic, Daniel understands that his use of the third person will help establish him as a credible, objective lens through which to understand the events he lays out. But the first person always creeps back in, reminding the reader that Daniel is incapable of describing these deeply personal events in a purely objective manner. Unfortunately, while I can appreciate Doctorow's efforts here, I thought the whole attempt came off as rather gimmicky, with Doctorow arbitrarily switching POVs to the point where I felt the technique lacked any literary substance. In fact, given that Doctorow's writing is already quite clinical, this novel could have been told entirely in the first person and made even stronger for it. In one of the most heart-wrenching scenes of the book, Daniel describes his parents’ executions, and you can see this beautiful play of Daniel attempting to distance himself from their deaths through how he is writing being contrasted with the pure emotion inherent in what he’s writing—and it's a scene told entirely in the first person. Though a fascinating risk to take, the blend of first and third person didn’t work at all, more often than not making The Book of Daniel a battle to read.
That's not to say that The Book of Daniel is not completely devoid of value. Daniel's narration when reflecting on his younger self is executed quite well, and the aforementioned scene in which Daniel's parents are actually executed is a haunting accomplishment in writing. But more often than not, this book is an ambitious disaster. Ultimately, there are some interesting ideas here, but The Book of Daniel suffers because Doctorow either doesn't know how to or just doesn't approach these themes. I'm still interested in reading Doctorow's more famous work, Ragtime, but this first foray into his bibliography just wasn't for me.
garleighc's review against another edition
2.0
What the hell did I just read. This was bewildering and bounced through so many narrative styles that sometimes I didn't know where I was at all. Which, you know, usually I don't like in books. However, the effect was tolerable due to these random sentences of clarity that seemed to have different shades of meaning behind their original aphoristic reading. In the end, this book was interesting and definitely a step outside my reading comfort zone... not my favorite, but I'm glad I read it.
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