• Creationists

  • Selected Essays 1993-2006
  • By: E. L. Doctorow
  • Narrated by: E.L. Doctorow
  • Length: 4 hrs and 32 mins
  • 3.8 out of 5 stars (20 ratings)

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Creationists  By  cover art

Creationists

By: E. L. Doctorow
Narrated by: E.L. Doctorow
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $13.50

Buy for $13.50

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

E. L. Doctorow is acclaimed internationally for such novels as Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and The March. Now here are Doctorow's rich, revelatory essays on the nature of imaginative thought. In Creationists, Doctorow considers creativity in its many forms: from the literary (Melville and Mark Twain) to the comic (Harpo Marx) to the cosmic (Genesis and Einstein). As he wrestles with the subjects that have teased and fired his own imagination, Doctorow affirms the idea that "we know by what we create".

Just what is Melville doing in Moby Dick? And how did The Adventures of Tom Sawyer impel Mark Twain to radically rewrite what we know as Huckleberry Finn? Can we ever trust what novelists say about their own work? How could Franz Kafka have written a book called Amerika without ever leaving Europe? In posing such questions, Doctorow grapples with literary creation not as a critic or as a scholar, but as one working writer frankly contemplating the work of another. It's a perspective that affords him both protean grace and profound insight.

Among the essays collected here are Doctorow's musings on the very different Spanish Civil War novels of Ernest Hemingway and André Malraux; a candid assessment of Edgar Allan Poe as our "greatest bad writer"; and a bracing analysis of the story of Genesis in which God figures as the most complex and riveting character.

Rich in aphorism and anecdote, steeped in history and psychology, informed by a lifetime of reading and writing, Creationists opens a magnificent window into one of the great creative minds of our time.

©2006 E.L. Doctorow (P)2006 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Doctorow's abiding humanism rekindles and sharpens our perception of creativity." (Booklist)
"Brilliantly written, Doctorow's cultural and literary analysis abounds in acute literary characterizations and mordant observations." (Publishers Weekly)

What listeners say about Creationists

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    9
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    5
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    3
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    3
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.