E.L. Doctorow

“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.” So said E.L. Doctorow, whose dozen novels–including Ragtime, Billy Bathgate and The Book of Daniel–mined the pageant and personages of American history for material. Against these backdrops, the shape-shifter vanished into his characters. A distinguished editor as well as an author (he shepherded works by the likes of James Baldwin and Norman Mailer), Doctorow, who died July 21 at 84, took pride in his ability to write in many voices. Each story demanded its own style. But all reflect his voracious appetite for ideas, his sly, dry wit and his drive to understand the relationship between individual lives and the often terrifying momentum of world events. He was a winner of the National Book Critics Circle and PEN/Faulkner awards and a Pulitzer finalist.

–DAVID VON DREHLE