Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Random House Trade Paperbacks (2007), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 253 pages
Description
One rainy morning in 1871 young Martin Pemberton, walking down Broadway in lower Manhattan, sees in a passing horse-drawn omnibus several old men in black, one of whom he recognizes as his supposedly dead and buried father. So begins E.L. Doctorow's astounding new novel of post-Civil War New York, where maimed veterans beg in the streets, newsboys fight for their corners, the Tweed Ring operates the city for its own profit, and a conspicuously self-satisfied class of new wealth and weak intellect is all a glitter in a setting of mass misery. As Pemberton tries in vain to track the strange omnibus of old men, he leads us into a city we know and recognize and yet don't know, a ghost city that stands to contemporary New York like a panoramic negative print, reversed in its lights and shadows, its seasons turned round. The increasingly ominous tale is narrated by Pemberton's sometime employer, McIlvaine, the editor of the newspaper for which the young man writes occasional reviews. When Pemberton himself disappears, McIlvaine goes in pursuit of the truth of his freelance's bizarre fate. Layer by layer, he reveals to us a New York more deadly, more creative, more of a genius society than it is now. New technologies transport water to its reservoirs and gaslight to its streetlamps. Locomotives thunder down its streets. Telegraphy sings in its overhead wires, and its high-speed printing presses turn out tens of thousands of newspapers for a penny or two. It is a proudly, heedlessly modern city, and yet ... the scene of ancient, primordial urges and transgressions, a companion city of our dreams ... a moral hologram generated from this celebrated author's electrifying historical imagination. The Waterworks is a haunting tale of genius and madness in a metropolis that is itself a product of these qualities. Masterfully written and promising to be unforgettable, it is a triumphant addition to E.L. Doctorow's remarkable body of work.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member arouse77
this book suffered from me having previously read Caleb Carr's excellent novel "The Alienist". These two books hearken back to roughly the same time and place, and even share a plot structure of a newspapermen's recollection of a mystery long since solved, but Carr's story is so much more finely
the disappearance of a freelance writer occasions little notice apart from his editor who embarks on the trail to discover his fate. this leads him through a strange warren of crackpot medicine, social darwinsim, and the quest for eternal youth.
the mystery lacks a certain momentum and urgency. i felt myself skimming pages and still feeling totally capable of grasping exactly what was happening later on. no great surprises in store at the end, and the resolution seemed to linger longer than it needed to.
for all of that Doctorow seems to be a capable enough storyteller with a decent command of language.
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crafted, engaging, and dramatic that The Waterworks fares pretty poorly in comparison. the disappearance of a freelance writer occasions little notice apart from his editor who embarks on the trail to discover his fate. this leads him through a strange warren of crackpot medicine, social darwinsim, and the quest for eternal youth.
the mystery lacks a certain momentum and urgency. i felt myself skimming pages and still feeling totally capable of grasping exactly what was happening later on. no great surprises in store at the end, and the resolution seemed to linger longer than it needed to.
for all of that Doctorow seems to be a capable enough storyteller with a decent command of language.
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LibraryThing member richardderus
Book Circle Reads 21
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Book Description: “An elegant page-turner of nineteenth-century detective fiction.”
–The Washington Post Book World
One rainy morning in 1871 in lower Manhattan, Martin Pemberton, a freelance writer, sees in a passing stagecoach several elderly men,
My Review: Mel-O-Drama!! The novel is set in 1871, and like any good sudser pits one lone man against a system of evildoers and manipulators. Adding to the pleasures are steampunky elements like technology out of its time, a villainous doctor aiming to create immortal men, and double-super-secret hidden bases that are in plain sight.
When I read this for my book circle, I was taken with the plot and somewhat flat on the wiritng. Doctorow makes wonderful sentences at his best, specifically thinking of Ragtime here, but this book fell short of the mark for me then. A quick flip-through to blow fifteen years of cobwebs off my memories didn’t so much refute my earlier contention as show me how very spoiled I was by the olden-days craft of editing. If I read a novel this well-made today, I’d yodel from the housetops and dance mazurkas of rapture down the middle of the parkway.
People who have read my reviews for a while might recall how UP I was over The Night Circus, and how much I loved it. So in that context, I say this: Had The Night Circus been edited as well as this far, far less extraordinary book (published in 1994) was, I think I would simply have melted into the fabric of the cosmos from sheer bliss.
Skills are being lost. It is NOT a good thing. I grow sadder with every mediocre book I read that someone somewhere with the talent and ability to edit even the ~meh~ into BETTER ~meh~ isn’t getting the chance, the training, the mentoring, to do so.
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Book Description: “An elegant page-turner of nineteenth-century detective fiction.”
–The Washington Post Book World
One rainy morning in 1871 in lower Manhattan, Martin Pemberton, a freelance writer, sees in a passing stagecoach several elderly men,
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one of whom he recognizes as his supposedly dead and buried father. While trying to unravel the mystery, Pemberton disappears, sending McIlvaine, his employer, the editor of an evening paper, in pursuit of the truth behind his freelancer’s fate. Layer by layer, McIlvaine reveals a modern metropolis surging with primordial urges and sins, where the Tweed Ring operates the city for its own profit and a conspicuously self-satisfied nouveau-riche ignores the poverty and squalor that surrounds them. In E. L. Doctorow’s skilled hands, The Waterworks becomes, in the words of The New York Times, “a dark moral tale . . . an eloquently troubling evocation of our past.”My Review: Mel-O-Drama!! The novel is set in 1871, and like any good sudser pits one lone man against a system of evildoers and manipulators. Adding to the pleasures are steampunky elements like technology out of its time, a villainous doctor aiming to create immortal men, and double-super-secret hidden bases that are in plain sight.
When I read this for my book circle, I was taken with the plot and somewhat flat on the wiritng. Doctorow makes wonderful sentences at his best, specifically thinking of Ragtime here, but this book fell short of the mark for me then. A quick flip-through to blow fifteen years of cobwebs off my memories didn’t so much refute my earlier contention as show me how very spoiled I was by the olden-days craft of editing. If I read a novel this well-made today, I’d yodel from the housetops and dance mazurkas of rapture down the middle of the parkway.
People who have read my reviews for a while might recall how UP I was over The Night Circus, and how much I loved it. So in that context, I say this: Had The Night Circus been edited as well as this far, far less extraordinary book (published in 1994) was, I think I would simply have melted into the fabric of the cosmos from sheer bliss.
Skills are being lost. It is NOT a good thing. I grow sadder with every mediocre book I read that someone somewhere with the talent and ability to edit even the ~meh~ into BETTER ~meh~ isn’t getting the chance, the training, the mentoring, to do so.
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LibraryThing member bontley
Slight, perhaps a tad over-written...
LibraryThing member rmckeown
I have always admired E.L. Doctorow since I first read Ragtime back in 1976. I met him that year at the 92nd Street YMCA in New York City. Over the years he has published 15 novels and some collections of essays. I lost track of him for a few years, but I resumed my interest with his 2009 work,
Martin Pemberton is a free lance writer for a New York daily newspaper in the decade following the end of the War between the States. His editor, Mr. McIlvaine, considers him his best writer, and so he accommodates Martin’s sometimes peculiar work habits. Martin is estranged from his father after writing an essay which attempts to depict the dark side of his father’s wealth. The essay hit home, and revealed greed corruption, and a financial interest in the slave trade.
One day, Martin appears at the office of the editor to turn in his latest article for the paper. Martin is disheveled, bloodied, and raving about seeing his father, Augustus, who had died several years prior. At his death, the widow, Sarah, and her young son, Noah, found themselves destitute and living on the charity of Sarah’s sister.
As a prominent man, numerous citizens had attended his funeral, so Martin’s ravings were considered just that. However, McIlvaine thought he saw something of the truth in Martin’s behavior, and when he left the office and disappeared for a few days, he became concerned.
Thus begins McIlvaine’s investigation into the life and circumstances of Augustus Pemberton and his connection to Boss Tweed and the corruption rampant in New York at the time.
The novel begins with somewhat turgid prose typical of the 19th century, but as the editor uncovers more and more details of the family, the narrative picks up a head of frenzy to solve the mystery of Martin’s disappearance. In this passage, Doctorow describes New York in 1870. He writes, “You may think you are living in modern times, here and now, but that is the necessary illusion of every age. We did not conduct ourselves as if we were preparatory to your time. There was nothing quaint or colorful about us. I assure you, New York after the war was more creative, more deadly, more of a genius society than it is now. Our rotary presses put fifteen, twenty thousand newspapers on the street for a penny or two. Enormous steam engines powered the mills and factories, Gas lamps lit the streets at night. We were three quarters of a century into the Industrial Revolution” (11-12).
The novel reminded me of a BBC import about New York during the same time period. Copper tells the story of the corruption, poverty, and near chaos of the time. Many of Doctorow’s events were paralleled in the series which recently completed its second season. I am anxiously awaiting the third.
If you are not familiar with E.L. Doctorow, The Waterworks is as good a place to start your journey as any of his novels. I haven’t read them all, but I have never read on I did not thoroughly enjoy. 5 stars
--Jim, 1/20/14
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Homer and Langley, a fictionalized account of two reclusive brothers living in New York. Now I am trying to catch up with a few of his novels I have missed over the years. The Waterworks, published in 1994, is another installment in the history and politics of The Big Apple.Martin Pemberton is a free lance writer for a New York daily newspaper in the decade following the end of the War between the States. His editor, Mr. McIlvaine, considers him his best writer, and so he accommodates Martin’s sometimes peculiar work habits. Martin is estranged from his father after writing an essay which attempts to depict the dark side of his father’s wealth. The essay hit home, and revealed greed corruption, and a financial interest in the slave trade.
One day, Martin appears at the office of the editor to turn in his latest article for the paper. Martin is disheveled, bloodied, and raving about seeing his father, Augustus, who had died several years prior. At his death, the widow, Sarah, and her young son, Noah, found themselves destitute and living on the charity of Sarah’s sister.
As a prominent man, numerous citizens had attended his funeral, so Martin’s ravings were considered just that. However, McIlvaine thought he saw something of the truth in Martin’s behavior, and when he left the office and disappeared for a few days, he became concerned.
Thus begins McIlvaine’s investigation into the life and circumstances of Augustus Pemberton and his connection to Boss Tweed and the corruption rampant in New York at the time.
The novel begins with somewhat turgid prose typical of the 19th century, but as the editor uncovers more and more details of the family, the narrative picks up a head of frenzy to solve the mystery of Martin’s disappearance. In this passage, Doctorow describes New York in 1870. He writes, “You may think you are living in modern times, here and now, but that is the necessary illusion of every age. We did not conduct ourselves as if we were preparatory to your time. There was nothing quaint or colorful about us. I assure you, New York after the war was more creative, more deadly, more of a genius society than it is now. Our rotary presses put fifteen, twenty thousand newspapers on the street for a penny or two. Enormous steam engines powered the mills and factories, Gas lamps lit the streets at night. We were three quarters of a century into the Industrial Revolution” (11-12).
The novel reminded me of a BBC import about New York during the same time period. Copper tells the story of the corruption, poverty, and near chaos of the time. Many of Doctorow’s events were paralleled in the series which recently completed its second season. I am anxiously awaiting the third.
If you are not familiar with E.L. Doctorow, The Waterworks is as good a place to start your journey as any of his novels. I haven’t read them all, but I have never read on I did not thoroughly enjoy. 5 stars
--Jim, 1/20/14
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LibraryThing member dickmanikowski
There's something magical about Doctorow's writing. The man truly seems to have been transplanted from Victorian New York City into the present just to spin his tales. This one is typically captivating, a really dark story of the power of wealth to forestall death . . . but with a terrible pricetag.
LibraryThing member snash
An enjoyable book, a little mystery, a little philosophy, and a huge dose of atmosphere. 1870's NYC is a prominent character of the book.
LibraryThing member john.cooper
A short book, for Doctorow, that tries to resurrect 1872 New York City by presenting and solving a conventional, if slightly supernatural, mystery. It should have been compelling, but its relentlessly downbeat tone and affected style made it difficult to finish quickly or enjoy slowly.
LibraryThing member JosephKing6602
Pretty good story line; very good writing
LibraryThing member hardlyhardy
The best historical novels read as if they were written in the time they are being written about. It can’t be easy to create that illusion, while at the same time producing a story contemporary readers can appreciate, understand and identify with. E.L. Doctorow does all this nicely in his 1994
Doctorow’s narrator is McIlvaine, a now aged newspaperman remembering his best story, one he couldn’t dare tell in his newspaper back in the 1870s when it all occurred. Now, after so many years, it doesn’t matter whether anyone believes it or not.
Martin Pemberton, a freelance or what we would today call a freelancer, mentions one day that he has seen his father. No big deal, except for the fact that his father, Augustus Pemberton (a wealthy, disreputable businessman) is dead and buried. McIlvaine assumes his reporter is just mistaken, until Martin disappears and the newsman learns that when the old man’s grave is opened the body of a boy is found inside. To help find Martin, McIlvaine enlists the services of one of the few honest cops in New York City during the Boss Tweed era, Capt. Edmund Donne. When they find Martin he is being held captive in, of all places, an orphanage.
The shocking story Martin later tells involves a mad doctor of the Doctor Moreau school of medicine who convinces dying old men of great wealth to, in exchange for passing that wealth on to him, gain, if not immortality, at least extra years of blissful existence as guinea pigs in a great scientific experiment. How the doctor makes use of the orphans is another part of the horror.
Other writers might have taken Doctorow’s plot, doubled the length of the novel (Doctorow’s goes barely 250 pages), added more deaths and sex and shocks, and gotten a bestseller in the horror genre. Doctorow earned his bestseller with an understated literary novel in which most of the horror comes secondhand. For someone like me who doesn’t go for horror anyway, secondhand is more than good enough.
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novel “The Waterworks.”Doctorow’s narrator is McIlvaine, a now aged newspaperman remembering his best story, one he couldn’t dare tell in his newspaper back in the 1870s when it all occurred. Now, after so many years, it doesn’t matter whether anyone believes it or not.
Martin Pemberton, a freelance or what we would today call a freelancer, mentions one day that he has seen his father. No big deal, except for the fact that his father, Augustus Pemberton (a wealthy, disreputable businessman) is dead and buried. McIlvaine assumes his reporter is just mistaken, until Martin disappears and the newsman learns that when the old man’s grave is opened the body of a boy is found inside. To help find Martin, McIlvaine enlists the services of one of the few honest cops in New York City during the Boss Tweed era, Capt. Edmund Donne. When they find Martin he is being held captive in, of all places, an orphanage.
The shocking story Martin later tells involves a mad doctor of the Doctor Moreau school of medicine who convinces dying old men of great wealth to, in exchange for passing that wealth on to him, gain, if not immortality, at least extra years of blissful existence as guinea pigs in a great scientific experiment. How the doctor makes use of the orphans is another part of the horror.
Other writers might have taken Doctorow’s plot, doubled the length of the novel (Doctorow’s goes barely 250 pages), added more deaths and sex and shocks, and gotten a bestseller in the horror genre. Doctorow earned his bestseller with an understated literary novel in which most of the horror comes secondhand. For someone like me who doesn’t go for horror anyway, secondhand is more than good enough.
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LibraryThing member ffortsa
Great evocation of NY during the Tweed era, coupled with an odd fantasy of scientific callousness, longing for eternal life, cruelty, and an old man's reminiscences.
LibraryThing member katiekrug
I've very much enjoyed the two other novels of historical fiction by Doctorow that I've read ([The March] and [Ragtime]), but this one was a disappointment. It was very slow to start, and the affected writing style, including.... way too many... ellipses was ... distracting. The plot is
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interesting, and the portrait of New York City in the post-Civil War period was vivid, but I mostly felt bored every time I picked it up. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 1996)
Original publication date
1994
1995 (Dutch edition, Baarn, Anthos, with title: De Watervang)
Physical description
253 p.; 5.17 inches
ISBN
0812978196 / 9780812978193