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139th out of 329 books
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351 voters
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City of God
With brilliant and audacious strokes, the author of Ragtime and Billy Bathgate creates a breathtaking collage of memories, events, visions, and provocative thought, all centered on the idea of a modern reality of God. At the heart of this stylistically daring and dazzling inventive tour-de-force is a riveting detective story about a cross that vanishes from a Lower-East-Si...more
Paperback, 272 pages
Published
February 1st 2001
by Penguin Books
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i keep reading this quotation over and over:
"...there are billions of galaxies with stars beyond number, so that even if a fraction of stars have orbiting planets with moons in orbit around them...a few planets, at least, may have the water necessary for the intelligent life that could be suffering the same metaphysical crisis that deranges us. So we have that to feel good about."
what draws me to it? it's a concise, perfect, indirect summary of the human psyche. wha...more
"...there are billions of galaxies with stars beyond number, so that even if a fraction of stars have orbiting planets with moons in orbit around them...a few planets, at least, may have the water necessary for the intelligent life that could be suffering the same metaphysical crisis that deranges us. So we have that to feel good about."
what draws me to it? it's a concise, perfect, indirect summary of the human psyche. wha...more
I was torn as to how many “stars” to give this one. It is a five-star on literary merit, but only a two-star on the “did I like it?” scale. Since this is my review, I went with the two-stars.
Foremost, this is a thought provoking and interesting book. What I found unsettling about this book is that, in my opinion, the author is proselytizing his own sociopolitical agenda. As E.L. Doctorow has strong leftist political opinions, my reading of this book is obviously going to be affect...more
Foremost, this is a thought provoking and interesting book. What I found unsettling about this book is that, in my opinion, the author is proselytizing his own sociopolitical agenda. As E.L. Doctorow has strong leftist political opinions, my reading of this book is obviously going to be affect...more
I read City of God by E.L. Doctorow over Easter. It is one of the books on the 1001 list. So, how did I find it? Intriguing, thought-provoking, frustrating, confusing ... but I really enjoyed it. A word of warning - the plot is pretty much secondary to this book. In fact large portions of the book are tied fairly tenuously to the main plot and there are various threads. Part of the difficulty is that there are several different narrators but it is not necessarily straight forward to work out who...more
The obscure story-telling style of this book actually come off perfect for the story matter. In this book the author is looking for God. And it is a great discussion! Partially through some narrative threads, partially through thoughts and observations taken from science, not-so-pop culture. The book is broken up into little vignettes, from a half-page to (a long one) around 8 pages. The narrators change constantly, and are only sometimes clearly identifiable. Frankly, if I knew all this, ...more
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I was completely blown away by the first 50 or so pages of this book. Doctorow's prose is beautiful and his description of living in New York City was strikingly accurate. As the book unfolded, however, I couldn't quite tell what he was trying to do. There were many different narrators, some of whom were never identified. Although the many different stories Doctorow incorporates into "City of God" are interesting in themselves, the book did not seem like a cohesive whole. That said, th...more
Lmiddle6
added it
I'm not gonna lie, when I originally started this book, I got totally confused! So I put it down, and started something else... In a clearer state of mind, I decided to try it again. City of God turned out to be a fairly interesting story, looking at the state and importance of religion, through the eyes of an invented author, the book being his own personal notebook. I initially was a little confused when I started it, as it jumps back and forth between the authors life, and his characters life...more
Sherrie
added it
"City of God" by E. L. Doctorow
(from inside flap)
In his workbook, a New York city novelist records the contents of his teeming brain--sketches for stories, accounts of his love affairs, riffs on the meanings of popular songs, ideas for movies, obsessions with cosmic processes. He is a virtual repository of the predominant ideas and historical disasters of the age. But now he has found a story he thinks may become his next novel: The large brass cross that hung behind the alta...more
(from inside flap)
In his workbook, a New York city novelist records the contents of his teeming brain--sketches for stories, accounts of his love affairs, riffs on the meanings of popular songs, ideas for movies, obsessions with cosmic processes. He is a virtual repository of the predominant ideas and historical disasters of the age. But now he has found a story he thinks may become his next novel: The large brass cross that hung behind the alta...more
The Doctorow book I almost didn’t read or should I say the one I almost couldn’t read. Is this a novel about writing a novel? Well, maybe I thought…but that was wrong…or I thought it was wrong. This began as the most disjointed, incoherent collection of thoughts and ideas I could imagine but I pressed on and I’m really glad I stuck it out. It was well worth it. The thoughts, ideas, sketches, poems, song lyrics and mythical histories are revealed as the notes of a novelist attempting to brin...more
You know how “Seinfeld” was a show about nothing? City of God is a book about everything. (I am now the first person to have put Seinfeld & E.L. Doctorow together in the first two sentences of anything!) And having started off with my own big bang there, next I shall steal from someone on Amazon who wrote about this book that it will provide you with “retrospective gratification”. I couldn’t possibly think of a way to put it better. City of God is not always fun while you’re reading it, but it’s...more
I'm a grumpy looking, successful author who has ideas for 2 or 3 stories but not enough character development, what do I do?
I know, mash 'em up, and don't even try to meld the separate storylines...in fact, don't use commas or quote marks when characters speak. Throw in some Einsteinian Physics, heck throw Einstein in as well. So what do we have? An Episcopalian Priest about to be defrocked, A "new school" female rabbi, a philandering bachelor, and a Physicist. We also have...more
I know, mash 'em up, and don't even try to meld the separate storylines...in fact, don't use commas or quote marks when characters speak. Throw in some Einsteinian Physics, heck throw Einstein in as well. So what do we have? An Episcopalian Priest about to be defrocked, A "new school" female rabbi, a philandering bachelor, and a Physicist. We also have...more
This book is a puzzle. A puzzle, where you didn't get the box with the picture on it but just had to figure it out for yourself.
For quite a few pages I sat wondering what was going on, how are these fragments related - and is this book a work of genious or a work by a man, who couldn't write a decent novel?
But then it slowly grew on me. The story of the boy in the jewish ghetto during WWII really drew me in and slowly, more and more stories started to make sense and the missing pictu...more
For quite a few pages I sat wondering what was going on, how are these fragments related - and is this book a work of genious or a work by a man, who couldn't write a decent novel?
But then it slowly grew on me. The story of the boy in the jewish ghetto during WWII really drew me in and slowly, more and more stories started to make sense and the missing pictu...more
An even-handed philosophical and religious treatise on the role of God upon our cosmogony? A gripping Holocaust account? A free verse poetry collection? An Audubon bird-watcher guide? All or none-of-the above?
"City of God" is a novel espousing some interesting (sometimes compelling) ideas, but its narrative structure, its lack of a cohesive plot, its eschewing of normal storytelling convention (Mr. Doctorow: can you PUHLEEZE explain why 9/10ths of your book fails to uti...more
"City of God" is a novel espousing some interesting (sometimes compelling) ideas, but its narrative structure, its lack of a cohesive plot, its eschewing of normal storytelling convention (Mr. Doctorow: can you PUHLEEZE explain why 9/10ths of your book fails to uti...more
A stand up fun read if you're a spiritual person not religious (and in the context of this book I'd probably lump atheist with religious). I'm not usually a big fan of things being "interestingly written"--wonky margins, aimless perspectives, radioplays, whatnot--but this book kept all its zany-ness in focus and created a kind of lexicon or inner-dialogue with its various speaking parts. And even though I could have guessed the ending, I still really liked where it went and how Doctr...more
Hmm...a musing on the state of society, our modern cities, through the eyes of a priest who loses one faith to convert to another for the love of a woman. This is another of the books to drop off the list, and I can easily see why. I'm sure if you know things about narrative structure and rhythms and all that kind of stuff then this novel is interesting, it skips rapidly between ideas, philosophical musings and recent history, falling out of standard narrative paragraphs into what I might tentat...more
Hmm. What should I say about this book?
The beginning was too disjointed for me, and even though I enjoyed some of the perspectives, I'm too much a fan of being able to pick out a continuous storyline to say that I was really thrilled with the way things started out. Actually, to be entirely accurate, I hadn't the slightest clue what was going on. (I really recommend reading the summary before you start reading the book.)
My favorite part was the storyline of Sarah's fath...more
The beginning was too disjointed for me, and even though I enjoyed some of the perspectives, I'm too much a fan of being able to pick out a continuous storyline to say that I was really thrilled with the way things started out. Actually, to be entirely accurate, I hadn't the slightest clue what was going on. (I really recommend reading the summary before you start reading the book.)
My favorite part was the storyline of Sarah's fath...more
I will say this: stay far away from this book if you can't tolerate ambiguity. There are multiple story lines and narrators that weave in and out with no warning at all. There are no chapters. I spent the first 20 pages thinking I forgot how to read! But once you find your groove, it gets pretty easy.
I did not finish this book, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it, because I did for the most part. Doctorow's musings on faith and religion were really interesting and gave me a lot to...more
I did not finish this book, but that doesn't mean I didn't like it, because I did for the most part. Doctorow's musings on faith and religion were really interesting and gave me a lot to...more
This is the first book I downloaded and read on my Kindle and as I read through the first third of the book, I started worrying that maybe the electronic book reader was not for me. I had trouble following the narrative -- who was speaking? what was the context? why did it feel like the author was jumping among too many thoughts without helping the reader to follow along? In short, I wanted to be holding a book so that I could flip back and forth to try to figure out the structure and meaning o...more
initially somewhat confusing as the book shifts from narrator to narrator, it all works marvelously when you give up trying to figure out identities of who's speaking and just bathe in the stream-of-consciousness. once you just let it wash over you, all of a sudden, the shifts are perfectly reasonable, and each narrator has their own "voice" anyway. it should scare the hell out of me that doctorow has won a faulkner award being as how i absolutely despised the faulkner i was bashed o...more
A beautifully written, intriguing, but ultimately frustrating book.
I spent the first hundred or so pages thinking that this was the first novel from the 2000s section of the 1001 Book Challenge that actually deserved to be there. I do still feel that City of God deserves its spot on the list but am disappointed that the book had no 'resolution' and therefore, in my mind, no point.
City of God is a story told in small sections rather than chapters; they are all seemingly narrated by d...more
I spent the first hundred or so pages thinking that this was the first novel from the 2000s section of the 1001 Book Challenge that actually deserved to be there. I do still feel that City of God deserves its spot on the list but am disappointed that the book had no 'resolution' and therefore, in my mind, no point.
City of God is a story told in small sections rather than chapters; they are all seemingly narrated by d...more
I love reading brave, bizarre books like this: I don't pretend to have understood it all, but I really, really liked it. To see my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2010/1...
I had high expectations for this "literary masterpeice". Wow was i ever disappointed! This is a story about several different stories.Much of the time I could not identify the narrator.And random chapters would evolve into poetry.I discovered nothing original in his discussions of God.The writing style was original yes but also confusing and just plain boring.The story in the middle, of the Latvian boy in the jewish ghetto was great.I wish Doctorow had focused on a fast-paced easy to r...more
Dissatisying and frustrating, this book seems worth it for the intriguing, if not entirely original, ruminations on modern and historic faith. My favorite passage: "but if you're a religious guy like me and you're not.a fundamentalist, you've got problems. Do you turn your faith into some kind of edifying poetry? Then you're a religious schizoid, your right brain believes, and your left can only relish the sentiment of believing." the book does lapse a little incoherent around the time Louis Sl...more
Am enjoying..here's a quote that caught my attention:
'There is one fish, the hatchet,which skulks about in the deep darkness with protuberant eyes on the top of its horned head and the ability to electrically light its anus. . . The electric anus. . . is not an innate feature. It comes form a colony of luminescent bacteria that house themselves symbiotically int he fish's asshole.. . But if you believe God's divine judgment and you countenance reincarnation, then it may be reasonably...more
'There is one fish, the hatchet,which skulks about in the deep darkness with protuberant eyes on the top of its horned head and the ability to electrically light its anus. . . The electric anus. . . is not an innate feature. It comes form a colony of luminescent bacteria that house themselves symbiotically int he fish's asshole.. . But if you believe God's divine judgment and you countenance reincarnation, then it may be reasonably...more
A less entertaining, more realistic Da Vinci code. Kind of interesting, had its moments, but it's more sanctimonious and tedious than anything. I basically agree with the books take on religion, too, but I don't see why it had to be presented in such an irritating and self-important way. Any inkling of legitimate character development or inter-character dynamic was some quashed by the author's need to shoehorn it into some grand, overarching, and obvious metaphor. It did get me to re-read so...more
Kristine Morris
added it
Unlike anything I've ever read. A masters in theology may have helped, but then again maybe not. At first confusing, but eventually you sort out the voices. So many layers that if you don't read closely you miss them. Father Pemberton is an enigmatic and charismic character - I love his prayer at the end that describes exactly today's secular society's viewpoint on why we question the existence God and our faith when there is so much evil on earth. Phew.... enjoyed this book, but it was wor...more
This was ... REALLY GOOD. It has many different threads (some I didn't even fully pick up on until I read the book's description on GR), but it seemed to me that the main one was the story of Thomas Pemberton, a priest in New York City. From there, the story branches out into the stories of Joshua and Sarah (Blumenthal) Gruen, rabbis of Evolutionary Judaism in New York City; Everett, the author who writes mystery stories based on Pemberton; the workings of Everett's mind, including possible movi...more
I almost gave up in the first 10 pages of this book. I'm glad I kept reading.
Doctorow makes some brilliant assertions, as well as some incoherent dribble.
I did really like how what seems to be complete randomness comes together to make sense and tell a story at the end.
This book has caused me to think more than any book I've read in quite a long time.
I especially liked the parts that were narrated by the philosopher/scientist, the stories of the Jewish boy in the ghetto, t...more
Doctorow makes some brilliant assertions, as well as some incoherent dribble.
I did really like how what seems to be complete randomness comes together to make sense and tell a story at the end.
This book has caused me to think more than any book I've read in quite a long time.
I especially liked the parts that were narrated by the philosopher/scientist, the stories of the Jewish boy in the ghetto, t...more
I am a tepid fan of Doctorow, having only read a couple of his works. They just seemed to linear and conventional, although the writing a and stories were excellent. This book seemed like a quantum leap from the others I've read. The broken narrative, shifting points of view, weaving story-lines, and bursts of over-the-top language while speaking through characters that seemed possessed were great. I raced through more tense passages such as the ghetto narratives, and savoring the scenes wit...more
I was disappointed with this book. One of the reviews on the cover of the paperback edition claims that "City of God restores one's faith in literature." Well, I wish it had done that for me; if anything - it re-affirmed my preference for non-fiction. Doctorow is an occassionally great writer ('Ragtime') who does produce some fascinating little scenes in this book, but the novel never comes together for me. It is a hodge-podge of little unrelated fragments that don't seem to add up...more
This is a beautifully written book with so many fascinating perspectives on faith, religion, meaning, our place in the universe, the existence of god, suffering, humanity, relationships -- basically everything in the human experience. It's also a bit of a mystery and love story. It's not an "easy" book to ready, as it's told from different perspectives and can be confusing until you get into the rhythm of it. Now that I've finished it, I want to start over from the beginning, since I t...more
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Famous American Jewish writer, Edgar Laurence Doctorow is the author of several critically acclaimed novels that blend history and social criticism. Although he had written books for years, it was not until the publication of The Book of Daniel in 1971 that he obtained acclaim. His next book, Ragtime, was a commercial and critical success. As of 2006, he held the Glucksman Chair in American Letter...more
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“And so the ordinary unendurable torments we all experienced were indeed exceptional in the way they were absorbed in each heart.”
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