histoire et fiction / history and fiction || narrating history: e.l. doctorow's "the book...

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Narrating History: E.L. Doctorow's "The Book of Daniel"Author(s): Winifred Farrant BEVILACQUASource: Revue française d'études américaines, No. 31, HISTOIRE ET FICTION / HISTORY ANDFICTION (Février87), pp. 53-64Published by: Editions BelinStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20871645 .

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Narrating History : E.L. Doctorow's

The Book of Daniel by

Winifred Farrant BEVILACQUA *

In ?The Beliefs of Writers,* a lecture delivered in 1985, E.L. Doctorow again voiced his conviction that ?the large examination of society within a story, the imposition in a novel of public matters on private life, the lighting of history within the individual ? are, even

today, valid literary aims and can be compatible with maintaining aesthetic rigor and vigor (615-616). Formulating and adhering to the kind of ? poetics of engagement? that would guide the writing of such fiction has been a constant in Doctorow's own career as a nove list (Trenner 48), and his books have characteristically been both

artistically innovative and historically conscious. In terms of his efforts to reinvent the historical novel per se, his most complex and

accomplished experiment has been The Book of Daniel One of the main threads holding this rich novel together is its exploration of the nature of historical narrative, as expressed in its problematic treatment of the making of a fiction about history, history as a field of inquiry, and the role of the historical writer. These themes in fact

unite the three dimensions of Doctorow's story : the past of the Isaac son familiy, the meanings given to the Isaacson case thirteen years after the execution, and Daniel's efforts to write a book about his

parents.

* Universita Degli Studi di Torino.

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54 WINIFRED FARRANT BEVILACQUA

Reconstruction and re-creation of the family past of the Isaacsons as Daniel remembers it occupies about half of the novel, with most of it being concentrated in the first two parts, entitled ? Memorial

Day ? and ? Halloween.? To present the past, Doctorow employs so me important conventions of the classical historical novel as descri bed by Georg Lukacs in his influential study of the genre. In parti cular, his novel respects tradition in that: it concerns a time of

change that rocks the foundations of a society; it has a local setting that is convincingly drawn and duly related to the larger historical

context; its characters give expression to their age in terms of their

personality and are placed at the meeting point of the great social and historical collisions of which the novel speaks; it uses the expe riences and destinies of the protagonists to provide a true, rather than ? official ?, version of the history of the individual and society.

Through Daniel's memory and imagination, Doctorow provides a

plausible reconstruction of the milieu of a lower middle-class com

munity in New York during the years from 1937 to 1954, giving spe cial emphasis to the crucial Popular Front era of the late 1930s and the Cold War period of the late 1940s and early 1950s. He also stres ses how over his characters' lives hovers the shadow of events on the international scene and how their daily existence is touched by events relating to the vicissitudes of the radical movement in the

United States. This historical context helps shape the characters' mental and political formation, just as it gives rise to their conflicts and dilemmas. Paul and Rochelle, as Daniel remembers them, are ?

in a broad sense ? characters whom the reader can identify with a

general type associated with a given historical time. Specifically, they are American Communists formed in the later years of the

Depression decade and faithful to the Party in an orthodox manner after World War II. Their most salient qualities therefore are a

popular Front mentality, with its emphasis on defense of Democratic values and the struggle against fascism, and a belief in Stalinism, which defines loyalty to Communism as loyalty to Russia and to the Stalinist model. This blend of romantic Popular Front ideas and less romantic Stalinism is the matrix from which they emerge and by which their destiny is determined.

Doctorow works into Daniel's depiction of the Isaacsons main

images and stereotypes of American Communism like the association of radicalism with purity and the idea of commitment to the left as a religious surrogate, as well as such main criticisms moved

against the Old Left as how its self-deception about Stalin narrowed and impoverished radicalism in the United States. Moreover, al

though the novel as a whole makes the reader keenly aware that

N? 31 - JANVIER 1987



E.L. DOCTOROW'S THE BOOK OF DANIEL 55

there have been recurring periods of hysterical repression of radica lism in America, through its portrait of the Isaacsons, it also conveys the idea that destruction of these radical movements has come from within as well as from without. As Paul Levine notes, the Isaacsons are ?pathetic but complicit scapegoats ?15, whose expe riences embody what Christopher Lasch has termed ? the agony of the American left.?

Despite these points of convergence, The Book of Daniel as a whole undermines the basic assumptions of the classical historical novel. In such a work, behind the efforts to create representative charac ters and an accurate context and to be plausible about how they interact, lies the idea that the writer can finally perceive the truth of history and give it authoritative artistic form. As dramatized au

thor of such a novel, Daniel can be said to have succeeded only in

part. His memories brilliantly show that his parents epitomized a

certain type of Communist and that their experiences were linked to a historically specific set of circumstances. Yet, as he admits, his

memories alone cannot establish whether his parents were guilty or

innocent, and if guilty, why their punishment was so harsh. Thus, instead of the confident evaluation typical of the classical historical

novel, his book conveys a more modern sense of uncertainty about

being able to grasp the full meaning of history.

Likewise breaking with the concepts of authorial detachment and

verisimilitude that lie at the heart of the genre in its classical form

is Doctorow's manipulation of point of view. Instead of trying to

maintain an illusion of objectivity, he accentuates Daniel's role as

mediator between reality and the reader by making use of a double

perspective, that of Daniel as a young boy experiencing events and

observing the adult world and that of Daniel as an older person

remembering those events and perceptions. The adult Daniel, taking his position beside and with young Daniel, sometimes substantiates and rounds out complexities the boy only intuits, at other times

directly fills in the missing elements through commentary and inter

pretation, and occasionally takes the liberty of imagining events the

boy cannot know because they occurred in his absence or before he

was born. In addition, he sometimes offers a critical and ironic pers

pective of young Daniel's perceptions or uses them to release retro

spective accusations and resentments against his parents. Such inter

ventions prevent the reader from accepting the picture of the past as a reflection of reality uncontaminated by subjectivity.

A further element undercutting the classic patterns of the histori

cal novel is the uncertainty the book generates in the reader's mind

about the ontological status of Paul and Rochelle. Generally, the

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56 WINIFRED FARRANT BEVILACQUA

protagonists of the classical historical novel are fictional characters

drawn from social types while ? real life ? individuals, if present, are

confined to minor roles and made to speak and act in a historically verifiable manner. Paul and Rochelle cannot be considered either

primarily ? invented ? or merely ? representative, ? since the models on which they are so transparently based were unique: the only Americans ever to be executed in peace time for treason and prota

gonists of one of the most controversial trials in the history of

American law. Doctorow's blurring of the bordeline between fiction and history

in relation to his protagonists is reinforced by his narrator Daniel.

Just after the first flashback, to a rally in favor of freeing the Isaac

sons, Daniel, who up to that point has been referring to his adoptive parents as his mother and father, addresses the reader directly about

who his parents ? really ? are :

Oh, baby, you know it now. We done played enough games for you ain't we. You a smart lil fucker. You know where it's at now, don* you, big daddy. You got the picture. This is the story of a fucking, right ? You pullin' out your lit-er-ary map, mutha ? You know where we goin', right muthafuck ? (33)

As pointed out by Turner, this aside, and similar moments later in

the novel, call attention to a connection between the story the reader is being told and an extraliterary reality (348). They thus suggest that the book is referential and implicity invite the reader not only to judge the adequacy of the historical re-creation but also to look to the story for illumination about the authentic people and events to which it refers. In such moments, Doctorow pushes his narrative toward the realm of history. Yet, as the attentive reader notes, he

also pushes the narrative back toward the realm of fiction by his modifications of official history, a tendency first signalled in the aside just quoted, where Daniel asks the reader to recognize his

parents not as the Rosenbergs, real-life protagonists of a real-life

trial, but as the Isaacsons, who are ? real? only in the world of this novel. Doctorow, instead of holding the fictional and the factual in

their traditionally stable relationship, sometimes asks to be allowed the autonomy of the novelists and at other times emphasizes the

links between his story and historical reality. The second level of the novel regards Daniel's actions in 1967-1968

and focuses on the relationship of the past to the present. Here the

narration, and consequently the structure of the novel as a whole, is based on a collage principle of composition, with Doctorow juxta

posing a variety of narrative segments set down next to one another

without the transitions, commentaries, or summaries which in more




EX. DOCTOROW'S THE BOOK OF DANIEL 57

traditional literature provide continuity. Such multiplication of pers

pectives, multilinearity of form, and fragmentation are eminently modernist techniques, as it the demanding role which Doctorow as

signs the reader, who must actively seek to supply the unstated rela

tionships between the various elements that make up the story. All

of these technical complexities serve an important function in terms

of the way the theme of history is presented since they highlight

problems of historical inquiry and historical interpretation.

On this level of the novel, Daniel is no longer and eyewitness nar

rator using his memory, and judiciously his imagination, to write

historical narrative in the form of autobiography. Such a perspective, as he learns from the force and clarity with his long-repressed memories emerge, certainly provides immediacy and insight and con

tains its own authority, yet as he senses all along, it is destined to

remain incomplete. Thus Daniel becomes a histor ? a narrator as

inquirer ?

trying to look historically outward and to construct a

narrative about the past on the basis of such information and evi

dence as he can gather from outside sources, in particular, from

written history, from New Left radicals, and from living witnesses

to his parents' trial and execution.

Having Daniel be, simultaneously, a narrator who remembers and

a narrator who investigates, means that his single perspective on

the past of the Isaacson family be surrounded by other perspectives he gleans from the sources he consults and that the roughly chrono

logical and linear sequence of episodes about the family be inter

laced with a variety of other narrative material, all of which forms

a larger story that both subsumes his memories and comments on

them. That the will ultimately be able to bind together into one

illuminating picture all of the disparate and suggestive bits of infor

mation he is gathering, is Daniel's underlying assumption as he car

ries out his work as histor. That is why, quite early in the novel, he

feels ? encouraged to go on ? and compiles the first of several lists

of topics to be covered. In reality, while such information as he

gleans does allow him to achieve a broader understanding of his

parents' background, it also introduces new problems since it con

fronts him with such a variety of responses to and versions of history that instead of moving toward a final clarification, he will have to

conclude that his only certainty is that history is elusive.

Doctorow's complex use of his character's excursions into history as a discipline, especially of his efforts to become an archeologist of

the Cold War by probing layer after layer of the historical record, can best be illustrated by a close look at the longest of Daniel's

interpolated essays, his ? True History of the Cold War: A Raga. ?

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58 winifred farrant bevilacqua

The research which resulted in the writing of this essay ? under

taken to better understand the general historical situation in which

his parents' experiences occured and to find some leading terms to

use in his thinking about those experiences ? leads Daniel toward

important discoveries about the nature of historiography. In typical modernist fashion, these discoveries are not explicitly stated but are

made to emerge indirectly as the reader, all the while keeping in

mind what Daniel has revealed about his parents' events contempo

rary to them, accompanies Daniel on his quest into what historians

contemporary to him are writing about those same events. Such a

doubly focused reading permits recognition of how Doctorow's novel

dramatizes the role of the historian in the creation of history.

To write his ? True History,? which deals with Soviet-American relations from 1945 to 1949, the crucial early years of the Cold War and the period which overlaps with his memories of his parents at

home, Daniel turns to the critical historiography of the Revisionists

of the 1960s and cites, among other scholars, William Appleman Williams, the most influential revisionist interpreter of the origins of the Cold War and a spiritual guide for the New Left. Ably summa

rizing the revisionist viewpoint, Daniel lays most of the blame for

originating and prosecuting the Cold War on the United States and

even contends that Russian actions were essentially defensive against America's expressed hostility. He also espouses the thesis that con

cern for continuous economic expansion abroad played a role in

determining American foreign policy at least equal to concern for

preserving democracy. Finally, he deplores the fact that American

policymakers ignored warnings that attempts to retain an atom bomb

monopoly would precipitate a desperate arms race and allowed ther

monuclear weapons of inconceivably destructive strength to com

plicate world politics and threaten the very existence of humanity.1

There are at least two reasons why Daniel might be emotionally satisfied with the viewpoint of the Revisionists. Their analysis of

the events of the Cold War is not very different from that of the

American Communists on them at the time they occured and thus

provides a sort of justification of his parents' positions. They suggest that the tragically absurd move toward the division of the world

which helped set the stage for his parents' execution could have been

avoided if the United States had acted differently. There are strong indications, however, that Daniel does not accept the Revisionist

viewpoint uncritically. As demonstrated in a variety of short com

ments, he is aware that after World War II Russia did not act merely on the defensive but, like the United States, worked actively to keep at least part of the world under its control. That Daniel's view is

n? 31 - janvier 1987




probably closer to those who hold that the early years of the Cold

War were not characterized on either side by a dream of peaceful coexistence, is also communicated by his sarcastic tone and by the subtitle of his essay, which cautions against reading the ? True His

tory ? straightforwardly and suggests that it be understood as an in

terpretation. A raga, in fact, is a form of Hindu devotional music

characterized by structured improvisation. Given this analogy, the reader can infer that Daniel's essay is only one of many possible ? ragas ? built on the events of the Cold War, or more precisely, on

the paradigm that was developed in accordance with the revisionist

perspective.

Daniel's playing of the revisionist raga recalls something he said

earlier in the novel about Paul when he noted that his father ? ran

up and down history like a pianist playing his scales ? (p. 46). As Daniel's memories indicate, Paul's historical music was an improvi sation on the Popular Front paradigm which was developed in the late 1930s in an attempt to link the Communist movement to histori cal American tradition. Popular Front historiographers transformed

important figures from American history into progressive political ancestors and ransacked their writings in search of quotable passa ges proving that America had had a long history of revolutionary impulses.2 Daniel ironically sums up the Popular Front point of view

when he imagines his parents marvelling over the simple efficacy of the slogan ? COMMUNISM IS TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERI CANISM ? and thinking with pride ? We are the revolutionary heirs

of Jefferson and Lincoln and Andrew Jackson and Tom Paine ? (210).

Through his exposure to Popular Front historiography as a boy and to the Revisionists as an adult, Daniel learns an inevitable element of interpretation in all historical accounts. His discovery is consis tent with the ideas of modern historical theorists like Hayden White, all of whom insist on the impossibility of any thoroughly objective historical discourse and variously stress that history is not mere

description and reproduction of fact but is shaped both by the na

ture, quantity, and completeness of the information available and

by the historian's point of view, aims, and interests. History begins in facts, but is also the product of the creative and imaginative abi

lities and the ideological and rhetorical predispositions of historians as they deal with those facts. For the student of history the task

therefore becomes one of learning to pay equal attention to the

history being reported and to the historical vision mediating that

report. Daniel would certainly agree with E. H. Carr, who instructs

that:

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History is a continuous process of interaction between the histo rian and his facts, an unending dialogue between past and pre sent... Study the historian before you begin to study his facts... You cannot fully understand or appreciate the work of the histo rian unless you have first grasped the standpoint from which he himself approached it. (35, 26, 28)

The perception that the ? truth of history ? does not exist objec tively but is the product of a personal interaction with reality is reinforced and amplified by the second major form of Daniel's historical investigation, that of seeking a thread of continuity bet ween American radicalism past and present. He conducts this search

by drawing closer to the New Left, namely, by approaching Artie

Sternlicht, a New Left radical who had befriended his sister Susan. Just as Daniel's parents sum up the Popular Front mentality of the Old Left during its period of decline, so Sternlicht is a distillation of the views of a portion of the New Left as in 1967-1968 it reaches the zenith of its explosive twelve-year history in America. In parti cular, he represents the Yippies (Youth International Party) who

beginning in 1967 envisioned and attempted to implement a recon

ciliation between political radicalism of the kind associated with SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and the cultural radicalism of the Hippies, thereby contributing importantly to the formation of a new dissident community most frequently referred to as the Mo

vement. The Yippies were also instrumental in promulgating the idea

of ? Revolution? as a battle between the Establishment and the Movement that would conclude in the creation of a totally new

human being.

As a self-consciously antipolitical, antitheoretical, and antirationa list Yippie who has few illusions about the Soviet system, Sternlicht cannot but consider the legacy of the Old Left as methodologically and ideologically useless :

You know what was wrong with the old American Communists ?

They were into the system. They wore ties. They held down jobs. They put people up for President. They thought politics is something you do at a meeting. When they got busted they called it tyranny. They were Russian tit suckers. Russia! Who's free in Russia ? All the Russians want is steel up everyone's ass.

Where's the Revolution in Russia? (166)

His judgment on the Isaacsons is similarly drastic. Ignoring the

question of their guilt or innocence, he denounces them as embodi ments of the weaknesses and failures of the Old Left, that is, he

condemns them as quaint progressives, reformers, and rationalists, as well as pro-Soviet dupes who in no way have anything to teach





the current generation of radicals. For him, and for the New Left, the Isaacsons are just another abstract symbol of ?the enemy.?

Besides serving to communicate the nature of the mind, voice, and life style of the Yippies, Sternlicht is important for what he reveals about the vision of history characteristic of the New Left in this particular moment of its evolution. In contrast to the Old

Left, which held a progressive view of history and was willing to

work for a gradual evolution toward the ? Golden Age of Socialism, ?

1960s radicals are antiprogressive and apocalyptic, having exchanged

patient waiting for the millenium and endless discussions of politi cal tactics and social strategies for indulgence in a holistic fantasy of rapid and total change. These visions of history are at opposite ends of the spectrum but, considered together, accentuate a single idea: that history

? the history people live through as well as the

history they write about ? consists not only of a flow of events

but also of the intellectual form which individuals project on those events.

For his third activity as histor, Daniel, like some other protagonists of the modern historical novel, becomes a detective-historian,3 at

tempting to use his intuition as well as his research to construct an explanation of the past. He interviews people who witnessed the events of his parents' case, uses their reminiscences to formulate his own interpretation, and tries to put that interpretation to the test.

Daniel is told by the wife of the lawyer who defended his parents that ? they were not innocent of permitting themselves to be used.

And of using other people in their fanaticism ?(232). From a New

York Times reporter, he hears that his parents were probably not

?innocent babes ? but ?little neighborhood commies probably with some kind of third-rate operation ? and that during the trial they ? acted guilty ? (230). And Daniel's adoptive father suggests that both

the Isaacsons and their lawyer made a grave tactical error when they tried to dispute the guilt of their principal accuser, Selig Mindish, rather than arguing that none of them had ever conspired to com

mit espionage.

Building on these conversations, Daniel develops the hypothesis that Mindish accused the Isaacsons in order to divert attention from

the real spies and that, while Rochelle was kept in ignorance, Paul

agreed to this coverup maneuver because it appealed both to his

fervid loyalty to Russia and to his firm belief that the American legal

system would not convict any of them because they were all inno

cent. The hypothesis has an appealing ingenuity and elegance, but

Daniel cannot prove it, for when he tracks Mindish down in Califor

nia and forces a meeting he discovers that his parents' accuser, and

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his own principal witness for the defense, is senile. Hence, as detec

tive-historian, Daniel moves in an anomalous pattern, since once

again the truth he is seeking eludes him and instead of being able to reduce a confusion of clues to meaningful order and reach a

plausible verdict, he proceeds from mystery, to possibility, to doubt.

A third level of the narrative, which implicity embraces both the memories and the historical investigations, involves the story of the progress of the book itself as Daniel sits composing it in the

Library at Columbia University. As maker of his narrative, Daniel is

highly visible and extremely self-aware, never trying to conceal the friction of his thought processes as he probes the recesses of his

memories and ransacks the Columbia library for information that

might be relevant to his book and as he seeks to determine the best

way to understand and give shape to his discoveries and insights.

Throughout, he foregrounds his interaction with his materials, no

ting lists of topics to be covered, agonizing over his false starts, and

discussing his progress in authorial asides, so that the reader can in no way ignore his struggle to establish coherence and is even made

party to his thoughts while he does so. He frequently shifts from a first to a third person, sometimes in successive sentences, thereby laying bare his struggle to review his experiences on existential and

analytic levels, both first-hand and at some distance. Moreover, by peppering his story with such reminders of his fallible memory as ? How do I know this ? ? and with disclaimers of his interpretive abilities like ? Probably none of this is true,? as well as by high lighting the fact that his knowledge is limited because he is bound

by time and space, he calls into question his own reliability as a

narrator. The subjective and evolving nature of his relationship to

his book is further emphasized by his metanarrative considerations of the difficulties involved in choosing an appropriate overall approach to his story. For him, ? what is most monstrous is sequence ? (262) because, although reflective of real-life inevitability, linearity cannot

capture the subtle multiciplity of experience; yet images, which he

admits ?are what things mean? (73) because of their ability to condense a variety of connotations, seem to him dangerously ambi

guous and evanescent.

Daniel's uncertainty about the most profitable way of making sense of his memories and research as well as the most appropriate man ner in which to structure them is reflected in the unstable form his book assumes. As he works, he adopts a variety of narrative strate

gies, mingling diverse fictional modes with memoir, essay, journal, dissertation, and epistolary forms, as if only by employing such an

eclectic approach can he finally hope to accommodate and clarify





his materials. Similarly, he experiments with tone and mood. Depend ing on his attitude toward the subject at hand, he can be matter of-fact or emotionally involved, sarcastic or ironically detached, ag gressive or passionately caring, and can also engage in imitations of diverse ways of writing and speaking, including the classical rheto ric of the radical tradition, the threatening obscenities of 1960s revo

lutionaries, the lament of the bereaved. All these means by which

Daniel conveys the impression that his work is still ?in progress ?

give the novel a postmodern spirit for they develop the idea of self conciousness in literature and make the act of writing a subject in itself. At the same time they are thematically functional, dramatizing the problems attendant on historical analysis and historical synthesis, as well as the difficulties inherent in the task of recasting prior reality into narrative form.

A final technical correlative of the historical exploration that runs

throughout this novel is found in its three endings, which, rather than being simply alternative choices for the reader of indications that Daniel has not yet decided on how to finish his book, are a

means of bringing to their respective conclusions the three levels that have been discussed here. In the first ending, THE HOUSE, Daniel returns to his childhood home but suppresses the desire to

ask the current occupants if he can go in and look around. ? It's their house now ? (315), he writes, and with this justification releases

himself from the obsessive concern with the details of his family past that characterizes his activity as a narrator in the first level

of his book. The second ending, THE FUNERAL, begins with a des

cription of Daniel and Susan at the Isaacsons' burial, shifts to Daniel

at Susan's grave, and culminates with him bursting into tears and

praying over his dead relatives. Along with showing Daniel re-esta

blishing emotional identity with the members of his primal family, this ending marks the close of his efforts, as histor and as narrator

who remembers, to determine whether his parents were extraordi

nary criminals or tremendous victims, a question about which he now knows he will forever remain in doubt. The third ending, THE

LIBRARY, narrates Daniel's abrupt eviction from the library where he has been writing his book by one of the New Left radicals who in

April 1968 occupied Columbia University. ?Close the book, man, what's the matter with you. Don't you know you're liberated ? ? (318) is the young radical's comment. Daniel complies, thus concluding his

activities as maker of his narrative and returning to the world of

the present, with a characteristically ironic curiosity about this

student rebellion.

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NOTES

1. For a critical view of the Revisionist interpretation of the Cold War see Maddox.

2. For a description of Popular Front historiography, as well as of the Old Left in general, see Howe and Coser.

3. See Collingwood for a discussion of the relationship between legal and historical methods.

WORKS CITED

Carr, E. H. What Is History. New York: Knopf, 1962.

Collingwood, R. G. The Idea of History. London: Oxford UP, 1946.

Doctorow, E. L. ? The Beliefs of Writers.? Michigan Quarterly Review 24 (1985): 609-619.

The Book of Daniel New York: Random House, 1971.

Howe, Irving and Louis Coser. The American Communist Party: A Criti cal History. New York: Da Capo, 1974. (Originally published in 1957).

Lasch, Christopher. The Agony of the American Left New York: Knopf, 1969.

Levine, Paul. E. L. Doctorow. London: Methuen, 1985.

Lukacs, Georg. The Historical Novel. London: Merlin Press, 1962. (Origi nally published in the U.R.S.S. in 1937).

Maddox, Robert James. The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1973.

Trenner, Richard. ? Politics and the Mode of Fiction.? Ontario Review 16 (1982): 5-16. Reprinted in E. L. Doctorow: Essays and Conversa tions. Princeton, NJ.: Ontario Review Press, 1983. 48-56.

Turner, Joseph. ? The Kinds of Historical Fiction: An Essay in Definition and Methodologiy.? Genre 12 (1979): 333-355.

White, Hayden. ?Interpretation in History.? New Literary History 4 (1973): 281-314.




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