E. L. Doctorow

Saul Karoo is a successful Hollywood script doctor, a fixer of flawed films, He is fifty, overweight, a heavy drinker and chain smoker. He is at an age when things break down, but he has not health insurance. His separation from his wife, Dianah, has become another form of marriage. His relationship with his son, …

From Ragtime and Billy Bathgate to World’s Fair, The March, and Homer & Langley, the fiction of E. L. Doctorow comprises a towering achievement in modern American letters. Now Doctorow returns with an enthralling collection of brilliant, startling short fiction about people who, as the author notes in his Preface, …