announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. charlie: this evening, we remember acclaimed novelist, e. l. doctorow. he died yesterday from complications of lung cancer. he was 84. he was described as a literary time traveler who stirred the past into fiction and one of contemporary fiction's most restless experimenters. he was best known for "ragtime" the book that made him famous. he covers the decade and a half leading into world war i.

he has several other books of note. at the news of his passing president obama tweeted "e. l. doctorow was one of america's greatest novelists. he taught me much and he will be missed. the prizes he won including national humanities level the saul bellow award for achievement in american fiction, and the national book foundation medal for distinguished contribution to american letters. joining me now is my great friend, kate medina, she was his editor at random house and knew him well as a writer and as a friend. so we are especially pleased to have her come here this evening and talk about her friend and the man she had the great pleasure to edit, e. l. doctorow . welcome. you said in an interesting way -- through books and characters i will never forget, he showed us america's great flaws and its

astonishing promise and our own. so where is his place in american literature? kate: for me, it is right at the top. it was exhilarating always to read him and one of the things i loved most about edgar as a writer was he was always trying something new. none of the books are exactly the same. he always created language, a voice, a period, a story so you really never knew what he was a two. he never showed us anything until you got the manuscript. charlie: you did not see a chapter by chapter? kate: i didn't know what it was about, i didn't know the title i didn't know when it was done. all the sudden, it would show up. one of the things i loved about

him was the exhilaration of someone who was never satisfied with his own work. in a way, he felt that way about america. one of the other things i liked about working with him was he held everybody to the same high standards he held for himself. he also really understood humor. you could be in a very serious conversation with him but then he would always say something funny because he understood human beings are only just so good. charlie: it must be great anticipation for you because you did not know when it was coming. he did not say this is how it is going and these are the characters. kate: he would say what do you think? i was thrilled, when "the march"

came. i think "the march" is a masterpiece. it is a huge novel, a great world he creates. it is set at the time of the civil war and the through-line is william tecumseh sherman's march. i think it shows what he did as a writer because on the first page, you can't really stop reading. he starts the story right away. you have these people in chaos. the language is different, the sentence structure is very long, it's very different from anything else he wrote. by the end of page one, you cannot stop reading. charlie: here he was 10 years ago at the height of his powers as far as you are concerned? kate: i thought it was fantastic. charlie: what did the editor do? as good as you are and as many great writers, you have had none better than him, what was the role of the editor?

kate: i think it is like maybe some of the other writers -- our friendship. the first thing with edgar was to understand and appreciate and take very seriously what he was doing. to read the books in a very serious way and bring up anything you thought maybe you didn't understand or wasn't clear enough. charlie: that is what he wanted and expected. kate: he was very eager for it. he did not want you to metal or tell him how to fix it. that was not necessary. all that was necessary was to love it, too appreciated, and tell him anywhere he could look again and see if it could be better. charlie: but he said i don't think anything i've ever written has been done in under than six or eight drafts. kate: yes. he also had a famous quote about

writing a novel -- he said writing a novel is like driving a car at night. you can't see beyond the headlights but you can make the whole trip that way. i remember him saying about "the march" i really like perl. maybe we could have a little more of perl. he said i thought about what you said about perl and as a matter of fact, that was all she was doing in this book. for him, these characters were real. i think that article today about him sort of gets a little at that -- he created a narrator that was not himself who was telling this story and whatever that narrator came up with is what was there. but they all had edgar in him. charlie: how do you think he would like to be remembered as an american writer? kate: he would like to be

removed as a wonderful writer, not a historical writer, not any kind of label of a kind of fiction. charlie: he would write a little bit of historical fiction? he was a writer? kate: random house did a timeline of visit the world of edgar doctorow. it was all different times for america -- the 50's, ragtime -- it showed a great range of background he was trying from. the novels are also contemporary, so you could see "the march" as a civil war novel. you could see it as an antiwar novel. it's just as relevant to any war in the world as it is to the civil war. charlie: how so?

kate: the chaos. people changing sides. one of the things editor always did was he had a very serious project here. -- one of the things editor did. he wanted to show how we fall short and do funny, silly things. he has two characters in the march you keep changing sides. what they really want to do is live. so they put on a confederate jacket when they think they are going to get away and then they see that is working, they change. i think he understood -- what would i do? what i rather live were -- these are not important people, just average people. charlie: these are moral

questions and big idea questions. what do i do to survive? kate: he was always holding our feet to the fire. charlie: he was a son of new york. born in the bronx. he said new york is home for my imagination, which is convenient, since i live here. he wrote about new york and also wrote about william tecumseh sherman, which is not new york at all. he could go far from new york, but new york was where he want to be. kate: it was always a work of the imagination. if you asked me how he would like to be remembered, i think it is in the world of melville the world of the great american writers who took a great big tapestry of american life and life in general and took us into

a story that just wouldn't quit. charlie: did he feel he belonged there? kate: i don't know whether he did or not. i would guess most writers i know are restless. they are always trying to do better, to do something different to surprise you, to surprise themselves. charlie: he was an experimenter and a learner. kate: i think he was pleased with his work. i don't know where he would place himself but i think i know where he would like to be placed. charlie: where did you meet him? kate: i met him a long time ago and worked with him for over 15 years. charlie: you began working with him in 2000? kate: maybe a little before that. charlie: what was it like when you met him? kate: it was easy.

we understood each other right away. i think we started with his short stories. they are whole world and are also very experimental and very modern. when i first met him i think i understood him immediately. charlie: did you ever understand what that was? this is a man i like and i get it and he it's me? kate: it was respect at first sight. he was very intelligent. charlie: interested in politics. kate: you could talk to him about many things. and also, he was fun. it was very easy to work with edgar in that sense as a person. charlie: "ragtime" was in 1975.

that was way before you knew him, but it established him in the firmament of american writers. kate: i do remember vaguely "ragtime" being the book that everybody read.

charlie: take "the book of daniel" which was about politics. what was his hope? a democrat i would assume, of

very liberal democrat? kate: i think he was an old lefty. i think you would say that. his politics were absolutely consistent. charlie: what liberty did he take in terms of historical fiction? this is loosely based on the rosenberg case. did he closely parallel? kate: i don't think he closely paralleled. i think he sprung off from something into the imagination and took you with him. he had that ability to create a whirlwind that you just wanted to keep reading. charlie: he loved new york and new york writers and loved being part of that world you live in. the world of writers in new york. people who care about recognizing talent and people who jealously guard the privilege and rights of writers. kate: also, he taught at nyu for

many years. many young writers at nyu were influenced by the classes edgar taught. charlie: did you ever see a class? kate: i didn't, but i gather it was pretty loose. he wasn't going to tell you what to do, but he was inspired by the seriousness with which he took it. charlie: talk to me out the role of the novel and how i saw the novel. what great novels mean to a country. kate: you can reach people i think he believed, with a novel that you are not going to reach with a speech or something that is a lecture. charlie: he said history is the present, that's why every generation rights it a new. he went about reimagining

history as a writer. what were his influences? what influence to more than history? or was history the most important contributor to his imagination? kate: it was probably reading the "new york times was quoted or talking to people at "the nation." he contributed to "the new yorker" and "the nation" for many years. reading the outrages of what is going on all over the world all of the time was part of his inspiration. "andrew's brain" his most recent novel is a remarkable thing -- you are in the mind of andrew, but you get something about george w. bush, but he sneaks up on you. he's not going to tell you. charlie: what he thought bush

did to america. he says this -- i don't know what i at out to do. someone pointed out to me that you could line my novels up and in effect now with this book cover 150 years of american history. this was entirely unplanned. you do get the impression that he did not in a sense -- he was open to life and did not set out with some grand plan as to what he would do and whether there might have been great seems throughout each of the novels and some commonplaces you could find that they shared some quality. it was not a grand plan to say i set out to do and explore decade by decade as wilson did in theater. kate: no, it was not

programmatic at all. even though he created a different language and cadence for each of the books, you always knew it was doctorow. i think you can tell, in some way, a great writer, that that is who you are reading. i would say that about edgar. charlie: you, more likely than other people -- you could say i know this is the pen of edgar doctorow. what would it be that you would see? kate: it is cadence. something about the mind is on the page and the weight is written. it would be the language. edgar was a very efficient writer in the sense that he made leaps and a sentence or in a story. you would be moving along much faster than you might with a different kind of writer.

there is a book once published where writers were asked to write something you would never write under your own name and so somebody sent me this book and said see if you can figure out which story is by your writer. it wasn't edgar, but it was someone else. i looked at the table of contents and said that title is her title and it was because there's something about the way the mind creates the language in its sentences. charlie: what will you miss the most? kate: i just loved him. i just loved him. i will miss everything about working with edgar doctorow. ♪

charlie: we now show you edgar doctorow -- he made five or six. -- -- five or six appearances on this program. he appeared on the program many times over the years, but here is a look at some of those conversations. e. l. doctorow in his own words. charlie: are you constantly aware of two tracks -- one is

writing the best novel you can write and pushing some envelope of the reform -- the envelope of literary form? e.l.: i don't think that way. books begin for me, as i said, as an image or sound. i just pursue that. sometimes it turns into a book, but the only rule is does it work? charlie: how do you define whether it works or not? e.l.: if it works for you, if it keeps it tension, if it is a story worth telling. charlie: if the characters are alive are you. e.l.: if everything. you just feel yourself on the nerve of the book. if you are off the nerve, you can tell immediately. it's not a rational way of working. you don't start with a plan or

outline or intention. that's the worst and you can do. you let the looks happen along its own line. it instructs you, it gives you gifts charlie:. charlie:do you search for another book or do you wait for it? e.l.: i never search for a book. they begin with serious evocative states of arousal, mental arousal. private emotions brought on by a phrase or a piece of music and then you write to find out why that is so evocative. "billy bathgate" just has an image of men in black ties standing on the deck of the top of. i didn't know why they were there on the east river. somebody was watching them -- you have yet to find out -- you write to find out what you are

writing. it's not an entirely rational way to live. charlie: writing is your way to get the story want to tell that is inside you mark -- inside you? e.l.: the book begins to a certain itself and present the identity it wishes to have. you followed your instructions. all the characters in "the march" came to me whole, whether they were verifiable as sherman's generals were or other people who had no such potential. they appeared to me with their behaviors and names and ways of thinking and it just followed along. charlie: some had appeared in other novels. e.l.: dr. sartorius -- he's something of a villain.

he's in advance medical practitioner who knows a lot more and does a lot more in the way of new therapies and surgeries than the other guys. charlie: could you have written this if you didn't find sherman interesting in your research? e.l.: it wasn't only sherman, it was the nature of the march itself. grant did something of the same thing on a small scale in mississippi -- stripping the troops down to their essentials traveling unencumbered and living off the land. what would happen with the march as he devise it is they came looting and pillaging, taking foodstuff, livestock, horses and mules for themselves. as they did this, people would dispossess and slaves were

freed. but the freed slaves could not stay behind because there was retribution to follow. sherman did not establish a civil government, he just moved on. pretty soon it wasn't just a march of soldiers, it was a march of an entire civilization that had been uprooted, freed slaves and a lot of dispossessed whites. that is what interested me. in the course of that, people changed and it was another state of being. eventually, i realized this was a road novel, the ultimate road novel. it was not comfortable. a friend of mine who was dispossessed in dorling -- in new orleans during katrina said that this is what katrina felt light -- felt like. charlie: you have also called at your russian novel. is it your "war and peace?"

e.l.: most of my books i do in the first person. i find a narrator that has been useful. i found myself writing in the third person, the omniscient third, and a lot of characters kept pretending themselves and a lot of territory was covered. about a third of the way through, i said this is my russian novel. charlie: what makes a russian novel? e.l.: a 19th-century russian novel has scope, panorama, a lot of characters, and very often their names are listed. charlie: is sherman napoleon or his lincoln napoleon? e.l.: i don't know much about napoleon, but sherman was a complicated man. he was fighting people he had known at west point. he was very familiar with the

territory having served as a young officer in the south. he had conflicted feelings, but he was resolute in his belief that the confederacy was an act of treason and had to be dealt with. and he did. when the war was over, i have a scene where general joe johnson surrendered to him in north carolina. he's sitting there in the evening with a glass of port and the cigar saying i can drink my flag and of pride -- drink my fl agon of pride. joe johnson, in their humiliation, i'm paraphrasing -- will grieve righteousness that will empower them for a century. charlie: joe johnson felt like they had been wronged and they were fighting for something noble. e.l.: that's right.

those who become endowed -- we see that after world war i, the germans felt the terms of surrender so obnoxious and humiliating to them that was probably the seed that allowed someone like hitler to come along. so this happens and one could even suggest the iraq insurrection after the invasion had something of that going. charlie: after the war -- you think of him as a man who tried to avoid battle. after the war, did he feel any sense that he had done what he had to do -- he had been a soldier and that's what he had to do? e.l.: he was not an abolitionist. he was something of a racist actually and the attachment to the freed slaves in his campaign

, he constantly divested himself. he did not want lack troops fighting for him. he wrote a special order reserving 40 acres for each freed slave and the plow and some seed all down the south carolina coast. he did that as a political expediency to get the abolitionists off his back. when the war was over, he left his troops who were going up to washington and went down south to oversee various kinds of rehabilitation and recovery efforts once the war was over. charlie: he hated war or not? in the same way patton allegedly loved war. e.l.: i don't think he loved war. he did try to keep his troops out of battle. he was a great strategist, but he was not good tactician.

there are records of his own generals criticizing his tactics. as a strategist, he was incomparable. he would have one of his wings feint toward one city whereas he intended to go as another, just to split the confederate resistance and avoid battle. charlie: he found himself missing the war because by living off the land coming found some great sense of what the land missed. did he get connected to the land and rivers? e.l.: you have to understand -- i'm not a historian. charlie: your guy did but the real man might not have? e.l.: he suffered during the

war. his family came down to visit him there. he also had a nervous breakdown after shiloh and had to be sent home. his whole career was endangered. it was a very complicated life he was living. some of it, the glory and fame he appreciated but he knew how changeable that was. at the beginning of shiloh, they called for his resignation. after that it's the reason he was elected. it's not just about sherman. charlie: it's about the march. you say at one point the march is like a van gogh painting.

you want this book to be -- e.l.: a rendering. the artist can set up his easel in the field and painted and you have two things -- you have the feel and you have the art. the novelist uses historical materials if i was just interested in sherman, i would have written a novel about sherman. soldiers civilians, whites and blacks a lot of different things going on. also rising to the reader's vision and falling away. some of the major characters do not survive this march. charlie: have you changed in the

way you approach writing? do you do it differently than you did when you have reached your full flight today? e.l.: when i was young, i knew a lot about writing. now i don't know anything about it, i just do it. charlie: you know nothing about it meaning what? e.l.: whatever knowledge i have has been absorbed to such a degree that i'm not even aware of lying it -- of applying it. charlie: in other books, do you go to the ending first? do you want to find out where it's going? e.l.: it's always an active discovery. when i write, i'm finding things out just as the reader does at any given point. the process some of the feeling

you have this discovering, not feeling possessive or calculating. it discovering things. to answer your previous question, someone like sherman comes out of the same imaginative resource any of the other characters come out of. all novels are historical novels. they are always written after the fact. to make the distinction between someone who is known -- who is known publicly and someone who is not is a false distinction. you are always going to use what you know and what you have seen. my definition of a historical novel is a novel that makes literary history. [laughter] charlie: tell me about america today and whether there is any

other than katrina, certain events come to mean something in terms of a time. the march did in some ways. did 9/11 do that for us? e.l.: certainly, we were in a state of anxiety and nervousness and 9/11 that some politicians have used to their own advantage and have been exploited. i think today, number of people say to me why this novel today? i don't know and it's not an allegory, but when you are writing about the past, you are naturally reflecting your own life and times in the present. charlie: so anxieties about the time you have or meaning you find in the present? e.l.: we are in a state of war now and it's kind of unpredictable.

i think the country is demoralized because of that and several other policies of this administration whether it has to do with the economy or the environment, the sort of draconian republican efforts to dismantle every bit of enlightened registration and fdr -- since fdr. there has to be a certain gloom that affect writers, i think. charlie: does it affect you? e.l.: i think so. i would have to be insensible not to be upset. charlie: you can be upset and still write perhaps about things in a way with a distance from that perhaps. e.l.: there always has to be a connection. i figured out -- i've been doing this work for a while.

new york city, where i've grown up and lived most of my life does not confer upon me a literary identity. my books are always organized around a. of time, not a place. -- organize around a period of time, not a place. the national identity seems to be most expressive. it is as much a composition for a book as a sense of lace. -- sense of place. mississippi -- there would be no mississippi without faulkner. charlie: hemingway was defined by a code? e.l.: alienation. his major work is set in europe.

sinclair lewis and people out west are western writers. coming from this huge city is like a tidal estuary with populations flowing out every decade or so. there are great new york novels but speaking personally, when i have used new york, it's because at a certain time -- charlie: it was time more than place. writing has influenced you or informed you more than others? e.l.: all the great 19th century american writers -- hawthorne, melville twain, i've read everything he wrote when i was 14 or 15. dry sir underrated by a lot of

people. sister carrie is the greatest first novel ever written by an american. the obvious guys in the 20th century -- fitzgerald falconer. -- faulkner. ira member being blown away by saul bellow's third book, "the adventures of augie march." i like "henderson the rain king" is welcome, but that one is so freewheeling and energetic it meant a lot to me. charlie: who is your editor?

e.l.: kate madea at random house. charlie: what did she do for you? e.l.: she's there to read what i've written and tell me what she thinks. it very important. -- it is very important. charlie: an element of trust is crucial. e.l.: she's incredibly honest. the fact that she liked this book as much as she did is enormously gratifying to me. i was almost happy. charlie: you mean it's hard to make you happy? why is it hard to make you happy? you are at the top rank of american letters. e.l.: that's why. charlie: do you worry you can keep it up? e.l.: i don't know. it's something in the dna.

i just generally -- i did discover fairly early that it's important for your anxieties to remain undaunted i what happens. i used to be an editor and i would go to lunch and say how's the book going? he would say this is the greatest thing i've ever written. it's terrific. it's just wonderful and i would say to myself this guy is really in trouble. [laughter] charlie: suppose he said i'm lost and i don't know where it's going. e.l.: then i knew everything would be ok. charlie: the struggle is essential? e.l.: not to be complacent or self-satisfied, but always wanting something to be better than it is. charlie: at any point in your adult life after you had success as a writer, have you wanted to do anything else? e.l.: maybe be a quarterback. charlie: or a rock star.

e.l.: not a rock star. maybe go into hang gliding or something. [laughter] charlie: a kind of skilled thing -- a dangerous sport thing. e.l.: that kind of recklessness. charlie: you made your reputation as a novelist. e.l.: i created this identity for myself. i read everything i could get my hands on and eventually i would wonder not only what's going to happen next in the book i'm reading come but how was it done? how was it making me feel this way? how does this work? at about nine, i stupidly announced to my family that i was a writer. charlie: at nine years old? e.l.: and i didn't feel it was necessary for many years after

that to actually do anything. i may have told you this before -- i was named after edgar allen poe. there's always an injunction in a man and the fact we had a lot of exit mouse, there's no money but everyone was a reader and there was a lot of books and music. all of this conspired to beam me in this direction. and then when a teacher says to you after reading it report this is really good, edgar, you should do more of this, that is crucial. charlie: how about plays? e.l.: i wrote a play called "drinks before dinner." a theater of ideas play. more of a stage reading -- it was produced and mike nichols to

wreck did it and christopher plummer directed it. it was a very unhappy experience for me. charlie: why? e.l.: when you are writing a novel, you are the director, the actors, the stage designer and the other people with their talents come in, things change and you don't have that -- at least i didn't as a first-time playwright have that sense of control i wanted. other people had ideas. the way irwin shaw saw me walking down broadway after bad reviews he said, in, son and have a drink. [laughter] he said i'm going to give you a bit of advice. never write another play. it will tear your heart out. [laughter] i never have. charlie: how about short stories? e.l.: i like stories.

occasionally, they come to me:. i've published a collection last year. charlie: do you know when it's good? does it speak to you and say -- e.l.: i know when it's dad. when it's good, have a feeling it works. charlie: for example, to some people, good writers -- it is a workmanlike process. they get up in the morning and go to work. e.l.: that's true. charlie: they get up in the morning and go to work the next day on a typewriter or computer. e.l.: you go to work like everyone else. charlie: it's true. it's a job? e.l.: it's not a job. it's a calling. charlie: you got it at nine. a calling means there's nothing else i can do. i have to do this or i would be miserable. e.l.: there would be no life. that's what a calling means.

it's so much a part of you it's your internal government. if you didn't have it, it would fall to pieces. that's what calling is, not to get too sanctimonious about it. that's what it is. it's not even a discipline after you do it for several years. charlie: has reading informed her life more than anything else? e.l.: of course. there's a continuum between reading and writing. i teach a reading course for writers at new york university called "the craft of fiction." i pick out a bunch of books that we go through and gauge and see how they work, how they are constructed, how time passes, who is talking, how does the

author -- who is the authority of this narrative and where does it come from in why? that is the way writers should read. figure out what's being done and how it works. there are some great writers beyond analysis. read virginia woolf. read "mrs. dell way -- mrs. dalloway." you think you know what she's doing, but you don't quite get the greatness because it's in describe. past analysis. charlie: what book do you think you have read the most? the number of times. e.l.: i don't know what the i have are the most, but i will tell you an author i always go to when i need to do something of that, it check off. it will never fail you.

-- the most unforced voice in literature some of the most truthful, honest voice that has ever come out of literature. and that is in translation. i don't read russian. charlie: who else? e.l.: well, i go back to the 19th century americans. "moby dick" is an unbelievably great work. that's an enormous achievement enormous achievement. charlie: have you achieved what you set out to do? e.l.: i don't know what i set do. i set out to write and it's funny -- someone pointed out to me a couple of years ago that

you could line them up and, in effect now, 150 years of american history visionary rendering of american history. if you wanted to do that and it's nothing i plan but you start with the march and the civil war and my first novel to layson dakota territory in the 1870's and then the waterworks during boss tweed tossed rain in new york city and then ragtime, the turn-of-the-century. i have three books that take place in the 30's. and then "the book of daniel" those on the 30's to the 60's. "city of god" is world war ii. and there you have it -- it was entirely unplanned and i'm not sure that's the way anyone should approach these books. but if someone has a critical idea i tend to agree with it.

charlie: why do you write? e.l.: why do i write? because i'm good at it. why do people do what they do? because there's some connection, some fit that works for them. why does derek jeter play baseball. charlie: i was just thinking of that. ted williams once said to me and i said why baseball? not some other sport. he said because i'm good at it. e.l.: and it's true. he was terrific. charlie: how do you know your good? e.l.: i learned it a very early age. your teachers begin to tell you that your compositions are good and you should keep writing or even members of your family are introducing your and eris meant -- you are the writer of the family. also, i happened to be named

after edgar allen poe. when children are named, there's always a wish behind a name isn't there? my father loved the work of edgar ellen pao. he liked a lot of writers -- the work of edgar allen ho. he liked a lot of writers. charlie: this is a silly question, but i'm fond of sleep weston's. -- i'm fond of silly questions. would you go with the conceit that a story that has great meaning and transcends and connects with everybody's life and has power or write a good book that had perfectly constructed sent -- perfectly

constructed sent? e.l.: why not take them both and put them together? charlie: is one more important? e.l.: i don't make decisions like that. the book always starts with a feeling, from a picture or a phrase of music, something you find mysteriously exciting. these guys were mysterious to me. they had to be understood and interpreted. so this looks started with that line and other books started -- "really bathgate" started with an image of men in black ties standing on a tugboat the deck of a tugboat. it seemed odd. it turned out they were there to take one of their members out to

new york harbor and dump him in for a betrayal he committed to the gang. charlie: that's why they were there? e.l.: that's why they were there. and i had the boy, billy watching and jumping on board as the tub vote took off. that started that book. charlie: how do you know you are at the end? e.l.: you know you are approaching the end, at least i do, by the time you are the far along in the book, you don't have any choices. everything has inevitable movement. it's like an arrow getting narrower and narrower and you think we're coming to the end of this. ♪

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