E.L. doctorow was born in new york in 193 1. His parents are Russian Jews who immigrated to the United States. He is an intellectual who loves books and music. Under the influence of this kind of family, E.L. doctorow spent the hard years of the Great Depression in 1930s, which laid the foundation for his later literary creation. E.l.doctorow was educated in Bronx Science Middle School in new york and Kenyon College in Ohio, and then studied drama at Columbia University, where he met Helen Hensley, who will be his future wife. 1953 went to serve in the army and retired two years later. He intends to support his family with his pension, but he can concentrate on writing novels. However, the reality is not satisfactory. He had to find a stable job first, so he even worked as a ticket booking clerk at the airport, and then worked as a commentator in the Columbia Radio and Television Department and Columbia Film Company. In the early 1960s, he switched from film to publishing. He worked as an editor in the New American Library and Dell Publishing Company, and became the editor-in-chief of Dell Publishing Company at the age of 33. His first novel, Facing Difficulties, was published in 1960. In this book, a bad guy almost destroyed an American town called Hadtems (meaning "hard times"). This is the first time that E.L. doctorow, like some kind of human time machine, took his readers back to the wild west for a historic trip. This work takes a small town as a symbol of human society. Although the intention is profound, it has failed to attract the attention of the literary world because of the simplification of writing about human activities. 1966, his second novel as big as life was published. This book describes the panic of citizens when a naked giant taller than a skyscraper appears in new york, which satirizes people's feelings and expresses sympathy and concern for ordinary people. E. l. doctor ow 1968 from publishing to education. He has taught at the University of California, Princeton University, the University of Utah and Sarah Lawrence College, and taught in the graduate writing class of new york University. His wife and three children are novelists and live in the suburbs of new york.
The ragtime came out. The style of combining fact and fiction in this work caused a sensation in American literary circles. Although there are some criticisms and controversies, American critics awarded it the "American National Book Review Award" on 1976, recognizing its author as an outstanding writer who broke the traditional novel writing mode and made bold innovations. Nowadays, as one of the representative works of the United States in the 1970s, Ragtime has been included in the required reading list of literature courses in American universities. E.L. doctorow has since entered the ranks of first-class American novelists.