By E. L. Doctorow
"Imagine a great segmented body moving in contractions and dilations at a rate of twelve or fifteen miles a day, a creature of a hundred thousand feet. It is tubular in its being and tentacled to the roads and bridges over which it travels. It sends out as antennae its men on horses. It consumes everything in its path. It is an immense organism, this army, with a small brain."
As the huge Union Army of General William Tecumseh Sherman burned its way from Atlanta to the Carolinas in 1864 - 1865, it was accompanied by a motley group of freed slaves, entrepreneurs, the dispossessed wives and children of landowners, and even a few turncoats, all of whom saw this army on the march as their protection from the hostile unknown. E. L. Doctorow, in his absorbing novel of this march, focuses on all the marchers—their varied interests, conflicts, fears, and goals—instead of focusing on battles and army maneuvers, creating a powerful and panoramic vision of how civilians, as well as soldiers, responded to the devastation of this terrible war
Emily Thompson, the elegant daughter of a Georgia Supreme Court Justice, joins the march after her father's death to help Dr. Wrede Sartorius, a Union regimental surgeon, renowned "for removing a leg in twelve seconds [without anesthesia]. An arm took only nine." Two turncoats, the devious Arly and the naïve Will, serve as the primary comic relief, opportunistically trading their gray uniforms for blue, until it becomes more convenient to wear gray once again. They eventually meet up with Calvin Harper, the black "assistant" to photographer Josiah Culp, whose photographs of battle scenes and their participants become historical records.
-Mary Whipple (reviewer)
Adding to Mary Whipple’s introduction, one thought comes quickly to mind, The March was a pleasure to read, a historical novel by a master at constructing a fascinating story in a framework of factual events. E.L. Doctorow is a classic story teller.
If you have read other books by Doctorow such as Ragtime, The Waterworks, Billy Bathgate or Loon Lake, you get an idea of this master writer’s opus operandi: creating a fictional story closely calibrated with actual happenings. At a critical moment, General Sherman’s slash and burn march through Georgia gave Lincoln the military victory that made his re-election possible. Doctorow weaves his characters into the greater strand of history, reminding us that the tapestry of great events is created with the threads of individual human stories. The March adds to Doctorow’s status as one of this era’s important story tellers.
As the huge Union Army of General William Tecumseh Sherman burned its way from Atlanta to the Carolinas in 1864 - 1865, it was accompanied by a motley group of freed slaves, entrepreneurs, the dispossessed wives and children of landowners, and even a few turncoats, all of whom saw this army on the march as their protection from the hostile unknown. E. L. Doctorow, in his absorbing novel of this march, focuses on all the marchers—their varied interests, conflicts, fears, and goals—instead of focusing on battles and army maneuvers, creating a powerful and panoramic vision of how civilians, as well as soldiers, responded to the devastation of this terrible war
Emily Thompson, the elegant daughter of a Georgia Supreme Court Justice, joins the march after her father's death to help Dr. Wrede Sartorius, a Union regimental surgeon, renowned "for removing a leg in twelve seconds [without anesthesia]. An arm took only nine." Two turncoats, the devious Arly and the naïve Will, serve as the primary comic relief, opportunistically trading their gray uniforms for blue, until it becomes more convenient to wear gray once again. They eventually meet up with Calvin Harper, the black "assistant" to photographer Josiah Culp, whose photographs of battle scenes and their participants become historical records.
-Mary Whipple (reviewer)
Adding to Mary Whipple’s introduction, one thought comes quickly to mind, The March was a pleasure to read, a historical novel by a master at constructing a fascinating story in a framework of factual events. E.L. Doctorow is a classic story teller.
If you have read other books by Doctorow such as Ragtime, The Waterworks, Billy Bathgate or Loon Lake, you get an idea of this master writer’s opus operandi: creating a fictional story closely calibrated with actual happenings. At a critical moment, General Sherman’s slash and burn march through Georgia gave Lincoln the military victory that made his re-election possible. Doctorow weaves his characters into the greater strand of history, reminding us that the tapestry of great events is created with the threads of individual human stories. The March adds to Doctorow’s status as one of this era’s important story tellers.
Review by Don Mac Brown
1 comment:
Having seen a recent documentary on Sherman's march, I'm looking forward to reading this.
Ken
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