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Big As Life
This novel presents a "what if" scenario. One day the people of New York City awake two find a couple of 2000-foot-tall figures standing in the harbor. The story describes the various ways that people cope with this event over the course of the next twelve months. I think that what Doctorow was going for is the idea that death looms over all of us, and is its own type of monstrosity, even though most of us going about our daily lives are unaware of the impending doom. Or something like that, anyway. Overall, I was a bit disappointed. "I don't know if it's courage," Red said. He was squinting to keep Wallace in focus. "There's no choice. You just believe that if you work hard and go for what you want, if you have any talent the order of the world will reward you. I don't think there's any other choice. You make believe, that's what. You make believe that there is some order and that what will happen is up to you"
218 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1966
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About the author
E.L. Doctorow
100 books1,151 followersHistory based known novels of American writer Edgar Laurence Doctorow. His works of fiction include Homer & Langley, The March, Billy Bathgate, Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, Loon Lake, World’s Fair, The Waterworks, and All the Time in the World. Among his honors are the National Book Award, three National Book Critics Circle Awards, two PEN Faulkner Awards, The Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. In 2009 he was short listed for the Man Booker International Prize honoring a writer’s lifetime achievement in fiction, and in 2012 he won the PEN Saul Bellow Award given to an author whose “scale of achievement over a sustained career places him in the highest rank of American Literature.” In 2013 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the Gold Medal for Fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 31, 2024
Big As Life is E L Doctorow’s second novel. I have read his first, Welcome to Hard Times. It was a literary western with philosophical affectations. I liked it just fine. I have also read Ragtime, a historical novel set in the early 1900s. I always meant to read more because I love his sense of humor and the way he fits ideas into propulsive plots.
According to the lore about this author, who died in 2015, he later decided that Big As Life was no good and forbade his publisher to print any more copies. I found a first edition at my local library.
Red is a jazz bass player, in love with his Indiana girlfriend, Susan. He calls her Sugarbush. Early one morning on his way home from the gig, two 2000-foot tall figures appear over New York City’s harbor and chaos ensues.
Through the viewpoints of Red and his historian friend Creighton, the usual inept attempts by the government are displayed: military control, lock down, Senate investigations, etc. Reading the book was reminiscent of the attack on the two towers, and the opening months of Covid 19.
I found the story completely entertaining, shocking and smart. I suppose you could call it speculative fiction but the writing was top-notch and the characters were so endearing.
According to the lore about this author, who died in 2015, he later decided that Big As Life was no good and forbade his publisher to print any more copies. I found a first edition at my local library.
Red is a jazz bass player, in love with his Indiana girlfriend, Susan. He calls her Sugarbush. Early one morning on his way home from the gig, two 2000-foot tall figures appear over New York City’s harbor and chaos ensues.
Through the viewpoints of Red and his historian friend Creighton, the usual inept attempts by the government are displayed: military control, lock down, Senate investigations, etc. Reading the book was reminiscent of the attack on the two towers, and the opening months of Covid 19.
I found the story completely entertaining, shocking and smart. I suppose you could call it speculative fiction but the writing was top-notch and the characters were so endearing.
January 4, 2016
I read this book before other, better-known (and better regarded) Doctorow books specifically because of its place in his canon of work. It's the only one (save for his final novel, the execrable Andrew's Brain) that isn't based on a moment in history and didn't involve immersive research. It's decades out of print now at Doctorow's insistence, and original copies fetch a hundred dollars or more, when you can find it at all. I had to get mine from the main branch library, inter-library loaned off some dusty, seldom-used shelf of Harold Washington Library in downtown Chicago.
Big As Life is Doctorow's only science-fiction novel. Its premise: one day, two enormous humanoid figures appear in New York Harbor. And by enormous, I mean truly gargantuan -- thousands of feet tall, towering above even the largest skyscrapers. ("Head in the clouds," but literally.) They aren't statues, but actual living, breathing beings. Naturally, pandemonium ensues, and mass riots and suicides follow.
A few months later, it's revealed that these creatures are living at a decidedly slower speed than the rest of us -- a helicopter has attached some sort of stethoscope to a giant wrist and noticed that each pulse of the heart is six hours apart. Thus, after an airplane strikes one on side of the head, it's a full three months before the giant's hand will reach up to touch the wound (which doesn't bleed until that point either), and for the next three months, a low moan (kind of an "oooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck" on a glacial pace) blankets the city.
It's a great premise, and Doctorow does more with mapping out the implications of such a seismic event than I expected. The military takes over, both to restore order and to bring back public confidence -- with everyone running for the suburbs, the economy of New York has nearly collapsed. Those who stay behind are scared, superstitious, and ready to find some kind of closure or understanding about these beings who are beyond scientific explanation.
Like I say, a great idea. The big shortcoming are the characters – a jazz bassist (a red-haired white guy, no less), his smokin'-hot girlfriend (I swear to god, Doctorow names her *Sugarbush*), and an ex-military man conscripted to be the historian of the first 10 days of The Event. They meet up and move apart again and again in the first six months, evading riots and trying out coping mechanisms as New York tries to get back to its feet.
There’s a decent Paris Review article article comparing this to Andrew’s Brain, suggesting that Big As Life is Doctorow’s actual 9/11 novel. My take was less on a catastrophe that had already occurred than one that was looming, namely the fear of nuclear war. The humanoid figures could just as easily have had stylized atoms on their chest in my opinion. That they are inert, coming into action slowly, if at all, over the course of years, maybe decades, is an excellent way to dramatize the monolithic vision that hung in front of every human being's field of vision constantly about the prospect of global annihilation. From there, the government intervention is less about rebuilding as maintaining day to day, trying to keep people from running into the street screaming and pulling their hair, knowing what is always standing just behind us.
It's rare that I say this, but Big as Life would have worked better as a longer book. I would have liked to see the long-term implication of these creatures, stretching past six months and into six years. Would we have a new society? Complete anarchy? Would we have completely killed ourselves? Based on Doctorow's predictions so far, I would have trusted him to carry this premise to a much further conclusion. Unfortunately, the book ends with a finality that makes me think Doctorow's editor said, "okay, that's enough time. Wrap it up."
Not a bad allegory, though most fascinating only for being such an anomaly in Doctorow’s output.
Big As Life is Doctorow's only science-fiction novel. Its premise: one day, two enormous humanoid figures appear in New York Harbor. And by enormous, I mean truly gargantuan -- thousands of feet tall, towering above even the largest skyscrapers. ("Head in the clouds," but literally.) They aren't statues, but actual living, breathing beings. Naturally, pandemonium ensues, and mass riots and suicides follow.
A few months later, it's revealed that these creatures are living at a decidedly slower speed than the rest of us -- a helicopter has attached some sort of stethoscope to a giant wrist and noticed that each pulse of the heart is six hours apart. Thus, after an airplane strikes one on side of the head, it's a full three months before the giant's hand will reach up to touch the wound (which doesn't bleed until that point either), and for the next three months, a low moan (kind of an "oooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck" on a glacial pace) blankets the city.
It's a great premise, and Doctorow does more with mapping out the implications of such a seismic event than I expected. The military takes over, both to restore order and to bring back public confidence -- with everyone running for the suburbs, the economy of New York has nearly collapsed. Those who stay behind are scared, superstitious, and ready to find some kind of closure or understanding about these beings who are beyond scientific explanation.
Like I say, a great idea. The big shortcoming are the characters – a jazz bassist (a red-haired white guy, no less), his smokin'-hot girlfriend (I swear to god, Doctorow names her *Sugarbush*), and an ex-military man conscripted to be the historian of the first 10 days of The Event. They meet up and move apart again and again in the first six months, evading riots and trying out coping mechanisms as New York tries to get back to its feet.
There’s a decent Paris Review article article comparing this to Andrew’s Brain, suggesting that Big As Life is Doctorow’s actual 9/11 novel. My take was less on a catastrophe that had already occurred than one that was looming, namely the fear of nuclear war. The humanoid figures could just as easily have had stylized atoms on their chest in my opinion. That they are inert, coming into action slowly, if at all, over the course of years, maybe decades, is an excellent way to dramatize the monolithic vision that hung in front of every human being's field of vision constantly about the prospect of global annihilation. From there, the government intervention is less about rebuilding as maintaining day to day, trying to keep people from running into the street screaming and pulling their hair, knowing what is always standing just behind us.
It's rare that I say this, but Big as Life would have worked better as a longer book. I would have liked to see the long-term implication of these creatures, stretching past six months and into six years. Would we have a new society? Complete anarchy? Would we have completely killed ourselves? Based on Doctorow's predictions so far, I would have trusted him to carry this premise to a much further conclusion. Unfortunately, the book ends with a finality that makes me think Doctorow's editor said, "okay, that's enough time. Wrap it up."
Not a bad allegory, though most fascinating only for being such an anomaly in Doctorow’s output.
February 25, 2018
Certainly not as bad as Doctorow made out! Worth a read if you can find a copy. I got mine through an interlibrary loan, like another reviewer here.
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August 15, 2024I see why Doctorow let it go out of print. The premise is absorbing--I wanted to know all there was to know about these two giant humans in New York harbor living in a different timescale--but the cjaracters we follow lack any motivation (and thus any interest). What do they want? Why are we following *them*? No good answers.
The fanstasical content is also undercooked. We never get real answers--which is fine, that can be a stylistic and thematic choice--but you always know when things are kept vague simply because the author never came up with anything clear to themselves. You can smell it.
The fanstasical content is also undercooked. We never get real answers--which is fine, that can be a stylistic and thematic choice--but you always know when things are kept vague simply because the author never came up with anything clear to themselves. You can smell it.
February 14, 2014
This novel presents a "what if" scenario. One day the people of New York City awake two find a couple of 2000-foot-tall figures standing in the harbor. The story describes the various ways that people cope with this event over the course of the next twelve months.
I think that what Doctorow was going for is the idea that death looms over all of us, and is its own type of monstrosity, even though most of us going about our daily lives are unaware of the impending doom. Or something like that, anyway. Overall, I was a bit disappointed.
"I don't know if it's courage," Red said. He was squinting to keep Wallace in focus. "There's no choice. You just believe that if you work hard and go for what you want, if you have any talent the order of the world will reward you. I don't think there's any other choice. You make believe, that's what. You make believe that there is some order and that what will happen is up to you" (143).
I acquired this copy through inter-library loan because the cheapest used copy I could find was over $150. Maybe others felt my same disappointment and that is the reason that the novel has gone out of print.
I think that what Doctorow was going for is the idea that death looms over all of us, and is its own type of monstrosity, even though most of us going about our daily lives are unaware of the impending doom. Or something like that, anyway. Overall, I was a bit disappointed.
"I don't know if it's courage," Red said. He was squinting to keep Wallace in focus. "There's no choice. You just believe that if you work hard and go for what you want, if you have any talent the order of the world will reward you. I don't think there's any other choice. You make believe, that's what. You make believe that there is some order and that what will happen is up to you" (143).
I acquired this copy through inter-library loan because the cheapest used copy I could find was over $150. Maybe others felt my same disappointment and that is the reason that the novel has gone out of print.
January 6, 2015
Shallow--especially compared to his other early books.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews