The Age Of Dutch Schultz

E.L. Doctorow is widely considered to be among the finest contemporary American writers, and, Billy Bathgate-one of the better novels of the last twenty years-is my personal favorite of all his works. Teeming with life, the book gives us Billy, an adolescent boy who runs and hustles around the streets of the Bronx in the early years of the Great Depression. Is he the everyboy? Meant to be representative of the spirit of the age? No, I don't think so; Billy is infused with originality, his very uniqueness makes him shine. He is faster, smarter, more resourceful than the other children in his neighborhood. They distrust him, envy him, wish not so much to be him but to possess his gifts.

The novel opens with an exciting, poetic account of a mob hit. The Dutch Schultz gang is fitting Bo Weinberg-formerly one of the Dutchman's most trusted lieutenants-for a pair of cement shoes and preparing to drop him over the side of a boat into the East River. Billy serves as a witness, he tells the story, and he captures all the confusion, recrimination and pathos of a man about to meet his death.

Flipping back in time, Billy shows us how he catches the eye of the renowned gangster Dutch Schultz-who by now has begun the acceleration to his own end-by theatrically juggling two rubber balls, an orange, an egg, and a rock. The Dutchman is stopping at one of his beer drops, sees the kid's act and stops to watch. He thinks Billy is "a likely boy," and soon he hires him as a gofer and a numbers runner.

We meet Drew Preston-a rich, slumming sophisticate-who was first the late Bo Weinberg's girl, and now has become attached to Schultz; and Abbadabba Berman, the Dutchman's second-in-command and a mathematical genius. The landscape changes from the lowlife of the City to glittering nightclubs, from the small upstate New York town where the gang hides in plain sight to the fantastically opulent resort of Saratoga. And Billy takes it all in, he absorbs everything and files it away for a future he knows will be bright, and indeed the most remarkable thing about young Bathgate is his adamantine self-confidence. He worms his way into the trust of the mad but generous Schultz, gains the respect of the intractable and emotionless Berman, and he enters into a fateful affair with the beautiful but venal Miss Preston. All of them are doomed, one way or another, except the boy himself, who is just beginning. Billy Bathgate has the charming arrogance of youth, and he remains appealing.

The novel is loosely plotted,anecdotal, and the main pleasures are found in the rich characters that are polished like shining Incan globes, the ripe, plummy prose and the ambitious thematic elements. It's a brutal, spirited romance.