Billy Bathgate
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| Billy Bathgate | |
| Author | E. L. Doctorow |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Postmodern Historical novel |
| Publisher | Penguin Books |
| Publication date | 1989 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 323 pp |
Billy Bathgate is a 1989 novel by author E. L. Doctorow that won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle award for fiction for 1990 and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was the runner up for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize [1]. The story is told in the first person by Billy "Bathgate" Behan, a fifteen-year-old boy who first becomes the gofer and then surrogate son of mobster Dutch Schultz. The book explores the question of self determination versus fate, the futility of sex without love, moral relativism, and the romanticization of the Mafia in American pop culture.
A 1991 film based on the novel starred Loren Dean as Billy, Dustin Hoffman as Schultz, Steven Hill as Otto Berman, Nicole Kidman as Drew and Bruce Willis as Bo.
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
The title character is a poor and fatherless teenager growing up in The Bronx. Billy and his friends are in awe of the flashy mobsters in the neighborhood. Dutch Schultz and Otto Berman, based on the real-life mobsters, hire Billy as a gofer and become mentors to him. Billy works his way up but begins to question his actions when he falls in love with Dutch's moll, whom Dutch plans to have killed.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ 1990 Pulitzer Prize Nominated Finalists (Runners Up) pulitzer.org Retrieved November 19th, 2006.
