Lives of the Poets:

A young boy writes letters and signs them with the name of his dead father. A young woman is shot at by a hunter in the field. A suburban schoolgirl dies in an exploding car. Realistic or dreamlike, brief or extended, set in the present or the past, these are the tense, poignant, oblique and mysterious stories by E.L. Doctorow. But they are a collection only at first glance. The book in its entirety may be read as a novel about the writer of the stories, daringly and disturbingly offered by Doctorow as a mirror of our current life of imaginative thought. And the writer's mind in all its aspects – its formal compositions, its naked secrets – is given to our contemplation. Funny, painful, and ultimately prophetic.