Beginning of Essay
Billy Bathgate is an important American novel in it’s portrayal of one young man’s evolution from boyhood to maturity. The novel is about a fifteen year old boy that gets taken under the wing of Dutch Schultz, a 1930’s gangster trying to keep a hold of his d ....

Middle of Essay
.... Loon Lake, World’s Fair, , Lives of the Poets: Six Stories and a Novella, a play entitled Drinks Before Dinner and of course his most recent work Billy Bathgate. Billy Bathgate is Doctorow’s most famous piece of literature. In fact, the book grasped so much attention that it was later made into a movie with an all star cast including Bruce Willis, Dustin Hoffman and Nicole Kidman. Although the film left out a lot of detail, as so many movies based on novels tend to do, it was interesting to see the elaborate detail given to the clothing, attitude, and backdrop that so accurately reflect the inner city Bronx in the 1930’s. Doctorow’s expl ....