BILLY BATHGATE
by E.L. Doctorow;
Random House; 323 pages; $19.95
Near the end, the narrator of this riveting novel refers to all that has gone before as "this story of a boy's adventures." Some boy. Some adventures. Both are as far as they could be from innocent visions of Tom Sawyer or Horatio Alger. Even discounting a particularly bloody penultimate encounter, Billy Bathgate directly witnesses two murders and helps dispose of the body of a third victim. In each case, the perpetrator is the notorious gangster Dutch Schultz, ne Arthur Flegenheimer, Billy's self-described "mentor" and as romantically dangerous a father figure as any lad could desire. Billy is his real name, Bathgate an alias he has invented, lifted from a street, known for its open-air markets, a few blocks from his birthplace in the Bronx. Billy's education in the criminal life is completed before his 16th birthday.
Those who have followed E.L. Doctorow's career -- a considerable number, judging from the commercial and critical successes of previous books -- will find much in Billy Bathgate that feels, initially, familiar. As in Ragtime (1975), this novel mingles fictional characters with historical ones: Schultz, Walter Winchell, Thomas E. Dewey. The setting combines Depression seediness and underworld glamour in a manner reminiscent of Loon Lake (1980). And this is not the first time Doctorow has written about a boy's coming of age in the Bronx; he did so in World's Fair (1985), even giving its made-up hero his own first name, Edgar. But the author is not simply repeating himself this time out. He is mixing elements from his other novels in a manner that proves combustible and incandescent.
Part of the allure springs from the subject, which plays upon the mysterious fascination that outlaws and gangsters have always held for law-abiding American citizens. In this, Billy is a native son of his place and time, a poor section of the Bronx in 1935, which is distinguished in his eyes only by the fact that the famous Dutch Schultz grew up there. In truth, Schultz still runs a beer drop in the vicinity, even though Prohibition has been repealed: "We were honored to know that our neighborhood was good enough for one of his places, we were proud we enjoyed his confidence." When he manages to attract the great man's attention and becomes what Schultz calls his "prodigy," Billy senses that destiny has blessed him "with the faintest intimation that I might be empowered. That is the feeling you get, that your life is charmed, which means among other things that it is out of your hands."