Billy Bathgate

A Novel

By: E.L. Doctorow

Narrated by: Mark Deakins

To listen to this audiobook is to enter the perilous, thrilling world of Billy Bathgate, the brazen boy who is accepted into the inner circle of the notorious Dutch Schultz gang. Like an urban Tom Sawyer, Billy takes us along on his fateful adventures as he becomes good-luck charm, apprentice, and finally protégé to one of the great murdering gangsters of the Depression-era underworld in New York City. The luminous transformation of fact into fiction that is E. L. Doctorow’s trademark comes to triumphant fruition in Billy Bathgate, a peerless coming-of-age tale and one of Doctorow’s boldest and most beloved bestsellers.


Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Fred Ahlert Music Corporation and Henderson Music Company: Excerpts from the lyrics to “Bye Bye Blackbird,” lyrics by Mort Dixon, music by Ray Henderson. Copyright 1926. Copyright renewed 1953. All rights for the extended term administered by Fred Ahlert Music Corporation for Olde Clover Leaf Music and Henderson Music Company, c/o William
Krasilovsky, Feinman and Krasilovsky. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Bourne Co./New York Music Publishers: Excerpt from the lyrics to “Me and My Shadow,” words by Billy Rose, music by Al Jolson and Dave Dreyer. Copyright 1927 Borune Co. Copyright renewed, International Copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission. The Songwriters Guild of America and CPP Belwin, Inc.: Excerpt from the lyrics to “The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else,” by Gus Kahn and Isham Jones. Copyright 1924. U.S. rights renewed 1980 Gilbert Keyes Music and Bantam Music. Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.: Excerpt from the lyrics to “Limehouse Blues,” by Philip Braham and Douglas Furber. Copyright 1922 Warner Bros. Inc. (Renewed). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Critic reviews

“A wonderful addition to the ranks of American boy heroes . . . Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer with more poetry, Holden Caulfield with more zest and spirit . . . The kind of book you find yourself finishing at three in the morning after promising at midnight that you’ll stop at the next page.”—New York Times Book Review

“A modern American masterpiece . . . Doctorow takes up the legacies of Fitzgerald and Cheever and adds to them a savage and erotic splendor of his own.”—John le Carré

“Indelible in its fierce energy, its relentless irony, its rawness.”—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Riveting . . . mesmerizing . . . unforgettable.”—Time

“Enthralling.”—Los Angeles Times

One of my fav books

Great tale told from the point of view of a kid from the Bronx, amazing period work.

A Masterpiece of Historical Fiction

This is the vivid first-person story of a fictitious 15-year-old boy who works his way into the confidence of a real-life gangster: Dutch Shultz, a New York mobster of the 1920s and 30s. Billy is determined to become a successful gangster, and inserts himself methodically into the mob’s inner circle. He becomes noticed as a street juggler, and is soon witnessing a classic cement-overshoes homicide.

There is intrigue, sex and violence, all in the enthusiastic aw-shucks voice of a kid with a nasal Bronx twang who also has amazing powers of observation and articulate description—and somehow it works brilliantly.

To beat a tax evasion rap, Schultz takes his whole entourage for weeks to Onondaga, NY, where the trial will be held, and charms the populace who will provide the jury of his peers. His popularity offensive as described by Billy could be a blueprint for recent US political campaigns:

“And now the scope of Mr. Schultz’ strategy became apparent to me. I had wondered how anyone could be fooled, because what he was doing was so obvious. But he wasn’t trying to fool anybody. He didn’t have to. It didn’t matter that these people knew he was a big-time New York gangster. Nobody here had any love for New York anyway. And what he did down there was his business, if up here he showed his good faith. It didn’t even matter that they knew why he was doing what he was doing, as long as he did it on a scale equal to his reputation. Of course, he was obvious. But that’s what you had to be when the fix was in with the masses. Everything had to be done large, like skywriting, so that it could be seen for miles around.”

You don’t expect this story to spin up and away to a whole new level, as it does in the last hour or so. You don’t see it coming. But suddenly it does, and what has been a nonstop compelling narrative accelerates like a rocket achieving orbit, from a dramatic gangland shootout through Billy’s youthful but crafty management of a life designed to escape detection by his enemies and one day lay claim to millions of dollars hidden by his late mentor.

You’ll want to drop everything, write down the generous list of clues, and find it yourself. But then you remember: Dutch Schultz was real, and the 1935 shootout at the Palace Chophouse in Newark really happened, and his legendary treasure was never found. Billy Bathgate, on the other hand, is a fictional character. E.L. Doctorow skillfully makes you believe otherwise.

The narration by Mark Deakins brings Billy Bathgate to life as a wide-eyed kid with wisdom beyond his years, not to mention the coarse voice of Dutch and his henchmen. A perfect choice.

It was...good. I wish I had enjoyed it more.

The Good: Doctorow is clearly a master wordsmith. When it is well suited to the purpose of a particular scene, his skill flows in a rising and falling motion. His characters were vivid and believable. And the scene setting/world building engaged all of the senses with a fastidious attention to detail which he delivers almost carelessly. Billy's introspection makes room for Doctorow's philosophies and the man is as much a philosopher poet as a dealer in fiction. Fiction is often described as a lie used as a vehicle to convey truth; that is what you will get in this tale.

The Bad: Billy continually works to reconcile his natural innocence with his ever-increasing reality of, at first moral ambiguity, and progressively a criminal bent. Therefore, his streams of consciousness make dramatic leaps from rich prose to absolute crass vocabulary in an instant. While I am not thick skinned, it was arresting more often than I would have liked. I do not impune the use of vulgarity and many of the characters are well suited to it. Yet, despite the illustration of Billy's development, I repeatedly struggled with the particular descriptions (and Billy's perceptions) of almost all things sexual.

Overall, it was a good read but not my favorite yarn. Doctorow's philosophies and vocabulary, however, were masterful.

Wanted to like it a bit more....

Attracted by the setting and characters, I just couldn't settle in to enjoy as much I had hoped. Consistently too wordy for a long a-book... and it felt like this slows down the development of the story. I'm sure many will find the command of the language refreshing, but for me, I would have enjoyed a better pace.

class of story telling seldom equaled

Highly recommend Billy Bathgate.. brilliant, engaging, descriptive writing, wrapped in excellent story. a true masterpiece.