Author and Bronx native E.L. Doctorow was here this spring at the Unterberg Poetry Center with journalist and author Roger Rosenblatt.

They spoke about Doctorow’s time as a student at Bronx High School of Science back when it was an all boys school, being named after Edgar Allen Poe, and his new novel, Homer & Langley. The novel, he explained, is loosely based on the Collyer brothers of Harlem: “strange, reclusive eccentrics who lived in a house on the upper Fifth Ave.”

Telling Roger his father named him after Edgar Allen Poe, Doctorow deadpans: “He liked a lot of Poe’s work. Actually he liked a lot of bad writers.”

On his time at Bronx High School of Science, he recounted a writing assignment that attracted great praise from the teacher. It was an interview with a stage door man at Carnegie Hall “...who was a German Jewish refugee who barely escaped from Hitler.” The teacher was so impressed, she wanted it published in the school newspaper. She requested that E.L. aquire a photo of the interview subject. Doctorow informed her that was not possible. There was no stage door man, he made him up.

The video above includes these highlights and more.

92Y Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation. View the Poetry Center archive.

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