Billy Bathgate is a 1989
novel by author
E.
L. Doctorow that won the 1989
National Book Critics Circle
award for fiction for 1990 and the
PEN/Faulkner Award for
Fiction, and was the runner up for the 1990
Pulitzer Prize . The story is told in the
first person by Billy "Bathgate" Behan, a fifteen-year-old boy who
first becomes the gofer and then surrogate son of
mobster Dutch Schultz.
The book explores the question of
self determination versus
fate, attempts to explore and establish the theory
postulating the futility of sex without love,
moral relativism, and the
romanticization of the
Mafia in American
pop
culture.
A
1991 film based on the novel
starred
Loren Dean as Billy,
Dustin Hoffman as Schultz,
Steven Hill as
Otto
Berman,
Nicole Kidman as Drew, and
Bruce Willis as Bo.
Plot summary
The
title character is a poor and
fatherless teenager growing up in The Bronx
. Billy and his friends are in awe of the
flashy
mobsters in the neighborhood.
Dutch Schultz and
Otto Berman, based on the
real-life mobsters, hire Billy as a
gofer and become
mentors to him.
The gangsters take Billy up to their upstate hideaway, where they
are awaiting a trial. Schultz becomes a community leader and
converts to Catholicism. Billy works his way up but begins to
question his actions when he falls in love with Dutch's
moll Drew, whom Dutch plans to have
killed.
Billy is sent to Saratoga Springs
with Drew to keep an eye on her. They act as
a couple in Saratoga. He realizes that she is to be killed and
calls her husband in New York City to come and rescue her.After
Schultz is acquitted, Attorney General
Thomas Dewey brings up more charges and the
gang goes into hiding. This time they are in
Union City, New Jersey. While Billy is visiting
the gang to give them updates on Mr Dewey's routine, unnamed
gangsters come in and kill everyone except Billy and the bartender.
Billy goes back to Schultz's hotel room and takes all the money
from his safe. The Spring after Schultz's death, A man in a uniform
drops off a basket with a baby inside. Come to find out, it was
Billy's son that he had with Drew.
See also
References
- 1990 Pulitzer Prize Nominated Finalists (Runners Up)
pulitzer.org Retrieved November 19th, 2006.
External links
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