The Waterworks by E. L. Doctorow

First published: 1994

Type of plot: Postmodern

Time of work: 1871

Locale: New York City

Principal Characters:

• McIlvaine, the narrator, who edits a newspaper
• Martin Pemberton, a reporter searching for his dead father
• Augustus Pemberton, his father, a war profiteer and slave trader
• Sarah Pemberton, Augustus’s second wife
• Emily Tisdale, Martin Pemberton’s fiancée
• Edmund Donne, the only honest police official in New York
• Wrede Sartorius, a brilliant physician who conducts unethical experiments
• Eustace Simmons, the aide to Augustus Pemberton
• Harry Wheelwright, an artist friend of Martin Pemberton

The Novel

The Waterworks is twenty-eight chapters of disjointed recollection in which McIlvaine, an elderly former news editor, recalls from some indeterminate time in the future incidents of 1871 in New York: his search for a missing freelance book reviewer, Martin Pemberton, and Martin’s tycoon father, Augustus Pemberton. First, the cynical Martin announces that he has seen his supposedly dead father in a horse-drawn omnibus with other stupefied old men. When Martin is missing, McIlvaine summons Edmund Donne, one of the only honest policemen in the New York run by William “Boss” Tweed and his ring of corruption. Donne and McIlvaine question Martin’s artist friend Harry Wheelwright. One night, Harry and Martin go to Woodlawn cemetery and hire some men to dig up the body of Augustus. In the coffin, they find the body of a boy. Donne and Sarah Pemberton, Augustus’s wife, engage in a romance, and Sarah learns that Augustus deliberately disinherited her and her young son Noah by liquidating all of his assets before he died.

Sifting evidence, Donne finds an orphanage in which no graft passed hands. Eustace Simmons, Augustus’s right-hand man in his slave-trading business, is the director, and Dr. Sartorius, who signed Augustus’s death certificate, is the attending physician. Donne surrounds the orphanage, rifles through the building, and finds the emaciated Martin Pemberton in a hidden cell. Martin, however, is traumatized and cannot talk. Continuing his investigation, McIlvaine finds six elderly men who died rich but left their families in poverty. The names of the same men are on a list found in Eustace Simmons’s log in the orphanage. Martin regains his speech and tells his story.

After finding that Augustus was not in his grave, Martin had been abducted to Sartorius’s elaborate hideaway, where Martin found his father alive amid the elderly clientele, kept in a state of semiconscious lethargy. Martin, who was allowed to roam free in Sartorius’ hideaway provided he not try to leave or interfere, was at first stunned by Sartorius’s scientific brilliance and his innovative experiments. Yet soon he realized that Sartorius was keeping alive these terminally ill old men by transfusing them with blood and glandular matter from young homeless children. Sartorius was sapping the lives of young children to prolong that of the elderly. The whole project was being bankrolled by the fortunes of the old tycoons.

Donne finally traces the old men’s trust fund to the Waterworks, a reservoir inside which Sartorius has set up his laboratory. Donne captures Sartorius and goes to Ravenwood, the old Pemberton estate, where he finds the dead Augustus on the grounds. He also finds the body of Eustace Simmons clutching a chest with a fortune in it.

Sartorius is declared insane and locked away amid screeching and howling madmen; eventually, his head is crushed by one of the inmates, and he is buried in a potter’s field. For a moment, the novel seems to come to a traditional ending, as the recovered Martin Pemberton is married to Emily Tisdale and Donne is wedded to Sarah Pemberton in simple and touching ceremonies. As McIlvaine walks away from Donne’s wedding, though, he sees the city frozen in time on a Sunday when the wheels of industry and business are still.

The Characters

The characters are not built on psychological depth but are of the stock types that people the gothic mystery genre. However, Doctorow goes beyond mere stereotypes to add the ambiguity of a postmodern mystery. McIlvaine, the editor of The Telegram, is the narrator, and he is absorbed in the narration of the story. His work is his life, and the freelance reporters who work for him make up his only family. He is a confirmed bachelor whose one marriage prospect died of heart failure. He is also an elderly man recollecting the one story on which he never got his “exclusive.” This sets up an ironic distance in the narrative, as McIlvaine claims that memory distorts and notes that his tale might arise out of his own insanity, though he tries to assure the reader that he is thought of as sane. Though he tries to maintain the detachment of a reporter, he finds himself involved in the tale he is telling. Yet McIlvaine is only one of the novel’s alienated heroes.

Martin Pemberton, who wears a great Union Army coat, sees the objects of the Civil War only as modes of fashion. He is a cynical, acerbic young man who writes scathing reviews of potboilers and reports on the fashion of the wealthy ladies whom he detests. He wrote a scathing exposé of his father’s underhanded business practices that led to his being disinherited. His shaky engagement presents only a glimmer of a close attachment. His quest for his dead father reveals only his ambivalent feelings.

Edmund Donne fulfills the role of the detective in a sort of Sherlock Holmes/ Doctor Watson combination with McIlvaine. Like McIlvaine, Donne too is a middle-aged bachelor who is absorbed in his work. He is one of the few honest policeman in a corrupt system. He knows the city thoroughly, cares for his informers, and sifts through paperwork for the key clues. Only after the novel comes to a close do Martin and Donne get married, leaving their family lives outside the realm of the novel.

The villains are as detached as the heroes. The novel centers on Dr. Wrede Sartorius, a brilliant physician from Germany who became involved as a doctor in the Civil War. He improved the techniques of surgery so that he could amputate limbs in a matter of seconds, and he modernized post-operative treatments. Yet Sartorius did not aid his patients out of a sense of mercy; rather, he engaged in a Faustian quest for new knowledge. Sartorius is a loner who has no love for his patients and treats his colleagues with disdain. He is a man without a conscience who is driven by intellect. He gathers rich old men and gives them prolonged life in a diminished state. Although his revolutionary methods of blood transfusion and brain-wave measurement become standard medical practice, he is not interested in cures; rather, he sees science as the new God. He too is a man who has dedicated himself to his work and has no relatives to claim him.

Another alienated villain is Eustace Simmons, the pock-marked right-hand man to Augustus Pemberton in his illegal slave trade and other underhanded activities. Simmons makes the easy move from working for Augustus to working for Sartorius. He is the perfect organization man, running the mechanisms of the underworld. After his death, no one is there to claim his body. In the background are two other figures. Augustus Pemberton is the tycoon profiteer who sells shoddy goods to the army and engages in the illegal slave trade. Like a modern magnate, he is more interested in buying and selling businesses than in running one. In a last-ditch effort to sustain his life, he disinherits his wife and young son. A last shadowy figure in the book who never makes a direct appearance is the corpulent racketeer Boss Tweed, who through his system of graft and corruption runs the city of New York, from the mayor to the lowliest police officer.

Critical Context

E. L. Doctorow, who was named “Edgar” after Edgar Allan Poe, has called The Waterworks his “Poe story.” Certainly, the novel has elements of Poe in its combined interest in science and detection, its detective-story format, its fascination with the crossover between life and death, and its narrator who defends his sanity. The dead man who will not stay dead and the ghastly exhumation scene in the eerie night mist are also reminiscent of Poe. Yet there is also the Nathaniel Hawthorne theme of the scientist who tries to conquer the forces of nature and puts the love of science before the love of humanity. There is also a glimpse of Herman Melville’s innocent narrators, trying to search out the truth behind the pasteboard mask of life.

The Waterworks, like other novels by Doctorow, takes place in New York City. Together with The Waterworks, Doctorow’s Ragtime (1975), Billy Bathgate (1989), and The Book of Daniel (1971) explore the panorama of a hundred years of New York. Like his other novels, The Waterworks focuses on a historical figure; as J. P. Morgan appears in Ragtime and Dutch Schultz in Billy Bathgate, Boss Tweed looms over The Waterworks. Also as in his other novels, Doctorow uses the framework of a popular genre to create a novel of ideas. He used the Western in Welcome to Hard Times (1960) and the gangster story in Billy Bathgate; in The Waterworks, he uses mystery detection with an element of science fiction. In The Waterworks, Doctorow once again raises history to the level of myth.

Bibliography

Baker, John F. “E. L. Doctorow.” Publishers Weekly 241, no. 26 (June 27, 1994): 51. Doctorow discusses the influences on writing The Waterworks and his techniques in writing the novel.

Doctorow, E. L. Interview by Donna Seaman. Booklist 91, no. 3 (October 1, 1994): 238. Doctorow discusses the influences and themes in The Waterworks as well as its connections to his other works.

“Doctorow’s City.” The New Yorker 70, no. 19 (June 27, 1994): 41. Review that discusses the uses of New York in The Waterworks and other novels. Also recounts Doctorow’s views on writing a historical novel.

Goodman, Walter. “The Waterworks.” The New Leader 77, no. 6 (June 6, 1994): 35. A review article that focuses on the genre elements in The Waterworks as well as its relationship to other Doctorow novels. Also discusses the narrative technique and possible influences from British literature.

Solotaroff, Ted. “The Waterworks.” The Nation 258, no. 22 (June 6, 1994): 784. A review article that discusses the influences of Poe and Melville on The Waterworks and gives an in-depth analysis of the novel’s characterization and themes.