E.L. Doctorow, RIP

When all is said and done, he was my favorite living novelist. His writing was brilliant, innovative, and poetic enough to deserve a Nobel prize, but perhaps the strength and appeal of his storytelling and his pigeonholing as a writer of "historical fiction" made him a little too popular. Ragtime and The March are deservedly considered his masterpieces, but I liked The Book of Daniel and Homer & Langley nearly as well.