E. Doctorow: The Book of Daniel

3. THE LIBRARY. For my third ending I had hoped to discuss some of the questions posed by this narrative. However, just a moment ago, while I was sitting here writing the last page, someone came through announcing that the library is closed. “Time to leave, man, they’re closing the school down. Kirk must go! We’re doin’ it, we’re bringing the whole motherfucking university to its knees!”

“You mean I have to get out?”

“That’s right, man, move your ass, this building is officially closed.”

“Wait—”

“No wait, man, the time is now. The water’s shut off. The lights are going out. Close the book, man, what’s the matter with you, don’t you know you’re liberated?”

I have to smile. It has not been unexpected. I will walk out to the Sundial and see what’s going down.

DANIEL’S BOOK: A Life Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Doctoral Degree in Social Biology, Gross Entomology, Women’s Anatomy, Children’s Cacophony, Arch Demonology, Eschatology, and Thermal Pollution.

and there shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation … and at that time the people shall be delivered, everyone that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever. But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end … Go thy way Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.

E. L. DOCTOROW’s work has been published in thirty languages. His novels include City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World’s Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks , and The March. Among his honors are the National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, three National Book Critics Circle awards, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. He lives in New York.