10 Questions for E.L. Doctorow

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YOU HAVE ACCUSED PRESIDENT BUSH OF "MORAL VACANCY." WOULD YOU CONTRAST HIM WITH A GUY LIKE SHERMAN? There's a passage in the book about the inability to understand death, when Sherman is giving a kind of a soliloquy. His troops have taken a fort just before entering Savannah, and they lie down to sleep beside the dead bodies of the Confederates who were defending the fort. He's drinking a cup of wine, smoking a cigar and thinking about the difference between sleep and death, and how hard it is to understand death. Some people make the effort to understand it. Others don't.

YOU'RE PART OF A GREAT GENERATION OF NOVELISTS--ROTH, UPDIKE, MORRISON. DO YOU FEEL AN AFFINITY WITH THEM? We all work off each other. And if we're each doing our work well, we create a kind of a surge that lifts everyone up. We're all lifted up by the community of us. Even in competition.

ARE YOU SURPRISED YOU'RE STILL WRITING GREAT BOOKS IN YOUR MID-70S? How old are you? UM, 36. Ah, yes, well, that's a 36-year-old question.