In The Context of The Author's Other Works
The novel was less successful than Doctorow' books Billy Bathgate and Ragtime, which were also filmed. But it shares with them the alliance between history and fiction. Some characters appear in other works of the author, for example Dr Sartorius in The March. Doctorow's father loved Edgar Allan Poe and named his first son after him; Doctorow told a journalist that Waterworks was written in Poe's honour. Already in 1984 Doctorow has written a story about the Croton Aqueduct with the title Waterworks (in the collection Lives of the Poets). This is the story of McIlvaine, who watched the child who drowned in the reservoir.
Read more about this topic: The Waterworks
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