"LITTLE CRIMINALS OF PERCEPTION": HISTORY AND MEMORY IN THE NARRATORS OF WORLD'S FAIR AND THE BOOK OF DANIEL, BY E. L. DOCTOROW

E. L. Doctorow's novels touch critical points of the American History in the 20th century. In this article, we will read some childhood episodes, which are lit by the narrator's focus in World's Fair (1985) and The Book of Daniel (1971), as eloquent images, warnings or lesson from their present. Mediated by the adult narrator's gaze, which remembers and dissects, those childhood memories seem to compose a narrative device which aims to link the past to the present, integrating the child's experience - with its immediate perceptions of the current events - to the bird's-eye view of the adult narrator - which knows the historical outcomes of the recollected events. Together, those movements compose a cognitive whole in which experience, memory and analysis are mutually illuminated.