I've only read one Doctorow book, Pirate Cinema (plus one long story which I apparently found the premise intriguing and the execution lacking but have otherwis

I've only read one Doctorow book, Pirate Cinema (plus one long story which I apparently found the premise intriguing and the execution lacking but have otherwise forgotten). I found Pirate Cinema to be annoyingly doctrinaire and not very well written. It was kind of like reading Soviet "proletarian literature" with a different underlying ideology (or the sentimental religious literature popular among some folks). From the brief bit I read and knowing what I know about Doctorow, I would expect this to be more of the same. Ideology never makes for good fiction.