“[E. L. Doctorow] is not deeply involved in his characters’ lives. Things do not happen in the world the way Doctorow claims they do. Even in the hands of young and excited men, penises do not behave as Doctorow maintains.”
— John Gardner, On Moral Fiction
Wade Rockett 
of course now i’m dying to know just what Doctorow maintains is regular penis behaviour.
“At this moment a hoarse unearthly cry issued from the walls, the closet door flew open and Mother’s Younger Brother fell into the room, his face twisted into a paroxysm of saintly mortification. He was clutching in his hands, as if trying to choke it, a rampant penis which, scornful of his intentions, whipped him about the floor, launching to his cries of ecstasy or despair, great filamented spurts of jism that traced the air like bullets and then settled slowly over Evelyn in her bed like falling ticker tape.”