American Epic: Reading the U.S. ConstitutionIn 1987, E. L. Doctorow celebrated the Constitution's bicentennial by reading it. It is five thousand words long but reads like fifty thousand, he said. Distinguished legal scholar Garrett Epps himself an award winning novelist disagrees. It's about 7,500 words. Doctorow missed a good deal of high rhetoric, many literary tropes, and even a trace of, if not wit, at least irony, he writes. Americans may venerate the Constitution, but all too seldom is