Ragtime is a novel
about early 20-century America on the cusp of change. Writing in a
fast-moving style that mirrors ragtime music, and intermingling real
and fictional characters, E. L. Doctorow produced a novel with a vivid sense
of time and place. His emphasis on history as much as on his characters
blunts some of the tragedies that occur, and the surface impression is
as buoyant as ragtime. Brewing beneath the surface, however,
are strains in the relations of whites and blacks, the
establishment and new immigrants, rich and poor, men and women, and
capitalists and labor that will continue for a century, into our own
era.
The historical characters woven throughout the book —
including Harry Houdini, J. P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Booker T.
Washington, Emma Goldman, and the celebrated chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit
— interact with three groups of fictional characters:
prosperous white, black, and impoverished recent immigrant.
Representing America in its pre–World War I innocence, an
unnamed WASPy family (Father, Mother, Mother's Younger Brother,
Grandfather, and Little Boy) in New Rochelle, New York, sees its
complacent life shaken up after an African American baby is abandoned
in its yard. The mother is found, and to keep her from prison, Mother
takes them both
in. The
father of the baby, a ragtime pianist, appears, and his run-in with
prejudiced locals escalates into a violent confrontation in which
Younger Brother joins the militants. Also eventually crossing paths
with the family is a Jewish immigrant artist in New York City's Lower
East Side and his young daughter.
Juggling so many people and issues while remaining entertaining and
easy to read, Ragtime is considered one of
Doctorow's great achievements. This inventive novel is likely to be
appreciated by students of both literature and history.
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