I love
reading the first chapter of a new book.
Everything is new and nothing is known.
Who is the narrator? What is the
tone? Who is this book about? Where and when are we and why do we seem to
be here? Sometimes the first chapter is
a grand struggle to make sense of the new surroundings. Sometimes it’s like a dream, full of familiar
objects in unfamiliar lighting.
Sometimes it’s like listening to a foreign language.
For me, Ragtime
was like an immersion in a warm bath after a long afternoon shoveling
snow. Everything about E.L. Doctorow’s
language was enjoyable and thrilling. I
knew before the end of the first paragraph (an admittedly HUGE paragraph) that
I was going to love this book, and the rest of the novel fulfilled that promise. I will detail what it was that I found so
rewarding about the book, but I must first acknowledge that any love of a
particular piece of literature is primarily aesthetic. I love a detached narrator who presents
emotionally powerful scenes with understated phrases. I love a sense of irony that makes you read
both what is said and what is not said.
To take an example from that first paragraph, the narrator describes
life at the turn of the century:
Teddy Roosevelt was President. The population customarily gathered in great numbers either out of doors for parades, public concerts, fish fries, political picnics, social outings, or indoors in meeting halls, vaudeville theatres, operas, ballrooms. There seemed to be no entertainment that did not involve great swarms of people. Trains and steamers and trolleys moved them from one place to another. That was the style, that was the way people lived. Women were stouter then. They visited the fleet carrying white parasols. Everyone wore white in summer. Tennis racquets were hefty and the racquet faces elliptical. There was a lot of sexual fainting. There were no Negroes. There were no immigrants.
Here we have what appears to be a detailing
of an historical time with what is almost textbook-like
generalities. We “learn” how people
gathered, how they traveled, how they “lived.”
Only when you hit the final two sentences are you shaken from the lull
you fell into as a reader and realize that you are hearing about only one tiny
sliver of American populace. These are the
people who could afford to holiday, who carried parasols, played the gentrified
sport of tennis—in short, the upper middle class white citizens. That’s a narrator I want to keep talking to
me! Near the end of that same opening
paragraph, Evelyn Nesbit is said to have met the revolutionary Emma Goldman: “Goldman
lashed her with her tongue. Apparently
there were Negroes. There were
immigrants.” The shock and disbelieve of
the italicized “were” are nothing short of delicious.
What is
established in this opening paragraph is a question that lingers throughout the
novel: what is history? To what extent is history created and
sculpted? Doctorow blurs the line
between history and fiction in Ragtime, fictionalizing historical
characters and events and historicizing fictional characters and events. Historical figures are given hilarious
scenes, like Freud riding through the Tunnel of Love on Coney Island, sharing
his boat with Jung; or Harry Thaw waving his penis at Harry Houdini during a
trick in the Tombs; or J.P. Morgan’s conversation with Henry Ford about
reincarnation. The fictitious characters
meanwhile are treated like figures
pulled from history, such as when the narrator discusses the “little [that] is
known about Coalhouse Walker Jr.” The
point of this blurring appears to be to call into question the authoritative
nature of history, to draw to our attention how history is not different from fiction,
really. Yes, things actually happen, but
all things that happen are not recorded, and all things that are recorded are
not given equal weight. There is
selection and creation in history.
History as we learn it is created like a narrative to move us
chronologically through the story of our nation's past that leads us to today. And
who writes history? Who decides what
stories live and which are lost? Those
in power, of course.
Power is at
the heart of Ragtime. It is the
thing against which Emma Goldman is fighting.
It is the thing of which Younger Brother becomes acutely aware. Power is at issue with the factory strike in
Massachusetts, with the sexualizing of Evelyn Nesbit, with the special
treatment of Harry K. Thaw, and of course it is the central concern in the
narrative of Coalhouse Walker Jr, a man demanding justice from a society that
believes itself just but which falls far short.
The system naturally protect Willy Conklin from any repercussions of his
behavior, and it naturally vilifies Walker’s attempts to achieve justice. When all normal channels are denied to him,
Walker assumes the role of a revolutionary.
Revolutionaries are of course a sub-theme in Ragtime, since they
are an attempt of the powerless to attain power. It is no coincidence that Father’s money
comes from his selling of patriotic paraphernalia. What is the American flag but the symbol of a
revolution that succeeded and became the ruling power in its turn? But of course power does not admit easily to
the power of others. After hearing of
Walker’s first retaliation against the fire department, Father cannot approve: “Does
he have anyone but himself to blame for Sarah’s death? Anything but his damnable nigger pride? Nothing under heaven can excuse the killing
of men and the destruction of property in this manner?” But Doctorow counters this sentiment with Younger
Brother’s response: “I did not hear such a eulogy at Sarah’s funeral . . . I
did not hear you say then that death and the destruction of property was
inexcusable.” That tension fuels our
nation and the movement of Doctorow’s novel, even when the narrative feels most
relaxed.
Mother,
Father, and their family are at the center of Doctorow’s narrative, a
comfortable white, upper middle class family who at one time in the beginning of
the novel believe “that all their days would be warm and fair.” They represent one whole sliver of American
society, the group for whom “there were no Negroes” or immigrants. But their lives collide with the rest of
American society, and nothing remains the same.
By the end of the novel, Mother has married Tateh, an immigrant, and
their family consists of her white little boy, his Latvian little girl, and
Coalhouse and Sarah’s baby. They are an
entirely new American family, worlds apart from the family that begins the
novel. Importantly, all the characters
in the family are entirely fictitious, but they are the truest portrait of
American in the novel. “True” things
happen in the novel, but the truth itself lies in the fiction.
Ragtime is
funny and moving and thought-provoking.
It is imaginative and relevant and utterly compelling. It is, in short, a fantastic novel, and I
look forward to reading more by Doctorow.
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