Re: _Ragtime_ by E.L. Doctorow2/18/11 - I've finished reading this book. I have to say that I enjoyed the film more. The plotline with the Coalhouse Walker, Jr. character was diluted in the book because the book (as opposed to the film) included more characters and subplots. Much of the text was taken up with the blending of the fictitious characters with the true-life historical personages and historic events. Although it was interesting the way Doctorow wove the fiction and non-fiction together, I could have done without all those details which became tedious or dry in spots. One GR review said: "...there were quite a few extended tangents ... that could have been stricken without the book suffering from it." I agree. I also feel that there could have been more paragraph breaks. The long paragraphs seem to run things together too much. I don't appreciate that aspect of Doctorow's writing style.I'm glad I had watched the film first because the scenes in the book about the Coalhouse Walker, Jr. plot were much more vivid to me. I'm not sure I want to read any more of Doctorow's books because I find his writing a bit tedious in certain parts. However, when he pulls you in, he REALLY pulls you in!I've read descriptions of a few of Doctorow's other books and, sorry to say, the subject matter didn't appeal to me. Below is a link to an interesting review by a GR member:http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...(Excerpt from above link: "The most powerful portion of the novel is devoted to Doctorow's fictitious character, Coalhouse Walker ... This is an amazing story and I wish Doctorow had centered his whole novel on this amazing tale.") The following link is to a GR review which contains a detailed summary of the book:http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...According to librarything.com, this book received the following awards and honors:tNational Book Critics Circle Award (Fiction, 1975)Time's All-Time 100 Novels selectionThe Modern Library's 100 Best Novels: The Board's List (86)New York Times Best Books of the Year (1975)New York Times bestseller (Fiction, 1975)Nebula Nominee (Novel, 1975)1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006/2008/2010 Edition)Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay Nominee (1981)The Modern Library: The 200 best novels in English since 1950 (1970s)2/15/11 - I watched the film last year. Now I'm reading the book (large print version).3/25/10 - BELOW IS A POST I MADE AT MY GROUP ABOUT THE FILM:Today I enjoyed a DVD of the terrific film, "Ragtime" (1981), a drama, adapted from the book, Ragtime (1975) by E.L. Doctorow.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082970/http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Ragtime/...Critic Roger Ebert wrote:====================================================="He (the director) decided to set aside the book's kaleidoscopic jumble of people, places, and things, and concentrate on just one of the several narrative threads. Instead of telling dozens of stories, his film is mostly concerned with the story of Coalhouse Walker, Jr., a black piano player who insists that justice be done after he is insulted by some yahoo volunteer firemen."FROM: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/p...====================================================I found this movie (set America in the early 1900s) totally absorbing. It has a great cast. I especially enjoyed Howard E. Rollins, Jr., who played the black pianist. (Too bad Rollins died comparatively young, at the age of 46.)The musical score by Randy Newman was beautiful.The NY Times review said (and I agree): "The movie is sorrowful, funny and beautiful."http://www.metacritic.com/video/title...The film was nominated for quite a few awards.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082970/a...There's an excellent review of the film here:http://www.scoopy.com/ragtime.htm
For the first time, I've read a book purely because of its existence on the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. Ragtime was the group read of the month, for January, in the accompanying Goodreads group. I immediately ordered it from my local library, and miraculously it turned up, nearly three months later towards the end of March. Upon collecting it from the library, not only was it now two months after the group had finished reading the book, but I'd somehow ordered the large-print edition. Finally, a book I can read without my glasses, from the other end of the bus.Ragtime is the story of early 20th Century America told through the experiences of an unnamed family. Rather unusually they remain deliberately unnamed throughout the whole novel. Instead they are referred to as Father, Mother, Mother's Younger Brother etc. – all capitalised as if they are proper names; as if they are their actual names. While these characters are central to the story, ultimately they also seem unimportant to the story. Really the story is about the America that is going on around them – the residual racism left after the official end of slavery some 50 years earlier; attitudes towards class and success as unions are being formed; as well as attitudes towards both gender and sexuality – and the characters that they interact with, and the characters that those people interact with too. While the family are at the centre, the real story is the ripples that flow out from them and in to them.Father's trip to the North Pole and business interests are key to the changes in his relationships within the family unit. But certainly the defining moment for the family is the adoption of a young black baby and his depressed single-mother. When the child's father arrives on the scene – a very dapper and self-assured young man called Coalhouse Walker – the story gently shifts and becomes much more focussed on these few characters and their place within the racial tensions of the time. Additionally, Doctorow has cleverly woven a cast of 'real people' into this story as secondary characters. Many of the characters that the family interact with were real historical figures: including Houdini, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Emma Goldman. These all allow Doctorow to place the novel firmly in time, as well as to make the family themselves even less special and more every-family.I was fascinated by Doctorow's writing style. His short, staccato sentences. Following on, one from another, quickly leading you into the prose. The casual smattering of historical figures that almost feel like side-stories in their own right. The often hilarious descriptions of both the sexual repression of the family and the comical description of the sexual antics of Mother's Younger Brother which seem to be written in the same style – one as an understated matter-of-fact occurrence, the other a fantastical, joyous, out-of-control event that ends with the best description of free-falling jism that I've ever read.
What do You think about Ragtime (2010)?
E.L. Doctorow has a beautiful style, a prose poetry that combines Dos Passos, black, ironic comedy, musical rhythms, and the ability to make history dirty, alive, and relevant. There has been some attempt to franchise this book into respectability but ignore that, as nothing can replicate the experience of actually reading this classic. Bawdy, irreverent, angry, and thoroughly eviscerating of an era commonly portrayed with nostalgia. The end of the gilded age or progressive era is portrayed as a time of racism, revolution, violent suppression of workers, superstition, uncontrolled militancy, poverty, and wild advances in technology but the poetry and ironic touch of the author keep this from merely being a Howard Zinn lecture. The unnamed family as a bit of frame device is slightly awkward and the plot thread of a revenge seeking black militant was probably a little more relevant in the era in which this book was written (the 70’s and Black Power, Black Panthers and even more rogue militants like the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Black Liberation Army), but with a book this luminous and joyful to read this are merely ripples on the pond. Read this every 4th of July.
—Adam
The dust jacket on my copy read: "It is a novel so original, so full of imagination and subtle pleasure, that to describe it further would only dilute the pure joy of reading it. Turn to the first page. Begin. You will never have read anything like _Ragtime_ before. Nothing quite like it has ever been written before."I thought this must be a huge exaggeration. Then I read the book. In fact it's completely the truth. It blends historical personages with central characters who are given no names beyond "Father" and "Mother's Younger brother" and "the little boy in the sailor suit" yet are fleshed out in amazing, detail. It's an amazing read, told in prose that's at once sweeping and breathless--it does, it reads like a piece of music.
—Celeste Ng
Wildly Overrated (2013)Doctorow, E.L. (1974). Ragtime. New York: Penguin.This impressionistic portrait of New York in the early 1900’s has been widely praised as a “classic,” and has been made into a movie and a Broadway show. I can't understand the attraction.The story is roughly centered on the life of an upper-class family in New York, but dozens of other sub-stories flare up and die down around them. A rich socialite who married for money defends her husband who killed her lover, a famous architect. For no reason at all, she takes up with an impoverished Jewish immigrant and his daughter. Anarchist Emma Goldman appears and “liberates” her from her corset. Harry Houdini appears when he accidentally runs his car into the rich family’s yard. Sigmund Freud appears on his visit to Clark University in 1909. William Taft wins the presidency. Henry Ford has lunch with J.P Morgan. And so on, and on, and on,and on.Toward the end of the (300-page) novel, a black man becomes enraged by an act of racial discrimination and finding no satisfaction in the legal system, turns to violence. That’s the only dramatic move in the entire novel, and it’s supposed to show America’s “loss of innocence” and rising awareness of racism. But that is pure nonsense, as anyone who knows anything about American history (and Black history) can attest. There never was an “age of innocence,” except among the profoundly ignorant, a condition that persists today.I think the reader is supposed to be charmed, or possibly amazed, at the intermingling of fictional and historical characters. I think that was a literary innovation in 1975, I can’t remember, but if so, it is method that no longer has novelty. Charitably, I can say this literary style has not aged well.The writing is pedestrian. Quotation marks are dispensed with, so I guess that’s a sort of innovation, but the language is mundane, the narration predictable and the descriptions full of empty abstraction. There are few memorable scenes or turns of phrase, and there are so many characters, you can’t even remember them, let alone identify with any of them, so the emotional effect of the work is nil.If you don’t know the social history of America during this period, it seems you would be mystified by all the random comings and goings. If you do know the history, you would be stupefied by its unimaginative recitation. Children might like the book because it gives easily digestible access to reasonably accurate history, though without insight.The acclaim this book has received is a mystery to me. It was a huge disappointment.
—Bill
