Inspiring Older Readers
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
As I finished reading this novel (or rereading it to be strictly accurate) I started to think about how I could possibly do justice to it in a short review. It’s not a particularly long novel – less than 300 pages – but it feels epic in its scope and its cast of characters. The thought of trying to capture the richness of what eventually coalesces as a plot just feels impossible. So I’m not going to attempt it – instead I want to try and focus on Doctorow’s overarching themes and structure.
Set in the intellectual, creative and commercial vibrancy of New York in the years prior to the start of World War One, Doctorow’s objective seems to be to reimagine how we think about history. He interlaces fictional storylines with real historical figures who move in and out of the action in a series of cameos. The cumulative effect is to lay down layer upon layer of detail and character that he buckles and folds into a three dimensional narrative.
This results in a novel that at first appears to lack structure, to be a loosely packaged series of set-pieces that don’t appear to relate to each other except by the accident of time and geography. However, as the story wends its way through the intricate sequencing of events, a pattern begins to emerge.
At this point it’s probably worth returning to the title, Ragtime, because the title gives us a strong signal about how the book is structured and how we should read it. Ragtime, it turns out, is the musical form that most closely mirrors Doctorow’s own ambitions in relation to his prose style. It’s the music that sets the pace and shape of his writing – the sentences are carefully planned to make you read with a ragtime swing. I’ve often heard ragtime music played at breakneck speed - which is to miss the point entirely as Doctorow himself highlights by putting this Scott Joplin quotation at the start of the novel:
“Do not play this piece fast.
It is never right to play Ragtime fast…..”
Not surprisingly, therefore, you will struggle to read this book quickly. Sentence lengths vary considerably with the deliberate intent of mirroring the stop/start rhythm of ragtime.
The way Doctorow uses real historical figures in the book might also lead a reader to suspect that this is all about gimmick and celebrity – dropping in famous names to keep people hooked. But that is not what he’s about. Characters like Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman, Evelyn Nesbit, J.P. Morgan, Stanford White, Carl Jung ( to name just a handful) are there to emphasise the extraordinary human soup that America was in the early 20th century. It also highlights the way in which history should be thought about as a living thing – these people, however famous they have subsequently become, were real people living real lives.
Doctorow is also not only interested in the rich and famous and he’s not content to simply skim material off the top layer. He’s also intent on showing how this crucible of creativity and capitalism was also capable of causing terrible poverty, hardship and discrimination. The real moral anchor of the book doesn’t reside in any of those capable of making social waves or big financial and commercial deals but in the deprived and oppressed Jewish community where the philosophy of Socialism is able to take root and begin to flourish.
I think it’s a tribute to Doctorow’s abilities as an author that his quite unorthodox approach to punctuation on the page isn’t something that gets in the way. He was quite militant about his approach to these issues and didn’t compromise throughout his career. He put it this way:
“I like commas. I detest semi-colons – I don’t think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn’t need them, they were fly-specks on the page. If you’re doing it right,” he continued, “the reader will know who’s talking.”
Ragtime is frequently ranked in lists of great novels of the 20th century and I can understand that entirely. When I first read it back in the 1970s I was blown away by it and I’m delighted to say that the passing of all these years has not changed my mind and, if anything, it’s made me admire it even more.
You’ll be able to pick up both paper and hardback editions of this book for very little and, if you haven’t already got one, put it somewhere near the top of your ‘must buy’ list.
Terry Potter
July 2018