Jan-Maat's Reviews > Ragtime

Very enjoyable novel of turn of the century America. The central plot element is a modernised retelling of Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas - foreknowledge of which is not required for enjoyment of this novel. In a sense I feel it sells that story a little short because it has to share Ragtime with a bunch of other elements and Doctorow doesn't to my taste project the same kind of moral outrage as Kleist but making race the equivalent of late medieval/early modern social structure is still a strong statement.

It is a lean, dry and witty book. The plot elements and characters are chopped up and interspersed with historical figures - including Houdini learning to fly an aeroplane and being mistaken for it's inventor, Freud and Jung going through the tunnel of love together at a Coney Island fairground & Emma Goldmann speaking up for truth and justice. The fictional characters are mainly nameless, reduced to labels. Lots of humour and sharp observation. It is a picture of the USA before the First World War from broken fragments of scandal and celebrity, injustice and struggle, innovation, invention and misunderstanding that has to end inevitably with the promise of Holywood and the mythologisation of the past, of family of a country not big enough for anybody to be able to escape their demons for long, but still with odd implausible chances of happiness for a few.