Darwin8u's Reviews > Ragtime

“Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
― E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime



So my first book of 2014 isn't even on my to-read list. Must be good. Yes, in fact it is the killer historical novel of the Ragtime era. It is the big uncle to late 90s Philip Roth ('I Married a Communist', 'American Pastoral') , Don DeLillo ('Libra', 'Underworld'), Gore Vidal ('Empire, Hollywood') & Norman Mailer* (Executioner's Song & Harlot's Ghost) novels which seem to all bend a little to the wind that blew out of this syncopated, tight, urgent historical novel. Doctorow captures a swift and direct channel of New York's energy, contradiction, growth, insecurity, isolation as America transformed between the late 1800s and early 1900s. It captured the race, immigrant, monied, and cultural changes that gripped New York as cars were beginning to roll down the streets and planes and Houdini were both beginning to float, briefly, in the air.

* Doctorow actually edited Norman Mailer's 'An American Dream' so it might seem odd to call Doctorow a literary uncle to Mailer since 'Ragitme' was originally published in 1974, but as most large families invariably find some nephews ARE actually older than their biological uncles. But I still hold that 'Ragtime' was influential on Mailer's later historical novels and even nonfiction. OK, so, perhaps Mailer and Doctorow are more like kissing cousins. Fine. I'll call them cousins.