Ragtime

Rating:
Summary: Captures the Beat of the Period
Review: Doctorow's Ragtime is different from any other book I have read. Ragtime tells the story of an unnamed family living in the early 20th Century. But it also gives glimpses into the lives of all the famous people that tangentially touch the lives of the family, from Harry Houdini to Henry Ford to Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa.

The intricate interlacing of the story, with digressions that flow from the previous plot, but yet still have a staccato feel to them, mirrors the rags that were popular in music then and from which the book takes its name.

There is not much to the plot. You should read the book for the atmosphere and vignettes about famous people, not because you want to become engrossed in the lives of interesting characters. But it is an interesting story of life a century ago.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely The Worst (Ever)
Review: This would have to be one of the worst books I've ever read, and after 5 years of highschool, I've read a lot of horrible novels.

This book meanders. We are not introduced to a particular set of characters whom we get to know and love as the book progresses. We are introduced to scads of minor characters who really don't have anything to do with each other. They don't usually meet. They usually don't interact. For example, we have Mother's Younger Brother (who apparently doesn't have a name) and Freud. Do they ever meet? No. Do they have anything in common? No. Do they work toward a similar goal? No. Is there any reason at ALL for them to even be in the novel? Of course not. They are simply in there because the author is A. a totally hopeless writer B. unable to develop a decent plot and C. mentally and emotionally unbalanced.

Perhaps Doctorow does explore absolutely every aspect of the early 1900's. However, my question would be why would anyone want to? Were the early 1900's so dull, boring, and pointless that every aspect can be summed up in one novel?

There you have it. I'd consider giving it to someone else so they can experience its meandering and hopeless plot line, but it IS a library book, and I'm not that mean spirited.

Rating:
Summary: Good reading--savor the fin de siecle flavors
Review: In an "age", spanning millions of lives and many years, how to capture the sentiment? Doctorow gives one take on the turn of the century. Here, he weaves together technological change, racial turmoil, and the emergence of a robust new American industial empire. Other names and events could have illustrated this era, but I am very happy with the way Doctorow tells the story.

Rating:
Summary: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: RAGTIME!!
Review: I gotta say this is one heckuva novel. E.L. Doctorow is a fine writer and scholar, possessing a novelist's eye for narrative and good storytelling and a historian's knack for getting the details right on the mark.

Ragtime is a true ensemble drama, the cast ranging from Harry Houdini, who surprisingly was a jewish immigrant whose real name was Erich Weiss, to Coalhouse Walker, a gifted black pianist who becomes via personal tragedy the leader of a terrorist group, to an affluent family who becomes entangled in this fascinating web of intrigue, passion, and murder.

Please read Ragtime right away. Not only is it a great story but I also became educated as to the plight of the working class (mostly comprised of immigrants) in turn of the century New York City, where the rich dined on caviar as they sailed on yachts while the poor were packed en masse into squalid slums, without proper health care, education, or nutrition. It was only then that I realized how much I have taken for granted in my sheltered life.

Two big thumbs up! Let's put it this way: once you pick up Ragtime you'll never put it down until the end.

Rating:
Summary: I LOVE THIS!
Review: This is a great book! A classic American novel! It is so fascinating, just the sentence structure is a break from the norm. The mixing of fiction/non-fiction characters is brilliant. I also highly reccomend the musical!

Rating:
Summary: Gawd awful dreck
Review: EL Doctorow is a man on a mission, a mission to re-educate the world, and he's chosen to do it novel of historical fiction by novel of historical fiction. Oh yes, by the barest bones definition, RAGTIME is indeed historical fiction, and the reader cannot escape the fact that history does matter, it does make a difference. There are central characters in RAGTIME, but they exist mainly to provide a forward thrust to the narrative, the vehicle Doctorow has chosen to drive home his point. They embody roles, are examples of certain patterns of behavior and as such are not even named. They are not meant to be seen as individual people doing things, but more as demographics, as representatives of groups of people. The main characters are puppeteered with a great deal of irony as Doctorow indoctrinates his readers with his views on capitalism and the correct execution of the American Dream. In choosing the first decade of the last century, Doctorow gave himself a rich cast of real characters to play with, all living within the crux of "now" and "then" and dealing with that fact as best they could. History matters here, because Doctorow has built his story on it, and so entwined his narrative with it that it is impossible to ignore. RAGTIME could not be lifted out of its decade. It belongs there.

With these lofty ideals to contend with, the plot of RAGTIME then becomes rather fantastical, both in its twisting of accepted history with rampant, speculatory commentary presented as fact and also in the neatness with which everything ends. The branding of famous magician Houdini as "one of the last great mother lovers", is particularly puzzling. Indeed, the Houdini of RAGTIME is one blonde away from opening a motel and calling himself Norman Baits. That Doctorow chose not to mention that the man had married in 1894-and that he and his wife had been so in love that after his death, she held annual séances for the rest of her life, trying to contact him-is irresponsible at best, manipulative at worst. Such blatant mishandling of history for narrative purposes weakens the integrity of the novel and lessons the impact of Doctorow's lessons for his contemporary audience. The neat conclusion is also somewhat bothersome, but as its scenes are painted by Doctorow's wide, ironic brush, it is fairly certain that even the sing song quality of the last few pages is intentional, as he glibly describes the deaths of a few main characters and the assassinations that will plunge the world into the Great War.

Borges wrote of fiction's ability to be a truer mirror of society than fact, but Doctorow blithely carries this idea too far, nonsensically twisting history for the express purpose of creating disgustingly easy to use tropes. This device smacks of laziness or worse, and cheapens whatever lasting value the novel could otherwise have had. How awful.

Rating:
Summary: Overrated, yes, but a worthwhile diversion nonetheless
Review: My immediate reaction to Doctorow's Ragtime is that it reads like John Dos Passos lite. Imagine if John Irving tried to rewrite the U.S.A. trilogy: all surface, no depth.

Other reviewers have commented on the similarities between Ragtime's structure and those of the films of Robert Altman. While this is a worthwhile comparison, I feel that Altman ultimately pulls it off better, as the whole intertwining-strands-of-narrative thing is much easier to follow in film, and, frankly, it's a bit clumsy in Doctorow's hands. Characters disappear for a hundred pages here and there, and none of the characters are all that well defined, whereas in, say, MASH, even the minor characters are unique.

This being said, the book reads rather quickly, and is worth taking a couple of days to burn through. Those looking for a fast-paced somewhat-historical novel, look no further. Those looking for the Great American Novel should continue their search.

Rating:
Summary: The Movie is Better
Review: Due to some amazing coincidence, I happened to finish this book on the same day that the movie "Ragtime" aired on television. While the movie cut some serious corners, I think that the film is infinitely better than the novel. I have never read any of E.L. Doctorow's books before, and I cannot say I am in a hurry to run right out and dig up anymore of them. If "Ragtime" is his best work, I fear we are all in a lot of trouble.

I really wanted to like this book. Honest. Within 10 pages, I started to get a sinking feeling in my stomach. By the last 50 pages, I didn't think I would have the energy to finish the darn thing. But since I don't like to leave started books unfinished, I gutted it out, hoping for redemption. I did find some redemption, but it sure took a long time to get there.

"Ragtime," written in 1975, is an attempt at historical fiction. Doctorow writes a tale of racial injustice set in the early part of the 19th century. Real historical figures appear at a rapid pace: Henry Ford, Harry Thaw, Stanford White, Harry Houdini, and scads of others. Against this backdrop, Doctorow sets up the story of Coalhouse Walker, a black piano player who rebels against the treatment he receives from a local fire station. After his car is vandalized and his wife-to-be is killed, Walker goes on a rampage of violence and mayhem.

I know what Doctorow is trying to do, but I just don't like it. The racial angle doesn't come into play until far into the book, and the prose is sheer agony. His sentences are extremely short, which in itself is a different way, and not necessarily a wrong way, of writing a novel. I think he is trying to make his prose mirror ragtime music, or images of the time. For me, every sentence was like ramming a truck into a brick wall.

Something should also be said about the various story threads in the novel. Sensational accounts of the day (the Thaw-Stanford murder) vie with fictional characters. While Doctorow does manage to weave them together at the end of the book, he takes far too long to do so. All of the vignettes seem to have much to do with the idea of escaping some type of role or problem. Houdini's escape tricks, Younger Brother's search for something to believe in, Morgan's quest for immortality; they all involve a sort of transcendence. Is Doctorow criticizing the supposedly staid social constraints of the time? What is certain is that he doesn't care much for America in this time frame. He seems to take great joy in revealing sexual peccadilloes and other scandalous behavior. I think he is criticizing the widely held belief that this time period was a type of American Eden in which everyone lived happily and troubles were few.

Hmm, maybe I did get more out of this book than I thought. I'm still not about to dive into anymore Doctorow, even though I usually will read other books by an author if I think they are capable of doing better. Be aware with this one; it is not a sunny, quick read.

Rating:
Summary: ragtime review
Review: Ragtime is about this family who lived in New Rochelle, NY. It was a good book and it was very exciting and very weird. The story was mixed about the different family members and there good and bad times.

This book was mainly many different stories compiled into one some of the con's of the book are that it doesn't really draw you in at the beginning and its an older set book. This book is not really for the teenage crowd but is more sutible for older adults.

Rating:
Summary: The music of the turn of the century will never be the same!
Review: In this incredible novel by E.L. Doctorow, the plot addresses three of the main social positions of the turn of the century: the rich, the immigrants and the opressed African-American community. These three classes are represented by three families whose lives somehow intersect eachother until they are brought into the confusion of the time period. Certain more popular historical figures such as Harry Houdini, Emma Goldman, and Booker T. Washington are refrenced which give the characters a certain characteristic of historical importance. This book brings to its reader to the struggle for freedom and justice, racial equality, economic troubles and the turmoil of trying to live simply.