Ragtime
Ratings3
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.7
Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century & the First World War. The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, NY, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. Almost magically, the line between fantasy & historical fact, between real & imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud & Emiliano Zapata slip in & out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family & other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler & a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.
Reviews with the most likes.
What a cool, weird novel. I was really surprised by it–I'm not familiar with the movie or the musical, and the copy from our library is like... from 1975 (OK I just looked it up, our copy was purchased in 1986). ANYWAY it looks old (especially since I'm used to reading flashy YA novels and graphic novels) but it feels surprising and fresh and relevant. Uhh basically I literally judged it by its cover and its cover was inaccurate.
Also I probably need to re-read this after having read the Wikipedia article for every historical figure in this.
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After finally seeing the musical Ragtime I wanted to re-read the book and it's still such a funny surprising little gem!
I don' t have strong feelings about this book in any particular direction, it was better than 2 stars, but not quite three stars, so I rounded up to three.
The book was a mish-mash, interesting and entertaining at points, and occasionally engaging, but not consistently enough for me to ever truly enjoy it.
It was an interesting character study, though every character was broken in some way. It had a few explicit sexual encounters, some of which were interesting for their social connotations, and others which just seemed gratuitously provocative. It was also an interesting social commentary on times past, showing how the tides of social change wash over us, sometimes carrying us under and sometimes letting us ride the waves.
Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I had a stronger interest in historical fiction. As it is, for me it was a moderately interesting jumble of a book.
