Ragtime

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 and the First World War.

The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, 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. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.

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This classic novel, published in 1975, chronicles the lives of three families in early twentieth-century New York. Three tales are relayed as separate stories initially, then are interwoven gradually.

The families' stories: that of rich white people, blacks from Harlem, and immigrant Jews, capture the spirit of the country in this era (1906-1915), and examine the shimmering, shattering forces that converged, evoking wonder as well as terror, in an age when everything seemed possible. Doctorow reminds readers that our life is not one "story." Rather, we are who we are because of the combination of our experiences.

Newsweek

Ragtime is as exhilarating as a deep breath of pure oxygen... At times, the swift, short sentences suggest the pristine flicker of silent film; at others, the sharp angles and sardonic deployment of detail in Citizen Kane... The grace and surface vivacity of Ragtime make it enormous fun to read. But beneath its peppy, bracing rhythms sound the neat, sad waltz of Gatsby and the tunes of betrayed promise. History resonates with special clarity here. Doctorow has found a fresh way to orchestrate the themes of American innocence, energy, and inchoate ambition.

Few writers have succeeded as E. L. Doctorow has at creating stories (largely based in 1930s New York) that evoke both warm, personal memory and a grander national portrait. Doctorow doesn't always promise historical veracity, but he captures our imagination of the past flawlessly.