Ragtime

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Ragtime

E. L. Doctorow

Literature

Aug 1, 2018

Ragtime is first and foremost a good read, animated with complex characters, real and invented, and several absorbing plotlines that intersect in the narrative’s ingenious design. The layering of fiction and fact, ephemera and history, headline news and private heartache is alluring, giving the book a surface glamour that is at once entertaining and compelling. Equally captivating are the juxtapositions of poverty and wealth, leisure and labor, sex and politics, idea and emotion. And although it is lucidly declarative, it is peculiarly told: There is a matter-of-factness to Doctorow’s prose, no matter how outlandish its content, that keeps the telling—appropriately enough given the book’s title—a little offbeat. The narrative itself is syncopated, playing off our expectations of history to present an entirely new music, one that holds us in thrall and creates no little sense of wonder.

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