REVIEW OF RAGTIME-E.L.Doctorow

TOM'S REVIEW

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Per  Wikipedia, “In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Ragtime number 86 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005.” And yet JFDI ratings ranged between 3.5 and 4.0 stars.

 I was inclined to go with the majority a give it 3.5 stars but bumped it to 4.0 because E.L. Doctorow is credited with popularizing (if not inventing) a genre, the historical novel in which the famous—in this case, J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Evelyn Nesbit, Emma Goldman and Harry Houdini—are portrayed as characters with common frailties who bump up against fictional characters with the same hopes and problems as middle-class readers of serious fiction. 

Wikipedia goes on to describe Ragtime as “a unique adaptation of the historical narrative genre with a subversive 1970's slant.” And that’s its problem. It’s not a timeless classic; it’s a zeitgeist of a time of awkward sex, music, politics, economics and dress sense.

4 stars