Doctorow's Ragtime seamlessly incorporates known history and artistic improvisation, thus creating a text which feels simultaneously familiar and unsettling. Thanks to Mr. Leff's U.S. history lectures, we have a general idea of the revolutionary ideas that took shape at the turn of the century and the conservative backlash against movements such as women's liberation. We know the stories of union strikes turned violent when factory bosses called in military support, and we know about America's brutal history of racism and oppression that sytematically denied African-American citizens political and economic equality to this day. Ragtime foregrounds these complex sociopolitical isssues, producing a picture of American history which agrees with our modern interpretations of the era. Doctorow's text becomes immediately historical.
However, Doctorow's history is peppered with less familiar references, much like melodic chords sparkling out of the rythmic bass of a Ragtime piece. Each new character dares the reader to question their very existence: Was there really a famous pianist named Coalhouse Walker? Did the renowned J.P. Morgan actually found a secret illuminati society based on his percieved status as a god among men? As we've seen in class, the answers to these questions are more convoluted than a historian would prefer. Nobody can confirm that Coalhouse Walker didn't exist, though the historical narrative omits reference to his crimes. Similarly, how could anyone prove that J.P. Morgan wasn't a fanatical amateur Egyptologist given his well-known love for collecting art and cultural artifacts? These paradoxes highlight Brian McHale's idea of the ontological dominant in postmodernist literature; rather than asking questions about the nature of a world, Ragtime challenges readers to question the very existence of his projected world and thus the existence of our world and its historical narrative.
One more question: Does it matter that Doctorow's history deviates from truth as recorded in archives and databases if his depiction of 1900's America's dominant modes of change and sociopolitical struggle remain truthful? The characters may not be "real" per se, though a student of American history could learn a great deal about this nation's complicated history from Ragtime. Maybe the role of historical fiction is not to simply frame a story in another world, place, or time (McHale's concept of the heterocosm) but to elaborate on the world itself and, historically, its effects on today's world. Reading Ragtime has certainly prompted me to consider how such a history has affected modern-day politics and culture, so I would not be so quick to dismiss Doctorow's work on the basis of its factual improvisations.
The connection with McHale point about the ontological dominant is super interesting here - it's really odd when we start to question reality in this way and get into a deep rabbit hole of wondering whether our entire perception and understanding of history is flawed - a fiction in and of itself. Who's to say Doctorow's fictional description of history doesn say more than the history we learn?
ReplyDelete