Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow

Published in 1975, Ragtime is an amazing tapestry capturing the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century & WW1, when … “patriotism was a reliable sentiment … everyone wore white in the summer… the only thing more irritating than immigrants is black folk, specially when they start acting like they was white folk.”

It’s aptly titled too, for Doctorow manages to capture the ragtime music energy of the era. A quote by Scott Joplin, a famous ragtime musician, at the beginning of this novel, affirming that “It is never right to play Ragtime fast”, gives away the style and tone.  It starts very slowly, with descriptions of the main characters, where they live, and what they do., and then proceeds forward.

This colorful semi-historical novel is jam-packed with a myriad of characters, some fictional and some real-life, revolving around the fortunes of three families; a white family who are unnamed (simply referred to as father, mother and mother's younger brother), a Jewish immigrant family and a black family. Their lives intersect in both happy and tragic ways. Interspersed are a cast of real life authentic figures such as magician Harry Houdini, Admiral Peary, tycoons Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan, anarchist Emma Goldman, Sigmund Freud, Booker T. Washington, and even a brief mention of Tom Thumb.

There is no inkling of a plot or hint that the book will be anything more than disparate descriptive passages for several early chapters. When interconnections between the characters intermingled with their encounters with some of the famous historical personages of the age begin to appear, these are the first indications that it will evolve into the veneer of a novel. 

These strange characters are inextricably linked by unexpected and unforeseen events seemingly outside their control; the young boy’s uncle is in love with a woman who meets a revolutionary who is arrested for creating anarchy when a criminal holes up in J.P. Morgan’s library after his fiancé is killed when she leaves the house of the mother of the young boy’s uncle. And so on.

Maybe it is Doctorow’s genius that he can link together as many characters as he chooses, keeping them intertwined in the fine fabric of turn-of-the-century New York. Or maybe it is because this bedlam and turmoil is intentional, reflecting perfectly the chaos and confusion of the era.

There is an undercurrent of radicalism in the novel and a strong sense of the inequality of society. What I found most stimulating was the fictional character of Coalhouse Walker, a ragtime pianist, and his fight for his rights stands out against an obvious injustice. His fanatical pursuit of justice drives him to revolutionary violence at a great cost to himself, but also to those he loves. It’s about this time that the book begins to become very interesting, and his story dominates the rest of the novel.

Ragtime definitely delivers. This is extrovert writing – witty, active voice, strong verbs, present tense. It is beautifully crafted, a stylistic tour de force, ingeniously pulled together and craftily presented, worthy of the era it captures, and should be enjoyed by anyone interested in the period.

“Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your
headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E. L Doctorow

By Ken Johnson, June 23, 2018

Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is known for creating strong, smart, passionate, and occasionally eccentric female characters. In Daughter of Fortune, this includes Eliza and her adopted mother Rose, plus several bit players that make this story like none other of the California Gold Rush of 1849. And the men are no slouches either.

Baby Eliza shows up on in a soap crate at a wealthy family’s home in Valparaiso, Chili—with or without a mink blanket, depending on who’s telling the story—and Rose, who lives alone with her stodgy brother Jeremy, takes her in and raises her as her daughter. For 15 years Eliza is a model child, dressing like a beautiful and delicate doll and following Rose’s guidance on how to become a proper young lady. Womanhood, though, takes her for a wild ride, and she has a torrid affair with one of her Uncle Jeremy’s lowly employees, the serious and romantic Joaquin. She gets pregnant, but Joaquin has already left to find his fortune in California. Eliza, of course, follows him as a ship’s stowaway and spends the next four years impersonating either a Chilean boy or a Chinese boy searching the High Sierras for her lover.  

Rose, a spinster at the age of 25, surreptitiously pens lusty stories that eventually also make their way to California to help miners get through the misery that greets them in the gold fields. As it turns out, Rose has her own secrets, mainly a love affair with one of the proteges of the Marquis de Sade, which gives her plenty of material for her books. Rose secretly wishes Eliza luck with her love affair with Joaquin because she herself was banished from England to Chili to save her reputation, and she’s quietly resentful.

Meanwhile Pauline de Santa Cruz, daughter of a wealthy landowner and wife of an entrepreneur, decides to buy a steamship, fit it with dried ice, and use it to transport fresh fruits and vegetables to the gold fields. She makes a fortune. 

We’re never clear about the fate of Joaquin—did he die in California early on, or did he become an outlaw? Jacob Todd, who we first meet in Chili when he pretends to be a missionary, ends up in California, changes his name and calls himself a journalist. He earns his living making up stories about Joaquin, so nobody actually knows what’s what. Even, possibly, Jacob.

Eliza’s friend Tao Chi’en is a Chinese doctor who saves her life aboard the ship and also earns the respect of the California community because of his medical wisdom. He helps Eliza maintain her secrecy and hides his own love for her, which, we’re sure, will eventually be requited. 

Rose’s other brother, the dashing sea captain John, adds mystery to the plot. Plus there’s the prostitutes who have learned to stay safe in a dangerous occupation and even more dangerous country and the Singsong girls who Tao Chi’en tries to save, earning a reputation as a reprobate because others think he’s using them in one awful way or another—and are fine with it.

The book is a primer on Chinese and Chilean culture and the horrors of the goldrush. We learn much about human nature while reading this book, in which nobody is entirely who we think they are. Except, possibly, boring Jeremy. — Pat Prijatel    

My Antonia, by Willa Cather

We had one of our most engaged discussions ever while reading Willa Cather’s classic,  My Antonia. In the book’s epigraph, Cather quotes Virgil: “Optima dies…prima fugit,” which translates to “The best days are the first to flee.” The quote has two meanings. First, the book is a romantic look back at childhood and the happiness of the past. Second, the Virgil poem itself is about appreciating and living off the land.The book was first published 100 years ago and new editions continue to be marketed. More than 30 different versions, all with different covers, are available on Goodreads. Most BBB members had a different cover, some showing just the land, others showing Antonia, others combining the two, others using only type and graphics. 

Some topics of our chats:

  •How and why did Cather become such a successful writer at a time when other women were writing under pseudonyms? One reason: She found a home at McClure’smagazine, one of the most active muckraking publications, which gave her credibility as well as a platform.

•Did Cather choose to write the book from the point of view of Jim because having a man tell the story might have been more acceptable to male editors? Perhaps, but maybe she did it simply because she felt that was the best was to tell the story.

•Jim clearly loved Antonia, but their lives were defined too differently for the two to be together in that world at that time. To be a success, Jim had to leave the land and get more education, which pushed him farther away. To Antonia, however, success meant staying on the land.

•Some of the “hired girls” also found success away from Nebraska, where they could redefine themselves and live on their wits and talents without the social restrictions of the city-country divide of class and status.

•If Antonia’s father had decided to stay in the city after leaving his native Bohemia—settling in New York instead of Nebraska, for example—would he have had a fuller and longer life? Antonia’s mother, however, knew she could not fit in and moved the family far enough that her past could not follow them. Her husband paid the ultimate price and her kids had a life that was far more difficult than it needed to be.

•While Antonia’s life was hard and often harsh, she was one of the happiest characters in the book. She knew who she was and where she fit in, and she embraced her own truths.

Cather’s descriptions of people and the land are so rich that I reread several passages just for the pleasure of the words. This book has one of my favorite lines, which I remember every time we spend the day traveling through Nebraska on our way to Colorado. When Jim first encounters Nebraska as a child, he observes, “The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was, still, all day long, Nebraska.” Nevertheless, he clearly loved that land, as did Cather. —Pat Prijatel