Research Guide to American Literature

to first-person plural, using “we” to refer to the WASP family. Most interesting is
the way the narrator filters the past through a 1970s perspective that shapes Coal-
house with a Black Panther sensibility and Younger Brother as a Weatherman-
like conspirator. These techniques highlight racism, sexism, and class bias, while
also contributing to the novel’s questioning of the nature of narrative and its place
in shaping historical reality.
Ragtime takes its epigraph from Joplin: “Do not play this piece fast. It is
never right to play Ragtime fast.” Yet, the novel is filled with descriptions of
fast-paced progress and technological developments: assembly-line produc-
tion and the invention of faster modes of travel from trains to automobiles
to airplanes. Ragtime music itself “never stood still a moment,” and Peary can
play The Minute Waltz in forty-eight seconds. The advances in technology
are matched by the social transformations of characters such as the destitute
Tateh, who becomes movie mogul Baron Ashenazy; Mother, who develops an
identity independent from Father; and Houdini, who escapes from the chains
and social attitudes that would imprison him. The novel negatively portrays
stagnation in its unfavorable depiction of those unwilling to accept change,
while celebrating social transformation and diversity through the use of music
as a metaphor. The complexity and richness of Ragtime invite multiple inter-
pretive approaches, all of which add to the reader’s understanding of American
history and attitudes.
Doctorow’s other novels include Big as Life (1966); Loon Lake (1980); World ’s
Fair (1985), winner of the National Book Award; Billy Bathgate (1989), winner
of the PEN/Faulkner Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the
William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters;
The Waterworks (1994); City of God (2000); The March (2005), winner of the
PEN/Faulkner and National Book Critics Circle Awards; and Homer & Langley
(2009). He has also published the short-story collections Lives of the Poets: Six
Stories and a Novella (1984) and Sweet Land Stories (2004) and a play, Drinks
before Dinner (1979). His essays are collected in Reporting the Universe (2003) and
Creationists: Selected Essays 1993–2006 (2006). Three Screenplays (2003) comprises
adaptations of The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, and Loon Lake. Doctorow holds the
Lewis and Loretta Glucksman Chair in English and American Letters at New
York University.
Students interested in learning more about Doctorow might begin with
the overviews of his life, work, and critical reception by Douglas Fowler, Carol
C. Harter and James R. Thompson, Paul Levine, and John G. Parks. Doctorow
has explained his work and discussed his writing process and literary influences
in interviews. Morris collects interviews from throughout Doctorow’s career up
to 1997 in Conversations with E. L. Doctorow (1999); the interviews conducted
by Allen Weinstein also offer valuable insights. Students interested in the criti-
cal reception of Doctorow’s works can consult newspaper, magazine, and journal
reviews of his books; John Williams provides a detailed overview of the reception.
Essays on particular themes or critical approaches to Doctorow’s works have been
collected by Richard Trenner; many of them deal with Ragtime. Berndt Ostendorf
traces the importance of music in the novel, as does William Matheson, who also

E. L. Doctorow 21