I really must finish some thoughts....

Ok. So as many of you know, our discussion in class today became a bit excited over history and fiction and how they relate. Though I communicated most of what I had to say today in class, I would like to revisit some of the ideas that have been floating around our room during class. I anticipate a varied, scattered post. You should too.

Let's start with some conclusions. First off, history is very like fiction and vice versa --they have plot, characters, setting, and (maybe most importantly) narrative. Before opening our first reading I could have written that down though. When stated, initially the comparison seems easy, but being the smart kids that we are at Uni, we have to make the simple complicated. We read Doctorow and now we have an issue: namely, that in his novel, the historical and the fictitious meet, mingle, and are practically indistinguishable. This deepens the initial comparison to the question: what delineates history from fiction?

Again, the question seems simple enough and the answer plain as day: one is true and factual, the other is false and contrived. But how is one to define fact or fiction? From whose perspective is it judged? and the question deepens. The clear line that separates historical truth from imaginative stories is now blurring in your own mind as you try desperately to define what is true and false for yourself. The threat of human bias causes this a paranoia that subsequently forces you to ask if there is any truth. The stories told in textbooks are severed from the real world as they morph into mere representations of truth. This sequence causes a sense of panic. History and truth are being turned into stories and fiction. It's disorienting. But why? Why do we care so much about events that we had no part in?

We care because it gives us context. It gives us a reason to act the way we do, to like certain people and fight others, to care about this and not that etc. We are built upon it and thinking that our foundation may crumble because it lacks truth is a scary thought. We want to be an extension of something substantial and undeniable, not something created and influence-able. At the same time, we are thinking about the future, when we are the history (if that makes sense...). How does it feel to think that we merely exist and then are replaced by mutable shells of our once factual being? It's creepy. So if fiction and history are so inseparable,  is this concluding that truth is nonexistent or at least, extremely difficult to identify?

If this is what you deduce (as this is what I originally got from all of this foolishness), this debate seems thoroughly depressing and annoying. Those who are backing this belief that there is no truth are SO ANNOYING. Much like Doctorow's political stance, these people are able to deconstruct and tear down the long established monoliths of truth, fact, and history, but unable to reconstruct anything to fill their spot, leaving an unsightly void in the world. When I realized that they would have to leave some such void in order to champion the there-is-no-truth-in-the-world and, in a discussion with such educated and intelligent individuals, this hole produces a problem. YOU JUST CAN'T DO THAT. It's like you don't like the design on a shirt, so you just cut it off the front of the shirt but you don't resew in anything to fill the whole so you are left with a obvious problem. Thus, I determined that my conclusion from their observations was incorrect so I began to explore other avenues that the evidence could open. I came up with a much more suitable solution.

These writers aren't saying that there is no truth but rather that there is SO much truth. Using fiction, they show that distinct perspectives are true; rather that there being one real truth there are practically infinitely many and they are constantly changing. Or, in other words, the fiction deepens and expands the truth rather that discrediting it. (Man this is really falling into place.) Doctorow tries to show that history is dynamic and changing. Using the truth of perspective, it is! All the time. The analogy to witnesses to a car crash was brought up in class today, if you ask witness A what happened the day of the crime, then wait a week after he/she has seen all the media about the accident and tell me that the story won't have changed.

So, I know this is long and winded but let me make like a few more significant points as to WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Well, this means that though historical writers use these perspectives, they can't quite use them the way fiction writers can. A historian can't just make up a character to reinforce a argument or a point of view while a novelist can. This gives a novelist a whole extra bag of tricks to enhance their writing. It's hard to convey meaning through facts and dates but emotion can be communicated easily. If writing history is like playing soccer, then writing historical fiction is like playing soccer... and being able to use your hands --it is often discredited as cheating but is way more effective than kicking the darn thing. Historians and novelists have similar jobs for similar purposes but everyone must recognize that there is a difference. It exists; there is no way around it. Still, even though I have come to some conclusions, the question is still out there and I definitely plan to revisit it later in the semester.

The Little Boy and the title

For the most part, the narrative position that Doctorow takes in Ragtime is a detached third person narrator, however, as I have discussed in previously posts, he sometimes slips into the perspective of one of his characters. The most significant of these characters is the little boy. Doctorow repeatedly comes back to the young child's point of view, using him to view much of the family dynamics of the New Rochelle family. But why? Why is the point of view of a child what Doctorow wants for this story?

Through Doctorow's manipulation of historical figures, Doctorow tries to change the idea of history from static to dynamic, from set in stone to theoretical, essentially from fact to fiction. Thus, he needs a narrator who is symbolic of the changing times and eager and able to perceive the changes occurring around him. A small child is perfect for this symbol because little kids grow rapidly and have visible changes in appearance over relatively short periods of time. There is a scene about him looking in the mirror and eventually he can't decide which is his real self and which is the reflection. THIS IS SO RAGTIME, both history and story are so close to reality that the reader struggles to mark fact from fiction.

The boy is also symbolic of fiction because he is young, playful, and, as all young children do, trying to create a world that he understands. History, in contrast, is more cold. One author I was reading discussed the title of the book in relation to the events in the book in a piece of literary criticism about the novel. There are two reasons for the title. First, the novel is about the ragtime era but second and more subtly, the genre of music called ragtime is comparable to the genre of writing that goes on in the book. History is the thumping, straight bass line holding the piece together while fiction is the treble/melody line with syncopated rhythms and intricate chords, sometimes harmoniously adding to the bass while at others, when the treble gets too far from the bass, clashing and eventually erupting into unorganized cacophony. Isn't that exactly like Ragtime? I think this is a wonderful comparison but there is more I need to add. (I am kind of digressing so new paragraph.)

Ragtime, the genre of music, is also a comment on the race relations of the time. Coon songs are basically happy, simple caricatures by white people for white people of older African-American music. Ragtime takes back this style of music and modernizes it, re-adding what made it interesting in the first place, the syncopation and chordal melodies. Coon songs are representative of the New Rochelle family's point of view and the lines that open the book about how there were no Negroes or immigrants: life is happy and simple. Then Colehouse Walker enters and brings with him a story, he is the complication and the rhythm. The New Rochelle family is bass, thumping calmly and steadily along and Colehouse and Sarah are the melody, sometime harmonizes and getting along, other times clashing and fighting. Colehouse embellishes the normally regular routine of the New Rochelle family.

This affect is also seen when Colehouse and the firemen meet. There interaction starts with the white firemen just chilling, minding to their daily routine of not really doing much. Enter Colehouse. Now things change. Colehouse changes encourages them to action and thus starts the story (or melody, to link this back to the metaphor). Thus another example of the ragtime metaphor in the novel.

Conclusion: The little boy is really significant and interesting. The metaphorical ragtime in Ragtime is so insanely cool and adds to reading the novel (at least for us music lovers).

Narration...

Just recently in Spanish, we read a short story by a contemporary Catalunian author. In it, a detective goes to the library and falls asleep reading a book in his office and personal library. When he awakes, he is shocked to discover a woman, who appears to know him, sitting and staring at him. Startled and embarrassed that he doesn't remember the name of this woman that apparently knows him, he listens patiently as she admonishes him for his irresponsibility, his incompetence, and the wrong he did her. Eventually he loses interest in her reprimands and she becomes extremely angry. Heated words and tears come into play and, long, crazy story REALLY short, he finds out she is mad at him because she is a character in a novel and thinks he is the irresponsible author that didn't finish her story. She begs him to have an emotional investment in her story and her actions. (This is the part relevant to this blog post but if you are interested, he isn't the author, the woman shoots the detective, and the last lines are the actually author lamenting how bad this scene is.) E.L. Doctorow would really piss off this woman. Doctorow's narration is detached, uncaring, and full of irony and sarcasm. Doctorow presents his characters pretty individually and then slowly and subtly rips away at them or supports them with carefully chosen and seemingly ambiguous language. At times he is unclear about his position on an issue or character while at others he is blatantly bashing or supporting another.

Although this narration style seems to annoy many people, I like Doctorow's way of describing his characters. I think that Doctorow didn't want his book to be casually popular to the general public and he shows this through his prose. He wrote for an educated, actively engaged audience, one willing to impose different tones upon the words on the page to get the full picture. He wrote so that the whole book could easily be read with little thought in one voice without regard to any of the other voices that could communicate the work. The nuances are lost on those who don't make an effort to appreciate them and the book loses much of its significance. After the initial frustration of trying to figure out where Doctorow stands as a third party, I began to understand and look for the different ways Doctorow was communicating underlying meaning through neutral prose.

Another important part of his narration is his divergence from being a third person narrator on a few occasions. A point from an article I just read while searching for a good panel presentation article gave me a whole new argument on why Doctorow chooses to narrate from where he does. So, this article was talking about how Doctorow was showing the mutability of history and perspective and whatnot.  Jesus Benito Sanchez talks about this novelist who sat in his room on a chair, continually adjusting the position of his chair trying to find the perfect angle to view life from. Doctorow too must deal with the issue of from what angle to view his story. Because he didn't want to fix the perspective, thus contradicting his idea of dynamic history, he discards this as an option. Another option would be to assume the position of omniscient narrator. Again, to avoid fixing his narrative voice, he rejects this narrative voice. Doctorow, instead, opts for an ambiguous narrator whose detachment and distance from the characters continually changes to provide different perspectives. The occasions where Doctorow does narrate through a perspective of one of his characters are, evidently, very significant, particularly the perspective of the little boy. And I could write a whole other blog post on just his perspective and what it means so I think I will.

In short, I like Doctorow's narration. He is engaging and challenges his readers to think. As I continue reading, and with the aid of some pieces of literary criticism, I see more and more significance in Doctorow's voice and I look forward to talking about it in the upcoming panel presentations and my next blog post.

Identity in the first few chapters

Everyone wants to be successful and everyone grapples with the question of who they truly are but Ragtime seems to consider these two issue side by side, evaluating how they relate. Does success shape one's identity or must the identity be manipulated in order to gain success? Either way, what does it matter? Is it really an issue if only a certain type of person is able to succeed and at what point does it become ridiculous to sacrifice personal values for success? The issue of success and how it is obtained is a recurring issue in the beginning of Ragtime. Everyone is forced to claim an identity but how one chooses their identity and values and how that contributes to their success is brought up in characters such as Tateh, Houdini, and Morgan.

Let's start with Tateh. Tateh struggles with creating a living for he and his daughter because he insists on adhering to his personal values that make him opposed to capitalist inequalities and his pride prevents him from taking the charity offered by Evelyn. His first attempt at business (his business of doing portraits) doesn't produce much profit because his identity of the proud, socialist, foreign man doesn't coincide with the characteristics that create a good business man like Morgan or Ford. When he gives up on his original business plan and up grades to the less personal, more modern practice of mass production of his goods, he becomes more successful.

Next, Harry Houdini. Like Tateh, Houdini was a Jewish immigrant from a similar background to Tateh's, that is drawn to America to find work and wealth, but somehow Houdini found success. The first difference between their two paths in America was that Tateh pursued a career in the cutthroat field of business whereas Houdini pursued a career on the much more accepting atmosphere of performance on the stage. But how do their identities play into this? Well, to start Houdini abandoned his given name of Ehrich Weisz for the more aesthetically pleasing stage name "Harry Houdini". By changing his name, he basically rid himself of his foreign past to start a new identity in the USA. Houdini also recognized how one played the game to achieve success and subsequently realized that before he was well-known he would have to take less than desirable jobs. Through this suppression of pride and deference to those in post higher than himself, Houdini changed his identity to start his career. Once famous and sought after, he again regained his pride, re-instituted high standards for work, and recreated an identity for himself that would get him recognition in the public eye and keep him on top. His desire to become successful demanded a willingness to play the game society poses that Tateh did not posses. Ehrich Weisz's transformation into Harry Houdini made him famous even today.

J.P. Morgan however comes from a completely different world. He is from a white, well-established, wealthy family and is thus perfectly set up to succeed in the business world. In his case, identity in the media or image seems more important than his substantive beliefs. He wears expensive clothes, owns expensive books and art, and he controls a great number of companies. In the media his identity stops there but don't fret because through Doctorow's lovely book we, the readers, are given a behind the scenes pass to Morgan's life. In his secret room (which symbolizes his hidden, more personal identity), we learn that he is interested in Egyptology because he identifies with the pharaohs and gods. He, according to Doctorow, thinks he is an actual god and, if not for his bulbous nose, he would have no concept of mortality. So for the public he is defined by his material possessions and his ruthless business transactions but to himself he is defined by his seemingly infinite power making him god-like and diseased nose. He too, even with his immense success, has multiple identities.

These observations seem to suggest that Doctorow is commenting on what is takes to be successful in the business climate he is writing about. Doctorow shows that the best way to gain success is to start out with it but if that's not an option, to make it big you must be willing to play into the system and allow it to manipulate your identity until you fit the mold for success or, like Houdini, create a completely new identity for yourself. A rather cynical take on success really...