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| Ragtime,
by E.L. Doctorow |
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 E.L.
DOCTOROW’S
list of great American novels include Ragtime,
City of God, Billy Bathgate, World’s
Fair and numerous others. A recipient of the PEN/Faulkner
Award, National Book Critics Circle Award (twice), the
National Book Award, the Edith Wharton Citation For
Fiction, and the William Dean Howells medal of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, Doctorow has taken his
place among America’s best authors. A graduate
of Kenyon College and Columbia University, Doctorow
lives in New York, where he has taught Creative Writing
for New York University. E.L. Doctorow was named after
Edgar Allan Poe. |
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RAGTIME
remains E.L. Doctorow’s most controversial work
even as it holds a place in America’s imagination.
Published in 1975 and winner of the National Book
Critics Circle Award, Ragtime plunges the reader into
turn-of-the-century New York, and captivates with
its sense of time and place. Blurring the lines of
fantasy and historical fact, Doctorow’s work
features Harry Houdini, Henry Ford, Emma Goldman,
J.P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud and Emiliano
Zapata, whose lives intersect with those of his own
imagined family and others, including a ragtime musician
from Harlem whose passion for principle and justice
leads him to revolutionary violence. The tapestry
of stories eventually interwoven reminds us that we
are all connected to one another.
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George
Stade
"...(It) is in this excellent novel, whose silhouettes
and rags not only make fiction out of history but also reveal
the fictions out of which history is made. It incorporates
the fictions and realities of the era of ragtime while it
rags our fictions about it. It is an anti-nostalgic novel
that incorporates our nostalgia about its subject. It is cool,
hard, controlled, utterly unsentimental, an art of sharp outlines
and clipped phrases. yet it implies all we could ask for in
the way of texture, mood, character and despair." Books
of the Century, The New York Times, July, 1975
Movie
Adaptation:
In
1981, Ragtime was adapted into a movie, directed by Milos
Forman. The film was nominated for Academy Awards for best
screenplay adaptation, supporting actor, supporting actress,
art direction/set direction, cinematography, costume design,
music, and song.
Find
out more about the movie at:
Review:
Other
Titles by E.L. Doctorow Include:
Welcome
to Hard Times, 1960
The Book of Daniel, 1971
Ragtime, 1975
Drinks Before Dinner: A Play, 1978
Loon Lake, 1980
Lives of the Poets: Six Stories and a Novella, 1984
World’s Fair, 1985
Billy Bathgate, 1989
Jack London, Hemingway and the Constitution: Selected Essays,
1977-1992, 1993
The Waterworks, 1994
City of God, 2000
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