Ragtime (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

It would be very difficult to find a piece of criticism that does not take Ragtime as a serious work of art. In his book-length survey of Doctorow's career, John G. Parks briefly mentions a few negative reviews of the book, including one by Roger Dale, who, in The New York Times Book Review, called it "all surface," and a piece by respected reviewer Hilton Kramer, who objected in Commentary to the novel's leftist political sensibilities. Parks identifies these critics as "second wave," who, having seen the glowing newspaper reviews and high sales figures after the novel was published, set out to go against popular opinion. Parks himself pays close attention to the themes of the book and finds it to be worthy of study and respect, in addition to being a "carnivalesque novel" that explores serious literary issues, such as the instability of history and the transitory nature of personality. Many other literary critics identified and applauded the book's ability to provoke thought without being too dense for general audiences, while still others looked at the same virtues from another direction, lauding it for being a popular book that is not afraid to touch on thought-provoking subjects. For example, Bernard F. Rogers, Jr., reviewing the book for Chicago Review, expressed his admiration for both the form and the content of Ragtime: he felt that the form appealed to critics and literati by experimenting with narrative, and to general audiences by striking a chord of familiarity; and that the content also played well to both audiences, struggling with serious themes while keeping readers entertained. Doctorow's novels are "simultaneously artistically venturesome and socially conscious," Arthur Seltzman wrote in a review called "The Stylistic Energy of E. L. Doctorow." "Like the Postmodernists," Seltzman asserted, "Doctorow extends the strategic possibilities of language; like the Naturalists, he employs language in the study of social ills."

Since most critics agree that Ragtime is an artistic as well as commercial success, most reviews throughout the years have tended to steer away from the question of whether the book succeeds and toward the study of how that success is brought about. David Emblidge, in a 1977 review, noted that Doctorow's very style made myths out of the incidents presented, even in cases where it seemed that myth-making was not his goal. Emblidge goes on to say that this is not necessarily bad for the author's works. David S. Gross thought that this mythological tone was actually a low-key satire of the kind of history lessons that are learned from schoolbooks, "wanting to destroy their easy and mystifying generalizations which prevent any accurate historical understanding." Paul Levine, in his book about Doctorow's career, takes note of the fact that much of what is done in Ragtime was done in a different form in John Dos Passos's U.S.A. Trilogy. Other critics, including Barbara Foley and John Seelye, examine the same connection, concluding that Ragtime surpasses the three-novel sequence by using contrasts to make its cynical point more quickly and efficiently. One of the sharpest critics of Doctorow's treatment of history is Greil Marcus, who wrote a review in the Village Voice pointing out the similarities between Ragtime and Nashville, a popular movie released at the same time that also used a large cast of characters to show the American dream faltering. The problem, as Marcus put it, was that both of these works were spun from their creators' theories of life, rather than from the writers' experiences. Most critics would agree, although most would say that this is not a bad thing if it is used well, as it is by Doctorow.