While I'm not the biggest fan of Rag as a style of music, I've certainly played a few in my short time on this Earth. With that I had an interesting association between the book and the movie. The book itself feels kinda like a rag, from its structure to plot escalation. Rag has its connection with silent films and other forms of entertainment such as live dance performances, etc. This gives rag music a sense of fun, taking away from its seriousness. By the same token, some situations in this book are extremely comical due to their absurdity combined with the very matter-of-fact way lots of the book is presented. Situations like Houdini's "fantastic" escape of the jail cell only to lead into his encounter with Henry K Thaw would be something decently fitting to put a good 'ol rag tune to. I'm not saying rag music is inherently comedic, because that's not what it was going for. That's precisely what makes me relate it to Doctorow's book more.
Alongside this, the book seems to frequently catch the reader off guard with some of its statements. 180 turns like Father as well as other characters seemingly sudden problematic outbursts tends to throw readers for a loop sometimes. Much like syncopation, some of the changes in pacing of the book will catch you off guard too. Especially Coalhouse's bombing of the city surprised me. While I don't know what to expect, I predict that the title of the book will get little to no explanation by Doctorow himself, so I;m just drawing conclusions from whats been read so far. If you have any other thoughts or connections, or the exact opposite and want to disprove a connection I've made, I'd be happy to hear it.
I've always seen ragtime as kind of irreverent, or at least it doesn't take itself as seriously as other musical genres, letting it have more fun and explore new ideas and themes with itself. In that sense, it's very similar to what happens in the book. Doctorow plays around with history while still keeping the basic structure of what actually happened, similar to how ragtime retains the basics of what a piece of music should have (rhythm, notes, etc), but then plays around with it with things like syncopation and jumps. I'd agree that the book title is a good representation of the book, as both the book and the music genre really don't seem to take themselves too seriously.
ReplyDeleteWe've also mentioned in class how ragtime also has a sense of two separate songs (left and right) are intertwined to create the unique sounds associated with ragtime. The book certainly does a lot of intertwining, what with the four or five plotlines all connecting and diverging throughout the book, interacting with each other to provide us with this story.
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