LITERATURE: Ragtime – Credibility of Content

I’m not sure how I feel about this "novel" by E. L. Doctorow. The main thing that bothers me is the inclusion of real characters such as Stanford White, Evelyn Nesbitt, Harry K. Thaw, and Harry Houdini.  While I understand the notion of historical fiction, and of course, the concept that all fiction is based on reality, I somehow feel lied to when real characters are placed into fictional events without definition between reality and fantasy.  I find myself checking the people, checking the facts.  In doing so, I begin to doubt the writer/narrator of the story since he has blurred the line between fact and fiction.

But that’s just me.

Doctorow’s writing style is crisp and clean, using sentence structure to emphasize pace and plot.  With the interaction between the family with whom he opened the story and Houdini, for example, we have an almost hypertextual possibility.  The Mother’s Brother is obsessed with Evelyn Nesbitt, an actress and Floradora girl who is involved with White at a young age, marries Thaw, and is central of the murder of White by Thaw.  This is all historical fact. With the brief encounter of Houdini’s car breaking down in front of the family’s house and thus a direct relationship formed (one which we may believe or doubt), Doctorow then ties Houdini in with Thaw as he waits in jail during his trial. 

My brain starts to itch.

The encounter between the two is an odd one; while Houdini escapes chains and a cell and dresses to leave in one of his escapades, Thaw, surrounded by personal luxury within his cell, proceeds to undress and comes up to the bars facing Houdini in a rather obsence gesture.  No words pass between the two men.  Houdini tells no one. 

So here’s the rub: According to Doctorow, only these two men know the reality or fiction of this small portion of their lives.  When he’s playing with real people however, does he have that right as an author of fiction to bend history?

The answer is likely yes.  But in my mind, it has affected–though not changed–fact. Memory changes history, true, but once things are written down, filmed, proven, can they still be altered? 

Maybe I just need to relax.  After all, my greatest moment of literary discovery was believing Paz’s wave existed as a splash of water that behaved for all intents and purposes, like a jealous girlfriend.