E. L. Doctorow’s Manipulation of History
When I first signed up to take the class History as FIction, I didn’t quite realize how much history would be involved in even the first book we read this semester. I had read some historical fiction novels before, but they largely just used history as a setting for a story that was unrelated, hardly ever involving real historical figures in the narrative. The way Doctorow manipulates historical figures in a way that technically can’t be disproven really grabbed my attention and made me think about how much reality is in actual history. At the start of Ragtime , we are immediately thrown into a world where the author manipulates historical figures. Houdini’s spontaneous appearance after the little boy’s extreme interest in him is mentioned, is a flaunting of Doctorow’s narrative abilities. The way he is humanized by his description is a good introduction to the casual way Doctorow treats historical figures, “he sur...