Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Doctorow Ponders Shock of ‘Ragtime,’ Tons of Junk
Bloomberg.com: "A Broadway revival of “Ragtime” opens Nov. 15, bringing back E.L. Doctorow’s dizzying mix of Jewish immigrants, black musicians and upper-class WASPs crossing paths in turn of the century New York."
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2 comments:
Hmm... it seems like it's rather rare when we get the chance to hear from the original book's writer, and even more surprising, to hear about how much of a different feel the musical has from the book. Ragtime occupies a very strange balance between delicate handling of difficult subjects from the turn of the century and a sweeping score with bravado, so I can definitely understand how the two can have a huge difference. The questions of Doctorow's politics feel very out of place in this article, though... although his books are full of history and politics, his assessments of today's government feels difficult to accept as a facet of his writing.
To see him discuss racism in this country, while in his book and the revival of Ragtime on Broadway- the parallels seem perfect. It is disappointing to hear that even after so much time has passed racism still exists but I think he is right to say that the country has lost it's identity.
People are confused and shocked at this administration because they are actually doing things. Helping people frustrates those that profit he says and it is true. I am interested to read his book and see how the bush/cheney administration affected his politically filled writing.
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