Real vs Fiction

As I read Ragtime, I constantly have one question lingering in the back of my mind: how much of this is real, and how much of it is fake? It might sound like a silly question at first, and I guess it is, but for some reason my head just can’t stop thinking about it. I think it’s obvious most of the plot points are fabricated, although there are sections in the story which are based on true events. But, how exactly do I draw the line between history and fiction?

I remember seeing a study on the correlation between information and entertainment. Viewers first watched a boring documentary-like video, and then they were shown a more fun film that contained similar information as the documentary but with some inaccuracies. Viewers were informed before watching the second video that it may be inaccurate, and that they should take the information presented in the video with a grain of salt. They were then tested based on information present in both videos they watched, and as it turns out, viewers more often than not answered with the inaccuracies present in the second video, showing that the entertaining video stuck with viewers much more, even to the subconscious level.

In Ragtime, I’m finding myself questioning whether an event really happened or not. As the study shows, entertainment will fog the mind, even without my own conscious knowledge, so I almost feel like I have to be careful. In class, we seem to have treated the book as a fictional story that just so happens to take place in a historically accurate setting with historical characters. I guess that solution works well enough most of the time, but that leads to me disregarding things that actually happened. For example, the Peary expedition in the story just flew over my head (somehow). I had no idea it was a real thing whatsoever. There was also a section in the story where it mentioned poor ballrooms, which I thought was just completely ridiculous and made-up. So I feel as though I’m treading a line between taking the book seriously and treating it as a completely fictional story.

To be completely clear, I think I’m making a bigger deal out of this than it really is. I’m about as far as you can get from a history buff, so it’s no surprise that I wouldn’t know some of the true events that happened in the story. But even then, it isn’t so difficult to discern what is real and what is fake most of the time, but there’s just that one single moment over here or there where I do end up having a little trouble.

I guess the best solution for me personally is just to look things up. Maybe that’s how the book is intended to be read for unaware readers like me. Perhaps it’s meant to just intrigue us by bringing us into a world where things may or not be real. Then, as the reader, it’s our job to either have enough common knowledge about the events mentioned in the story, or to become interested enough to read more about them outside of the book, and end up learning more history in the process than a relatively short book could ever teach on its own.

Comments

  1. anyaktFebruary 11, 2022 at 1:12 PM

    I don’t think you’re making too big a deal out of it, I think it’s kind of how we’re supposed to think about it I guess. I definitely have also been confused about what is true and what is not, and wasn’t aware somethings were actually historical. However, honestly I think Doctorow gets a kick out of screwing with us and wants us not to know what is fiction or history because he doesn’t necessarily think that line needs to be drawn. Definitely something to think about.

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  2. MitchellFebruary 17, 2022 at 10:04 AM

    I try to imagine what reading (or writing!) this novel would have been like before the Internet. It's so easy for us to check real quick whether Evelyn Nesbit is a historical person, or whether Houdini really did an escape from the Tombs in New York--to do a quick Google and keep reading. Back in the 1970s, you'd have to take a pile of notes and queries to the library and spend the afternoon researching, and remember too that this is the kind of research Doctorow would have done while writing the novel. The Internet has definitely made it easier to compose postmodernist historical fiction, for better or worse.

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