Word: tremain
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Doctocow's Ragtime is historical fiction, like Johnny Tremain. And while I realize that in some circles this is nothing short of blasphemy, I think it's as good a book--the same wide-eyed, burrowed-under-the-covers-with-secret-flashlight fascination, the same wonderfulness. Doctorow's way of letting you slip into the sheets of history has been compared to the work of Robert Altman, who is planning to film Ragtime, and with the magical trickle of ragtime music. These are good analogies, but a passage from the novel might give a better idea. Father is a Harvard...
Maybe the lure of a book like this, as with Johnny Tremain, comes from some stunted attempt years ago, children trying to identify with the towering figures of history as people, and stopped cruelly short by dry tones of reverence or cheap Bicentennial ads. Pigs though many were, there's a childish urge to connect to these people of the American past, maybe the more so when the myths about them fall away with age. When Doctorow winds up these dead dollies and starts them teetering, you get seized, as though some buried roots inside you are churning up again...