It surprised me to realize that the well-spoken ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr. was not a historical figure after growing accustomed to E. L. Doctorow's habit of bringing real people into his story. Doctorow even went so far as to specify that it was not known where Walker was born or whether he'd been previously married, details most narrators would have procured openly with ease. But what was really convincing about Coalhouse Walker Jr. was his story: the societal injustice, the longing to regain a shred of dignity, and the eventual spiral into violence in his quest to take the law into his own hands.
As I read more about this fictional Coalhouse character and came upon the information that he was transfictional, this made so much sense to me. Coalhouse's story is one that transcends a specific time frame and unites humanity in the common struggle against the incessantly unreliable laws we live within that protect only a small fragment of the greater population. Whenever one of us is betrayed by the society we have invested ourselves in, it's easy to fantasize about formulating an elaborate plot to regain our pride and demand the justice that we have been deprived of. Not that I'm condoning Coalhouse's actions or anything, but there's undeniably a driving force behind these two characters that represents the hubris in all of us, and even our simple desire to be treated with respect.
The story of Michael Kohlaas (who Coalhouse is based off of) takes place nearly a century before Coalhouse Walker Jr.'s and yet parallels it almost exactly. Yes, Kohlass has horses rather than a Model T Ford and yes, Walker is facing racial prejudice, but the fact that this story can credibly exist in two very different worlds and time frames shows just how timeless it is. It's even more timeless if you think about how Doctorow was actually writing this in 1975, and people were still identifying with the original Kohlaas story.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Getting to Know Doctorow
As someone who loves history in addition to literature, History as Fiction is the perfect combination of my favorite things. Last semester in my British and American poetry course, I got a taste of good historical fiction in the poetry anthology Kettle Bottom in which Diane Gilliam Fischer brings to life the 1920-21 West Virginia Mine Wars in a series of poems that speak from the perspective of various people in the community. Having some familiarity with the history of the mine wars from my U.S. History class, re-experiencing the events through the lens of fiction lent an insider's perspective and drew my sympathy for the miners in a way that a mere timeline of events couldn't possibly have done.
I thought I knew what to expect when reading historical fiction, considering the restrictions the genre can put on a story, limiting it within certain confines of what we know to be true about history. Of course it's possible to throw in completely unbelievable plot twists for the sake of a more engaging plot, but only at the risk of losing your readers' trust. But E. L. Doctorow masterfully stays true to the books while crafting his own stories into the mix, and somehow manages to present the craziest of situations in such a way that they can't be historically disproven. One of the most striking such occurrences right at the beginning of the book is when the little boy is pondering Houdini and Houdini crashes into a telephone pole outside his house and ends up having to pay his family a visit. But who's to say Houdini didn't crash his car into a telephone pole and visit such a family? Doctorow even throws Evelyn Nesbit and Emma Goldman together in a strangely intimate scene that makes for fascinating parallels between the two historical figures despite Nesbit using her body to climb the capitalist social ladder and Goldman using her mind to spread her political ideals. And even if that encounter didn't happen, Doctorow makes it feel as if it should have. "You came because in such ways as the universe works, your life was destined to interact with my own," Goldman tells Nesbit. Another great pairing Doctorow forms is a meeting between Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan. Again, there's this sense that even if they never had met, tif they had, it would have fit into history perfectly.
With this, Doctorow builds in a sense of destiny in their encounter, with Ford representing something the affluent J. P. Morgan is seeking to give meaning to a world in which he can buy anything or anyone. "Suppose I could demonstrate that you yourself are an instrumentation in our modern age of trends in human identity that affirm the oldest wisdom in the world," J. P. Morgan tells Ford. In fact, trying to give meaning to the world is a recurring theme of Doctorow's. A few chapters earlier, we see the little boy finding meaning in treasures discarded, looking at the tracks of skates in the ice and seeing only "traces quickly erased of moments passed." "It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction," Doctorow writes.
Yet even as Doctorow writes with this force of greater purpose that makes us believe that some of these historical figures were destined to meet one another or that his characters might have touched on some profound aspect of life meaning, he laces his narrative heavily with irony in a way that toys with my hypothesis that historical fiction serves to garner sympathy for its characters. He makes Ford seem conniving, telling us that he thought most humans were too dumb to make a decent living. He makes J. P. Morgan seem out of touch with reality because of his excess wealth, his interests in mysticism seemingly a pass time designed to help him cope with his lack of anything to work toward. Emma Goldman seems strangely paradoxical with her unrelenting judgements of Evelyn Nesbit while attempting to reach out to her. Evelyn Nesbit is one of the few characters who gets more sincerely portrayed by Doctorow, with her life described as one tragedy after the next, and the transformation of her character as she reaches out to Tateh's daughter. So, maybe Doctorow is interested in drawing in his readers' sympathies for certain characters, but he does so sparingly, and maybe that's what makes his style especially effective. But with his mix of leading his readers to believe in some greater life meaning alongside his habitual irony, Doctorow's narrative is the most difficult character to capture of all.
I thought I knew what to expect when reading historical fiction, considering the restrictions the genre can put on a story, limiting it within certain confines of what we know to be true about history. Of course it's possible to throw in completely unbelievable plot twists for the sake of a more engaging plot, but only at the risk of losing your readers' trust. But E. L. Doctorow masterfully stays true to the books while crafting his own stories into the mix, and somehow manages to present the craziest of situations in such a way that they can't be historically disproven. One of the most striking such occurrences right at the beginning of the book is when the little boy is pondering Houdini and Houdini crashes into a telephone pole outside his house and ends up having to pay his family a visit. But who's to say Houdini didn't crash his car into a telephone pole and visit such a family? Doctorow even throws Evelyn Nesbit and Emma Goldman together in a strangely intimate scene that makes for fascinating parallels between the two historical figures despite Nesbit using her body to climb the capitalist social ladder and Goldman using her mind to spread her political ideals. And even if that encounter didn't happen, Doctorow makes it feel as if it should have. "You came because in such ways as the universe works, your life was destined to interact with my own," Goldman tells Nesbit. Another great pairing Doctorow forms is a meeting between Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan. Again, there's this sense that even if they never had met, tif they had, it would have fit into history perfectly.
It was upon his [J.P. Morgan's] return to America that he began to think about Henry Ford. He had no illusions that Ford was a gentleman. He recognized him for a shrewd provincial, as uneducated as a piece of wood. But he thought he saw in Ford's use of men a reincarnation of pharaohism.
With this, Doctorow builds in a sense of destiny in their encounter, with Ford representing something the affluent J. P. Morgan is seeking to give meaning to a world in which he can buy anything or anyone. "Suppose I could demonstrate that you yourself are an instrumentation in our modern age of trends in human identity that affirm the oldest wisdom in the world," J. P. Morgan tells Ford. In fact, trying to give meaning to the world is a recurring theme of Doctorow's. A few chapters earlier, we see the little boy finding meaning in treasures discarded, looking at the tracks of skates in the ice and seeing only "traces quickly erased of moments passed." "It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction," Doctorow writes.
Yet even as Doctorow writes with this force of greater purpose that makes us believe that some of these historical figures were destined to meet one another or that his characters might have touched on some profound aspect of life meaning, he laces his narrative heavily with irony in a way that toys with my hypothesis that historical fiction serves to garner sympathy for its characters. He makes Ford seem conniving, telling us that he thought most humans were too dumb to make a decent living. He makes J. P. Morgan seem out of touch with reality because of his excess wealth, his interests in mysticism seemingly a pass time designed to help him cope with his lack of anything to work toward. Emma Goldman seems strangely paradoxical with her unrelenting judgements of Evelyn Nesbit while attempting to reach out to her. Evelyn Nesbit is one of the few characters who gets more sincerely portrayed by Doctorow, with her life described as one tragedy after the next, and the transformation of her character as she reaches out to Tateh's daughter. So, maybe Doctorow is interested in drawing in his readers' sympathies for certain characters, but he does so sparingly, and maybe that's what makes his style especially effective. But with his mix of leading his readers to believe in some greater life meaning alongside his habitual irony, Doctorow's narrative is the most difficult character to capture of all.
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