Ragtime

by E.L. Doctorow

Coalhouse Walker paid for the funeral with the money he had saved for his wedding. He

A breeze came up and blew from the maples a shower of spermatozoic soft-headed green buds. They caught in his sparse gray hair. He shook his head with delight, feeling a wreath had been bestowed. A joyful spasm took hold of him and he stuck his leg out in an old man’s jig, lost his balance, and slid on the heel of his shoe into a sitting position. In this manner he cracked his pelvis and entered a period of declining health from which he would not recover. But the spring was joyful and even in pain he wore a smile.

Thaw would not divulge the name of the person who helped him escape. Just call me Houdini, he said.

grave. He looked up with the swollen and laughable face of grief.

Mrs. Cecelia Weiss’s burial mound was covered with pebbles and small stones, one upon another, so that a kind of pyramid was forming. He thought of her at rest in the coffin under the earth. He wept bitterly. He wanted to be next to her. He remembered his attempt to escape from a coffin, the terror when he realized he could not. The coffin had a trick lid but he had not anticipated the weight of the earth. He had clawed at the earth, feeling its monumental weight. He had screamed into its impenetrable silence. He knew what it was to be sealed in the earth but he felt now it was the only place for him. What good was life without his beloved little mother?

he laid on the pillow of her bed.

He lived with his mom

So he knew what spiritual fraud was. He could recognize it. Spiritual fraud had been rampant in the United States since 1848 when two sisters, Margaretta and Kate Fox, invited neighbors to hear the mysterious rappings in their house in Hydesville, New York.

enacted Houdini’s desire for his dead mother. He was buried and reborn, buried and reborn.

Wisps of her hair had come undone and lay on her neck and over her ears. Father looked at her and she was beautiful in the way she had been as a girl. He did not realize the pleasure he felt in having made her cry.

condition. If these conditions are not met I will continue to kill firemen and burn firehouses until they are. I will destroy the entire city if need be.

Felt he had nothing left to live for perhaps. Somewhat similar to Houdini in that regard.

He went in the door

Interesting phrase. Leads me to think that he did not leave as such.

ended. His father had made a fortune in the Civil War

How?

The old man was the sort who thrived on adversity. His confidence rose with every loss. In bankruptcy he was beaming and triumphant.

the habit of inferiority to the full self.

Now every morning Father rose and tasted his mortal being.

cuspidors

He walked out with the reporters. The next day a bill to license automobiles was introduced in the State Legislature.

I wonder if this is the true origin.

excrescence

Mother might have withstood all of this if a debate did not rise concerning the family’s sheltering of Coalhouse Walker’s son.

She enlisted her son to watch over him when she had to see to something.

I wonder how all of this impacted the boy.

lives. Father had always felt secretly that as a family they were touched by an extra light. He felt it going now.

west. Did that mean only that more and more of the world resisted his intelligence?

Toward his wife he felt drastically slipped in her estimation, an explorer in body only, the spirit trapped in his own father’s prejudices.

Perhaps regretting not defending Coalhouse before the violence escalated to this point.

He condemned himself most for the neglect of his son. He never talked to the boy or offered his companionship. He had always relied on his presence in the child’s life as a model for emulation. How smug that was, how stupid, as the tactic of a man who had acted in his life to distinguish himself from his own father.

Father bought the expensive fifty-cent admission, then paid extra for a box, and they entered the park and took their seats behind first base in the lower of the two decks where the sun would for an inning or two cause them to shade their eyes.

To ask dad: what is one of your favorite memories with your father?

He believed in the perfectability of the republic. He thought, for instance, there was no reason the Negro could not with proper guidance carry every burden of human achievement.

they were in this moment so calmly in possession of themselves that there was no need for false assurances or for either of them to dissemble an optimism not truly felt.

But the situation was altered. Let him now burn down the entire metropolis of New York, one editorial said. Or accept the principle that any man who takes the law into his own hands places himself against a civilized and resolute people and defames the very justice he seeks to enforce.

Descending to the concourse of trains he looked right and left and saw as far as he could see in either direction the encouched locomotives waiting in an impatience of steam and shouts and tolling bells to be released on their journeys.

Mirrors the girl and her train journey, as well as the idea of a fine holiday away rather then the escape that it was

He had composed an impassioned statement about justice, civilization and the right of every human being to a dignified life. He remembered none of it. I can make bombs, he said. I know how to blow things up.

The pilferage was duly reported to the police and duly forgotten by them. They were busy working on the Coalhouse case.

proving himself to everyone including himself.

pond. This tangible proof of the force of Coalhouse’s will made them all feel holy. By the time they received news of Willie Conklin’s flight and sat down to discuss the proper response, they were so transformed as to speak of themselves collectively as Coalhouse.

Mother’s bathing costume was modest but she required several days to feel comfortable in it. It was black, of course, with skirt and pantaloons that came below her knees and low-cut swim shoes.

But her calves were exposed and her neck, almost to the bodice.

He came in staggering through the waves, laughing, his hair flattened on his head, his beard dripping and his costume clinging to him immodestly; and she felt momentary twinges of dislike, so fleeting she didn’t even recognize what they were.

more and more he only demonstrated his limits, that he had reached them, and that he would never move beyond them.

most of all to the still-unchristened and beautiful son of Sarah, who was thriving here and seemed to be growing visibly.

Perhaps she finds purpose in rearing him, as if she is preserving unspoiled life—potential in him and purpose for her as well.

lascivious

The old man would have none of it. He was totally engrossed by his condition and too irritable to engage in civilized discourse.

The other adults around her were unengaged or aloof.

There were other guests, of course, who were not Europeans: a gigantic stockbroker from New York with a huge wife and three immense children, who spoke not a word when they dined;

Portrayal of larger than life America. It's interesting though, because the family is from NYC too.

jodhpurs

ebullient

malapropisms

The idea of examining through a frame what was ordinarily seen by the eye intrigued her.

He felt he deserved his happiness.

He would buy her light and sun and clean wind of the ocean for the rest of her life. She played on the beach with a well-bred comely boy. She lay between soft white sheets in a room that looked into an endless sky.

What bound them to each other was a fulfilled recognition which they lived and thought within so that their apprehension of each other could not be so distinct and separated as to include admiration for the other’s fairness.

He ran with his mind. He ran toward something. He was unencumbered by fear and did not know there were beings in the world less curious about it than he. He saw through things and noted the colors people produced and was never surprised by a coincidence. A blue and green planet rolled through his eyes.

Who would not risk his life for such a woman?