[Loon Lake] is E. L. Doctorow's first novel since Ragtime, the seventies' smash hit in American fiction. Unlike its predecessor, the new book has both a hero and a second banana…. (p. 105)

Joe [the hero] and Warren [the second banana] aren't mere symptoms or props or proofs—evidence of social injustice or American fatuity or the meaninglessness of history. And this sets them off sharply from Father, Mother, Younger Brother, J. P. Morgan, Houdini, and the others—even Coalhouse Walker—who populate the book that made Doctorow a household word.

One starts with comparisons to Ragtime because of the nature of the issues that record best seller left in its wake…. [For a while Ragtime] stimulated ecstasy in both the popular and the highbrow press….

But the second wave of attention paid the book was filled with doubt…. [Certain critics] drummed away insistently on the theme that character...