Ragtime | Social Concerns

Ragtime Social Concerns

Ragtime is one of the few novels that can who had run business and government with claim undeniable success in both the critical and popular realms. Some critics have been able to pick at miscellaneous faults, but the novel was received with widespread praise when it was published and won the National Book Critics' Circle Award in 1976. Most reviewers agreed that Doctorow took the blend of historical and imagined characters, which was used often in historical novels but with only weak results, and manipulated it into a rich blend that is entertaining, challenging, and true to the spirit of the times. The reading public agreed: unlike many experimental works of art whose freshness makes them too difficult for widespread audiences, Ragtime became a bestseller in its initial hardcover edition. For a period of time, in the mid1970s, it was the book one saw in everybody's house. Doctorow became a...
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