Ragtime—E.L. Doctorow

It was evident to him that the world composed and recomposed itself constantly in an endless process of dissatisfaction. (118) 

He was not unaware that in his dress and as the owner of a car he was a provocation to many white people. He had created himself in the teeth of such feelings. (174)

Today marks the press opening of Ragtime at my place of business, The 5th Avenue Theatre. With that, and having just finished We Were Eight Years in Power, in which Ta-Nehisi Coates references Doctorow at several points, it seemed the opportune time to read the book upon which the musical is based.

The amazing artwork for our production.

The musical was written over 20 years ago by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens. They're an amazing musical theatre team, having written some of my other favourites including current Broadway hit Anastasia, the forthcoming Broadway revival of Once On This Island (they wrote the original too, obvs), and perennial classic Seussical.

In many ways, the musical is a completely different experience from reading the book, and in other ways, it is the same. Profound observation, I know, since this is true of any adaptation, of course. There were certain points while reading the book where I could see direct pieces had been lifted and put into the musical. And then there were noticeable omissions.

Let me tell you friends: Doctorow never met a paragraph break that he liked. There are sometimes as many as two or three pages that run together as one paragraph. The text was not even split up with dialogue because there's literally no indented dialogue in the book—all of it is incorporated into the sentences/paragraphs.

Here are some things that happened in the book that do NOT happen in the musical:

• Mother's Younger Brother (who, in our production comes off much more lackadaisical, aimless privileged upper class white boy) is actually a creepy stalker who follows Evelyn Nesbit everywhere, including watching her through the door of an apartment one night, where he's discovered masturbating and then ejaculates all over Evelyn "like falling ticker tape." For some reason, she knows that he's following her and finds his stalking comforting rather than creepy: He had learned where she lived and what her daily routine was, but he never approached her. She felt not intimidated by his attention but protected. Intuitively she felt his admiration like a keenness in her own breath. (46) She later enters into a sexual relationship with him but *SHOCKER* he gets belligerently upset when she breaks it off with him.
• Evelyn Nesbit and Emma Goldman run into each other at a protest-type situation, and when things get rowdy, Emma Goldman helps Evelyn Nesbit get away safely. Emma advises Evelyn to remove her corset and free herself, and then rubs Evelyn's skin with astringent after the corset is removed. (This is the point where Mother's Younger Brother is looking through the door and masturbating.)
• In general, there's a LOT more of Evelyn Nesbit in the book than the musical. In fact, there's more focus on ALL the real-life historical figures in the book than there is in the musical.
• Tateh and Little Girl have a Mameh, who is trying to help make ends meet and lets her boss rape her in order to pay the rent: One afternoon she took her finished work to the loft on Stanton Street. The owner invited her into his office. He looked at the piece goods carefully and said she had done well. He counted out the money, adding a dollar more than she deserved. This he explained was because she was such a good-looking woman. He smiled. He touched Mameh's breast. Mameh fled, taking the dollar. The next time the same thing happened. She told Tateh she was doing more work. She became accustomed to the hands of her employer. One day with two weeks' rent due she let the man have his way on a cutting table. He kissed her face and tasted the salt of her tears. (16) (She is indicated to have died early in the story, but she's still part of it in the book.)
• Evelyn Nesbit meets Tateh and Little Girl on the street (after Mameh has died) and becomes obsessed with them, constantly visiting them on the street, and later in their apartment. When Tateh finds out who she is, he's disgusted and runs away from her forever.
• After Sarah is beaten, when they somehow think that she has a gun, she is actually taken to the hospital and survives for a number of days before dying, rather than dying in that place.
• Mother's Younger Brother, after deciding to follow Coalhouse after Sarah's death, puts on some good ol' blackface in order to show a sense of irony, or something? He shaved his blond moustache and he shaved his head. He blackened his face and hands with burnt cork, outlined exaggerated lips, put on a derby and rolled his eyes. Having in this way suggested his good faith to Coalhouse's other young followers by appealing to their sense of irony, he went out with them and threw the bombs into Municipal Firehouse No. 2, thereby proving himself to everyone including himself. (243-244)
• The intertwining of the character's lives are evident and important in the musical, but they're much more prominent and elaborate in the book.

It was much more obvious to me reading the book how much this story is full of men who hate women. (Which, I have to say, is not incongruous with the time period it was intended for, and it's not incongruous with our experience these days.) Mother's Younger Brother feels entitled to Evelyn Nesbit's attention because she's in the public eye and he thinks he has a relationship with her. Mother's Younger Brother is somewhat made to seem like a sympathetic character, what with Evelyn feeling "safe" as a result of his stalking, but he clearly doesn't care about her as a person. Father expects Mother to behave a certain way, based on their class and status, and is irked by anything outside of that. He has an affair with an Eskimo woman while away, but resents Mother any independent thought and, at one point, the narrator reveals to us how much Father secretly enjoys making Mother cry. I think this is less emphasized in the musical, though we do get more of a taste of the Mother/Father dynamic than we do of the Evelyn Nesbit/Mother's Younger Brother dynamic.

The very minuscule storyline with Mameh definitely felt relevant with the recent revelations about Harvey Weinstein. How long have women been stuck in this power dynamic, caught between sexual assault and harassment and attempting to have a career/make a living/just live? (Pssst. The answer is basically all of history.)

I do appreciate that Coalhouse and Sarah get more "screen time," as it were, in the musical than they do in the book. Coalhouse isn't even introduced in the book until halfway through. Even though the book was written over 40 years ago, about a period 70 years before that, it's astounding and infuriating how similar are the conversations. Father somehow has a revelation that Coalhouse doesn't see himself as a Negro (read: deferential, uncomfortable in certain spaces, etc.), but rather as, like, just a person. Coalhouse, despite being a relatively virtuous man minding his own business, still falls prey to persecution because of the color of his skin. (Even 40 years ago when Doctorow wrote this, respectability politics were a prevalent belief. Hell, even going back to the setting of the turn of the century, with Booker T. Washington's preaching of respectability politics.) Women are still fighting against the patriarchy and toxic masculinity.

One of the non-story ways in which the story is different is that the book is from the point of view of an omniscient narrator, so we get a much closer view at the thought processes of the characters. This is one of those areas where the musical has a good bit of crossover; explanations of narrative in the musical are sometimes introduced by the character whom the explanation is about. But of course, there's nowhere near the same level of depth. (Even a 2.5 hour musical is quite different, time commitment-wise, from a 320 page book.)

A conversation that I have been having with myself, and with a few coworkers, is the white savior-ness of the whole thing. I think there is a fine line between using your white privilege in order to be an ally and amplify oft-marginalized voices, and the white savior trope. I still haven't quite figured out on which side of the line the whole "Mother saves Sarah and a little brown baby and gives them both a home, and then raises the child after Sarah and Coalhouse are both gone" story falls. It's something on which I will continue to ruminate, I am sure.

All in all, I understand why the musical is structured the way that it is, and I understand the story changes that were made. I do think it's an essential and relevant piece for American life today, but I also greatly appreciated the closer look at the lives of these characters.