The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (81 page)

Ragtime

E. L. DOCTOROW

Z
estlessness is a notoriously difficult ailment to diagnose. Easily confused with boredom (which is really a failure of the imagination; see: Boredom) and apathy (which manifests as physical sluggishness although it, too, has a mental cause; see: Apathy), zestlessness can appear, to the untrained eye, to be simply a case of having a dull personality. Left untreated, it can ruin entire lives—and we’re not just talking your own. To live without zest is to live without an appetite for new experiences, to miss out on the spice, the juice, the edge that makes life thrilling. It is to live with deadened, flattened senses, with your passions unaroused and your curiosity untapped. It is to depress the hell out of those around you—and, frankly, us too. Do us all a favor. Read this novel and switch yourself on.

Ragtime
takes as its subject the dawn of the twentieth century in the United States—a time when the entire nation was in the exhilarated grip of commotion, invention, and change. Sparkling new railroads sprung up across the country. Model T Fords spilled off the assembly lines. Twenty-five-story buildings shot skyward and aircraft zoomed people away. Telephones connected people as never before. Skyrockets and cherry bombs exploded in the skies. In ordinary homes, sneezing powder and squirting plastic roses tickled people’s noses and made them laugh.

In among all this is the story of a well-to-do family in New Rochelle, New York. The son—known simply as “the little boy”—is fixing his gaze on a bluebottle fly crossing a screen one day when Harry Houdini crashes his car outside and is invited in for tea. Soon after, Mother discovers a black baby in the garden, and takes the child in—thus breaking the first of several cultural and gender taboos. When Father returns from an expedition to the Arctic to find her running his fireworks business, he becomes increasingly alienated from the domestic scene, and the family begins to fall apart.

By turning his lens from vivid close-up to great, sweeping vista and allowing real and fictional characters to meet at the junctions of a vast, complex cobweb, E. L. Doctorow injects the novel—and the reader—with enormous zest. As immigrants from Italy and Eastern Europe, such as Tateh and his beautiful daughter, pour into squalid tenements on the Lower East Side, the financier J. P. Morgan sets new standards of wealth and power, and Houdini defies death with more and more terrifying feats. Freud puts America on the couch, and the boy’s uncle, known as Mother’s Younger Brother, stalks the country’s first sex goddess, Evelyn Nesbit.

As you read, notice how Mother and the little boy say yes to progress and change. Watch how Father, conversely, says no, refusing to move with the times. Like Tateh, let the tumult and tumble of Doctorow’s startling sentences remove you from what is familiar and failing. Board the train to a new life. Take with you the boy’s curiosity for recent inventions. Appropriate Grandfather’s joy at the sight of spring (though take care, if you’re getting on in years, that you don’t slip and break your pelvis doing a spontaneous jig). Put yourself in a place where change is a given, and feel the zest flood back in.

See also:
Disenchantment

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to our team of readers, who valiantly tested our literary cures and reported on their efficacy: Becky Adams, Miranda Alcock, Tim Bates, Josh Beattie, Nichole Beauchamp, Chris Berthoud, Colin Berthoud, Lucy Berthoud, Martin Berthoud, Veronique Biddell, Amanda Blugrass, Gael Cassidy, Sarah Cassidy, Sarah Constantinides, Belinda Coote, Stephanie Cross, the Danny House Book Group, William Davidson, Sandra Deeble, Mel Giedroyc, Gael Gorvy-Robertson, Teresa Griffiths, Gill Hancock, Jane Heather, Belinda Holden, Charlie Hopkinson, Grahame Hunter, Clare Isherwood, Lou James, Tim Jones, Sarah Leipciger, Annabel Leventon, Rachel Lindop, Hilary Macey-Dare, Sam Nixon, Emma Noel, Anna Ollier, Patricia Potts, Joanna Quinn, Sarah Quinn, Janaki Ranpura, Lucy Rutter, Carl Thomas, Jennie Thomas, Morgan Thomas, Clare Usiskin, Pippa Wainwright, Heather Westgate, and Rachel Wykes.

For G&Ts, nurturing, and hands-on help, we would like to thank Damian Barr, Polly and Shaun at Tilton House, Pippa Considine, Tim Jones, Natalie Savona, Laurie Tomlinson, and Olivia Waller.

Thanks to our Bibliotherapy Advisory Board for ideas and suggestions over the years, including Terence Blacker, Rose Chapman, Tracy Chevalier, Abi Curtis, Nick Curwin, Ashley Dartnell, Geoff Dyer, Piers Feltham, Patrick Gale, Sophie Howarth, Alison Huntingdon, Nicolas Ib, Lawrence Kershen, Caroline Kraus, Sam Leith, Toby Litt, Anna McNamee, Chiara Menage, Stephen Miller, Tiffany Murray, Jason Oddy, Jacqueline Passmore, Bonnie Powell and her Facebook friends, Charlotte Raby, Judy Rich, Robin Rubenstein, Alison Sayers, Anna Stein, Chris Thornhill, Ardu Vakil, S. J. Watson, Rebecca Wilson, and Charmaine Yabsley.

Special thanks go to our colleague and friend Simona Lyons at the School of Life; and Morgwn Rimmell, Caroline Brimmer, Harriet Warden, Clemmie Balfour, and all those at the School of Life who supported us throughout the period of writing the book.

Thanks also to our bibliotherapy clients past and present, who gave us ideas for books we had not yet read, and allowed us to practice our medications on them.

Thank you to our agent Clare Alexander, our editor Jenny Lord and all at Canongate, plus Colin Dickerman, Liesl Schillinger, and all at Penguin USA.

A posthumous thank-you to our tutor at Cambridge, David Holbrook, who set us on our way.

And most of all to our families: Martin, Doreen, Saroja, Jennie, Bill, Carl, and Ash, for their love and support throughout this process; and to our children, Morgan, Calypso, Harper, and Kirin for putting up with our mental absence.

READING AILMENTS INDEX

Amnesia, reading associated (CURE: Keep a reading journal)

Book buyer, being a compulsive (CURE: Invest in an e-reader and/or create a “current reading” shelf)

Busy to read, being too (CURE: Listen to audiobooks)

Children requiring attention, too many (CURE: Designate a reading hour)

Concentrate, inability to (CURE: Go off grid)

Depletion of library through lending (CURE: Label your books)

Find one of your books, inability to (CURE: Create a library)

Finishing, fear of (CURE: Read around the book)

Give up halfway through, refusal to (CURE: Adopt the fifty-page rule)

Give up halfway through, tendency to (CURE: Read in longer stretches)

Guilt, reading associated (CURE: Schedule reading time)

Household chores, distracted by (CURE: Create a reading nook)

Hype, put off by (CURE: Put the book in its place)

Identity, unsure of your reading (CURE: Create a favorites shelf)

Live instead of read, tendency to (CURE: Read to live more deeply)

Loneliness, reading induced (CURE: Read in company)

New books, seduced by (CURE: Learn the art of rereading)

Non-reading partner, having a (CURE: Convert or desert)

Overwhelmed by the number of books in the world (CURE: See a bibliotherapist)

Overwhelmed by the number of books in your house (CURE: Cull your library)

Read instead of live, tendency to (CURE: Live to read more deeply)

Reverence of books, excessive (CURE: Personalize your books)

Sci-fi, fear of (CURE: Rethink the genre)

Sci-fi, stuck on (CURE: Discover planet Earth)

Shame, reading associated (CURE: Conceal the cover)

Skim, tendency to (CURE: Read one page at a time)

Starting, fear of (CURE: Dive in at random)

Tome, put off by a (CURE: Cut it up)

Vacation, not knowing what novels to take on (CURE: Plan ahead to avoid panic purchases)

Well-read, desire to seem (CURE: Ten novels for the literary fake)

TEN-BEST LISTS INDEX

The Ten Best Audiobooks

The Ten Best Audiobooks for Road Rage

The Ten Best Big Fat Tomes

The Ten Best Breakup Novels

The Ten Best Escapist Novels

The Ten Best Fantasy Novels

The Ten Best Novellas

The Ten Best Novels for After a Nightmare

The Ten Best Novels for Duvet Days

The Ten Best Novels for Eightysomethings

The Ten Best Novels for Fiftysomethings

The Ten Best Novels for Fortysomethings

The Ten Best Novels for Going Cold Turkey

The Ten Best Novels for Ninetysomethings

The Ten Best Novels for the Over One Hundreds

The Ten Best Novels for Plane Journeys

The Ten Best Novels for Sci-Fi Beginners

The Ten Best Novels for Seeming Well-Read

The Ten Best Novels for Seventysomethings

The Ten Best Novels for Sixtysomethings

The Ten Best Novels for Teenagers

The Ten Best Novels for Thirtysomethings

The Ten Best Novels for Twentysomethings

The Ten Best Novels for the Very Blue

The Ten Best Novels for When You’re Locked Out

The Ten Best Novels for When You’ve Got a Cold

The Ten Best Novels to Cheer You Up

The Ten Best Novels to Make You Weep

The Ten Best Novels to Cure the Xenophobic

The Ten Best Novels to Cure Wanderlust

The Ten Best Novels to Drown Out Snoring

The Ten Best Novels to Lower Your Blood Pressure

The Ten Best Novels to Make You Laugh

The Ten Best Novels to Read in a Hammock

The Ten Best Novels to Read in the Bathroom

The Ten Best Novels to Read in the Hospital

The Ten Best Novels to Read on a Train

The Ten Best Novels to Turn Your Partner (Female) On to Fiction

The Ten Best Novels to Turn Your Partner (Male) On to Fiction

The Ten Best Shocking Novels

AUTHOR INDEX

The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.

Abe, Kobo,
15

Achebe, Chinua,
345

Aciman, André,
46

Adams, Douglas,
353
,
363

Agee, James,
56

Alain-Fournier,
116

Alcott, Louisa May,
341

Alexie, Sherman,
364

Ali, Monica,
181

Allende, Isabel,
294
,
375

Almond, David,
184

Ames, Jonathan,
107

Amis, Kingsley,
188
,
210
,
245

Amis, Martin,
47
,
93
,
366

Ammaniti, Niccolò,
157

Andrews, Virginia,
282

Apuleius,
83

Atwood, Margaret,
55
,
273
,
323

Austen, Jane,
30
,
95
,
257
,
273
,
350

Baker, Nicholson,
179

Ballard, J. G.,
159
,
313
,
323

Balzac, Honoré de,
372

Banks, Iain,
272

Baricco, Alessandro,
397

Barnes, Julian,
310
,
345

Barrie, J. M.,
221

Barrows, Annie,
180

Barry, Sebastian,
269

Bates, H. E.,
279
,
305

Beckett, Samuel,
112

Beerbohm, Max,
93

Befeler, Mike,
132

Behn, Aphra,
38

Bellow, Saul,
103
,
108
,
159
,
205

Benioff, David,
272

Berger, John,
64
,
98

Bernières, Louis de,
179
,
185
,
290

Bester, Alfred,
383

Beukes, Lauren,
261

Bhattacharya, Rahul,
386

Birch, Carol,
290

Blatty, William Peter,
143

Block, Lawrence,
222

Bolaño, Roberto,
290

Böll, Heinrich,
112

Botton, Alain de,
350

Bowen, Elizabeth,
132

Bowles, Paul,
218

Boyd, William,
272

Bradbury, Ray,
123
,
172

Broch, Hermann,
347

Brontë, Anne,
366

Brontë, Charlotte,
50

Brontë, Emily,
46
,
378
,
389

Brookner, Anita,
159
,
179

Buck, Pearl S.,
159

Bukowski, Charles,
335

Bulgakov, Mikhail,
165

Burgess, Melvin,
39
,
283

Burnett, Frances Hodgson,
191
,
350

Butler, Samuel,
87

Byatt, A. S.,
67

Cain, James M.,
28
,
30

Calvino, Italo,
112

Cameron, Peter,
180

Camilleri, Andrea,
222

Campbell, Bonnie Jo,
395

Camus, Albert,
134
,
372

Capella, Anthony,
368

Capote, Truman,
64
,
137

Carey, Peter,
2
,
285
,
375

Carr, J. L.,
326

Carrington, Leonora,
279
,
332

Carroll, Lewis,
269

Carter, Angela,
261
,
324

Cartwright, Justin,
153

Cather, Willa,
122

Céline, Louis-Ferdinand,
77

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de,
218

Chabon, Michael,
359
,
372

Chandler, Raymond,
112
,
364

Chapman, Maile,
180

Chatwin, Bruce,
48

Chbosky, Stephen,
364

Chevalier, Tracy,
233

Childers, Erskine,
280

Christie, Agatha,
67
,
155

Clarke, Arthur C.,
313

Clarke, Susanna,
261

Clavell, James,
376

Cleave, Chris,
97

Cleland, John,
282

Coates, John,
7

Cocteau, Jean,
198

Coe, Jonathan,
201

Coetzee, J. M.,
112
,
153

Collins, Suzanne,
179

Collins, Wilkie,
222

Comyns, Barbara,
250

Conan Doyle, Arthur,
76

Connell, Evan S.,
334

Connelly, Michael,
222

Conrad, Joseph,
132
,
313

Cornwell, Patricia,
33

Cortázar, Julio,
313

Coupland, Douglas,
272

Cruse, Howard,
77

Cunningham, Michael,
180

Davis, Lydia,
46

Defoe, Daniel,
215
,
292

DeLillo, Don,
96

Dennis, Patrick,
107

DeWitt, Helen,
344

DeWitt, Patrick,
64

Diamant, Anita,
294

Díaz, Junot,
46

Dick, Philip K.,
64

Dickens, Charles,
19
,
72
,
269
,
350

Djian, Philippe,
108

Doctorow, E. L.,
132
,
399

Domínguez, Carlos María,
181

Donleavy, J. P.,
317

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor,
169
,
195
,
312

Drabble, Margaret,
370

Dreiser, Theodore,
199

Dumas, Alexandre,
157

du Maurier, Daphne,
76
,
328

Duncan, David James,
269
,
368

Dundy, Elaine,
340

Durrell, Lawrence,
384

Duteurtre, Benoît,
237

Eco, Umberto,
272

Egan, Jennifer,
273

Eliot, George,
159
,
259
,
270
,
344

Ellis, Alice Thomas,
278

Ellis, Bret Easton,
124
,
338

Ellison, Ralph,
301

Endo, Shusaku,
269

Enger, Leif,
341

Enright, Anne,
77

Ephron, Nora,
46

Erdich, Louise,
294

Esquivel, Laura,
132

Eugenides, Jeffrey,
104
,
114
,
294
,
366

Evison, Jonathan,
313

Faber, Michael,
18
,
66

Fallada, Hans,
108

Fante, John,
77
,
320

Faulkner, William,
132

Faulks, Sebastian,
150

Fermine, Maxence,
177

Fielding, Helen,
188

Fielding, Henry,
188
,
294

Fitzgerald, F. Scott,
47
,
270
,
318
,
338
,
389

Fitzgerald, Penelope,
352

Flagg, Fannie,
108
,
159

Flanagan, Richard,
343

Flaubert, Gustave,
7
,
64

Fleming, Ian,
222

Flynn, Gillian,
179

Foer, Jonathan Safran,
98
,
158

Ford, Ford Madox,
89
,
132

Ford, Richard,
119

Forester, C. S.,
185

Forster, E. M.,
183
,
273
,
290
,
354

Fowles, John,
157
,
350

Fox, Paula,
42

Francis, David,
255

Francis, Dick,
222

Franzen, Jonathan,
13
,
270

Frayn, Michael,
376

Frazier, Charles,
377

French, Tana,
157

Frisch, Max,
193

Gaddis, William,
389

Gaiman, Neil,
5
,
77
,
184

Gaines, Ernest J.,
91

Galchen, Rivka,
193

Gale, Patrick,
370

García Márquez, Gabriel,
96
,
334
,
372

Gardam, Jane,
278

Garner, Helen,
61

Gawain Poet, The,
126

Gemmell, Nikki,
52
,
283

Genet, Jean,
283

Ghosh, Amitav,
386

Gibbons, Stella,
81
,
108

Gibson, William,
323

Gilchrist, Ellen,
372

Gillespie, Grant,
6

Giono, Jean,
355

Godden, Rumer,
137

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von,
230

Gold, Glen David,
157

Golden, Arthur,
376

Golding, William,
308

Goldman, William,
76

Goncharov, Ivan,
77

Gordon, Mary,
46
,
153

Grahame, Kenneth,
269

Grass, Günter,
339

Graves, Robert,
223
,
224

Gray, Alasdair,
368

Green, John,
91
,
364

Greene, Graham,
46
,
67
,
134

Greer, Andrew Sean,
280

Grenville, Kate,
283
,
337

Grossman, David,
273
,
395

Gurganus, Allan,
280

Gustafsson, Lars,
289

Hadfield, John,
67

Haggard, H. Rider,
70
,
71

Ha Jin,
255

Hamilton, Jane,
294

Hamsun, Knut,
189

Harbach, Chad,
245

Harding, Paul,
64

Hardy, Thomas,
91
,
230
,
270
,
392

Hartley, L. P.,
314

Haruf, Kent,
1
,
269

Haslett, Adam,
166

Hautzig, Deborah,
129

Hawthorne, Nathaniel,
199

Hazzard, Shirley,
67
,
255
,
387

Hedayat, Sadegh,
395

Heller, Joseph,
89
,
272

Hemingway, Ernest,
22
,
132
,
269
,
270
,
366
,
386

Hemon, Aleksandar,
112

Hensher, Philip,
178

Herbert, Frank,
324

Hesse, Hermann,
24
,
280

Hiassen, Carl,
320

Highsmith, Patricia,
67
,
232

Hill, Susan,
148
,
157
,
175

Hines, Barry,
328

Høeg, Peter,
185

Hoffman, Alice,
269

Hollinghurst, Alan,
284
,
361

Holtby, Winifred,
103

Homer,
204

Homes, A. M.,
159
,
359

Hornby, Nick,
45
,
46
,
108

Hosseini, Khaled,
273

Hughes, Richard,
333

Hughes, Thomas,
55

Hugo, Victor,
238

Hunt, Rebecca,
104

Hurston, Zora Neale,
119

Hustvedt, Siri,
7
,
98

Huxley, Aldous,
124
,
323

Ibbotson, Eva,
76

Irving, John,
179
,
272
,
273
,
350

Isherwood, Christopher,
67

Ishiguro, Kazuo,
180
,
280
,
297
,
323

Ivey, Eowyn,
360

Jackson, Mick,
390

Jackson, Shirley,
25

Jacobs, Kate,
366

Jaffe, Rona,
366

James, Henry,
26
,
84
,
350

Jansson, Tove,
77

Jerome, Jerome K.,
269

Johnson, B. S.,
362

Johnson, Denis,
64

Johnson, George Clayton,
11

Jonasson, Jonas,
280
,
326

Joyce, James,
270
,
282
,
350
,
356

Joyce, Rachel,
143
,
345

Kadare, Ismail,
113

Kaddour, Hédi,
395

Kafka, Franz,
193

Kaufman, Sue,
186

Kavenna, Joanna,
68

Kawabata, Yasunari,
132
,
386

Kazantzakis, Nikos,
136

Keneally, Thomas,
179

Kerouac, Jack,
281
,
313

Kesey, Ken,
330

Kidd, Sue Monk,
77

King, Stephen,
16
,
368

Kingsolver, Barbara,
58
,
185

Kipling, Rudyard,
5

Kneale, Matthew,
350

Knox, Elizabeth,
185

Kosinski, Jerzy,
179

Krauss, Nicole,
334