There is a romanticization that comes for a past that we all haven't lived. It is a time so unlike ours that it seems simpler, has fewer problems, and is overall greater. There is a desire to escape from the present and wander those streets. While E.L. Doctorow doesn't set out to burn down that notion, he seeks to turn fiction into a historical look at what America looked like at the turn of the 20th century. As chintzy as it has become through media manipulation, often set to Scott Joplin's titular music style, it was a dangerous time. In a time prior to World War I, America was a land of spectacle but also of murder, racism, corruption, misogyny, and xenophobia as they tried to make the melting pot into something more palatable. The reality was far more complicated than that and what Doctorow does is tear down the veil, creating something more realistic, and giving audiences one of the most entertaining points of view imaginable. Its history brought to life, placing the reader at the ground level in ways that only the best writers can.
