Doctorow: Manipulative?

I've generally been pretty supportive of Doctorow's style of narration; unlike a lot of other readers, I don't really have a problem with the way he shapes--or as others may see it, manipulates--his real characters. For example, the way he portrays Ford certainly says something about how Doctorow himself views the inventor. It just depends on how we interpret Ford's language, since it can be pretty slippery at times. On page 136, he describes Ford: "He allotted sixty seconds on his pocket watch for a display of sentiment." Of course, we may see this as admirable; it could just be Doctorow pointing out Ford's discipline and nature. On the other hand, given the nature of Ford's whole theory, we may view this as Doctorow mocking Ford's lack of humanity. In any case, I haven't really had a problem with this ambiguity in narration because I think it allows for a lot of interesting viewpoints.

Funnily enough, though, I have had a problem with the way Doctorow talks about fictional characters as if they are real. For instance, on page 183, when Doctorow explicitly talks about Coalhouse Walker Jr.'s background, I was not only confused, but also a bit annoyed: "Here, given subsequent events, it is important to mention what little is known about Coalhouse walker Jr. Apparently he was a native of St. Louis, Missouri....There were never located any of his school records in St. louis and it still is not known how he acquired his vocabulary and his manner of speaking. Perhaps by an act of will." I'm not totally sure why this passage bothered me so much, but I think it has to do with the fact that up until now, Doctorow had only been fictionalizing real characters, not the other way around. So when he did start to come up with a real history for a fictional character, for some reason I was confused (because at first I thought Coalhouse was a real person) and then annoyed because Doctorow was messing with my head.

I guess it's pretty weird because usually in historical fiction, making a fictional character seem more real by providing details rooted in history is not very odd. But there's just something about the way Docotorow shamelessly messes with the distinction between history and fiction that's unsettling. It's probably because as a society, we don't really see the line between the two blurring, but Ragtime definitely breaks that boundary.