"Ragtime"

[fiefoe]

It's hard to avoid using 'jaunty' to describe the opening of E. L. Doctorow's novel. 'Pointillistic' also comes to mind.

• Patriotism was a reliable sentiment in the early 1900's.
• There seemed to be no entertainment that did not involve great swarms of people.
• There was a lot of sexual fainting. There were no Negroes. There were no immigrants.
• A certain light was still available along the Eastern seaboard. Homer painted the light.
• Across America sex and death were barely distinguishable.
  

True stories that beg to become fiction:

__ the immigrant some years before had shot the steel millionaire Henry Frick in Pittsburgh
__ the papers were full of the shooting of the famous architect Stanford White by Harry K. Thaw, eccentric scion of a coke and railroad fortune. Harry K. Thaw was the husband of Evelyn Nesbit, the celebrated beauty...