The Zapruder Film vs. 9/11 Films

The Zapruder film is an interesting historical source because it can be viewed in two different lights. It can make people aware of the awfulness of the assassination and how it must have felt to be watching the Kennedys as JFK got shot, but it is also a platform for conspiracy discussions that disregard the emotions experienced by those in the car and those watching it. If you dissect the film, looking carefully at the all the frames to see what clues you can find that point towards a government conspiracy, you risk becoming used to the sight of someone having their brains blown out. Then you also risk forgetting that this caused everyone a great deal of pain; JFK obviously suffered physically, but Jackie and the people watching suffered emotionally. It strikes me that the Zapruder film is very similar to the films of 9/11 that people have tried to dissect, searching for clues about government involvement.

There is much more footage of 9/11 than of the Kennedy assassination, and this means that there is a lot more material to work from when forming conspiracy theories. There are dozens of videos on Youtube about conspiracy theories, all showing in detail how the planes crashed into the World Trade Center. They examine how the floors collapsed, claiming that there must have been explosives placed inside the building. Other films, however, show a more human side. They show people jumping out of the buildings because they don't know what else to do. They show pictures of people in the street, screaming and running in panic. They include recordings of phone calls made from the buildings from people who were about to die to the people they love. If you watch the first type of video, you don't understand the despair that people felt, just as you lose the human side of the story if you watch the Zapruder film with an analytical mindset.

Of course, these are tragedies on very different scales. In one, one man was killed, and another was killed in the aftermath. In the other, thousands of people lost their lives and thousands of families lost their loved ones. But they are both tragedies, and perhaps that fact should be more important than the government's possible role. I do not mean to say that it is not important to figure out the truth. But since it may not be possible to know the truth, perhaps it is better to focus on the sadness and the ways that people reacted to these events after they happened. Focusing too much on how it happened feels somehow disrespectful to the people who died.

The Fake Identity Toolkit

Nowadays, obtaining a new identity is not as difficult as it once was, with Everett forging all the documents in his basement.Of course, most people who assume a new identity do it to hide from less omnipresent organizations than the federal government and its many intelligence operations. Most people who create a new legitamate identity do it by registering new names and social security numbers with the government, meaning that the government has a record of these changes. However, this new identity can help certain people slip under the radar of other organizations. I found several stories that interested me about creating new idendities.
The first is the simplest, and the only one that would allow you to keep your identity change secret from the federal government. According to Bob Burton, president of Cobra, a bounty hunting organization, assuming a new identity is as simple as obtaining the birth certificate of a dead person:

"You look in the obituaries," Mr. Burton said, "in Topeka, Kan., say. You want a gas station attendant more or less your age. Once you get the date of birth, you call the county. 'Hi, I used to live in Kansas, but I've been living in American Samoa for the last 20 years as a Christian missionary. Any chance I could get a copy of my birth certificate?' 

If the ruse works, you can now become a new person. Since you possess one piece of real identification belonging the this person,  you can obtain others. To the federal government, you exist, and the other person exists, but by becoming both of them, you have hidden yourself from them.
I also read about Frank Cullotta, a former mob hit man who had several run ins with the people he was informing on and was entered into the Witness Protection Program by the federal government to protect him from other organizations.He made the switch to a new identity sound much more difficult that Burton did. Here are some of the general guidelines he gave for keeping your identity hidden:

1. Come into your new town with a story: "They asked me why I came there and I would say I was married and my wife got killed in an automobile accident, and I didn't want to stay where I was at anymore because of the memories..."
2. Don't take pictures of yourself an post them to any social media site because there will inevitably be something in the background that could identify you or the place where you are living.
3. No credit history is a problem. Claim that previously you had chosen to spend only cash for idealistic reasons, but now you think that credit will be a little more secure as you get older. "They want your money. They give you a little static at first but they’ll take your money.”
4. According to Cullotta, it is nearly impossible to change your personality or demeanor though: "You hear my voice? Can you imagine me living in Biloxi, Mississippi?...Of course, people would look at me and they would say, ‘you’re a Yankee, you’re a gangster, you sound like a gangster,’” he said in a strong Chicago accent. “So I tried to dress down. I wore ball caps, jeans, tennis shoes, s— I never wore in my life to try to fit in, but I still had that accent. And the demeanor, how I walk and carry myself which is almost impossible to change. It is impossible for me to change.”

It is interesting to me to see how much you have to change to disappear, even when you are not trying to hide from the government, and these points were just a few of many. The next story was just kind of interesting. Jacob Allred, whose other hobby is reading and writing science fiction, runs the site fakenamegenerator.com, a comepletely legal site that creates "a name, date of birth, address, email, Social Security number, mother’s maiden name, even a credible-looking credit card number with expiry date and security code" for billions of new identities every month. He uses real street names, zip codes, telephone numbers, and names from databases of common names and mixes up the data to get a fake but realistic new identity. Some people use these idenities online, and others generate them just for fun. Some people use the name database to look at baby names, while researches sometimes use large batches of fake identities to test database systems. Even though most people do not do illegal things with the identities, the federal government is somewhat suspicious. The FBI and the NSA have been looking into the operation, and the government has asked him not to post social security numbers (even fake ones) openly on the internet. 
 To me, it is interesting to see how someone could remake themselves if necessary. I think it would be very difficult, and I would not want to do it myself, but it is amazing how some people have just disappeared and started entirely new lives in new places.

The Assassin's Fan Club

I have to admit that I was surprised when Mr. Mitchell said that there was a lot of sympathy for, and even romanticizing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after the Boston Marathon bombings, and that there was that same current of romantic interest in Lee Harvey Oswald after he assassinated JFK. So I decided to look into it a little more.

Tsarnaev has garnered the interest of women young and old, primarily because he is attractive. Despite the evidence that he is a mass-murderer who is interested in violent jihad, women all over the country have seen the prom and graduation pictures that show him as a curly-haired, slightly-smiling kid who looks completely harmless. Young women enamored with Tsarnaev (and the apparent "air of mystery" that he seems to have earned by murdering three people and wounding many more) even set up a site called "Free Jahar" to chat about how he was set up by the government, complain about unflattering mugshots, and "[cluck] maternally over his well-being". Unfortunately, criminals like Tsarnaev often have fan-bases; among the celebrities of the criminal world are Oscar Pistorius (killed girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp) , Ted Bundy (murdered 30 or more young women across the US), and Chris Brown (on trial for assault).Older women have also been on Tsarnaev's side, talking about he didn't know what he was doing, and how he is too young (at 19, he is a legal adult) to be charged with such as serious crime as terrorism.

I couldn't find any information on corresponding fan clubs for Lee Harvey Oswald, but conspiracy theories surround them both. Many of the people on Free Jahar believe that he was framed by the government. This seems very similar to the way that many people believe that the government was really behind the assassination of J.F.K. and that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the sole perpetrator of the crime. It is difficult to think about, since three people were killed and more than 200 were wounded, but perhaps at some point a few decades from now, someone like DeLillo will write a novel about how the government was implicated in the Boston Marathon bombing. At the moment, most of us would be unwilling to absolve Tsarnaev and his brother of any responsibility for the crime, but it is possible that we may end up contemplating the involvement of others in future. I don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is an interesting phenomenon.

I Don't Get the Hype

I don't find JFK's assassination overly interesting. Unfortunate, I know, since we are beginning a four hundred page book about conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination. But it just doesn't draw me in. I do find conspiracy theories interesting. I like to hear about the NSA and the ways that the government is controlling our lives as much as anybody else. But present conspiracies are more interesting than past conspiracies.

One of the reasons for my apathy is that there is nothing about the government's version of the story (the little that I know about it) that I find difficult to believe. I don't find it hard to believe that a 24-year-old nobody with little education and no real role in any government or military activities could kill the President. I recognize that during Kennedy's presidency, people viewed him as almost a deity. He was loved, revered, even though some of his policies were questionable. JFK and Jackie were role models for the entire country. But he was only human, and the people who were guarding him were human. At its core, it was one man killing another, something that has happened countless times over the course of history. He was a political leader--political leaders are killed all the time, whether by rebels or complete lunatics.

I also do not find it that hard to believe that the government might have been behind that. I grew up post-9/11. I have grown up in a society that does not entirely trust its government. Recent scandals with the NSA have made the government even more suspect. No one I know has complete faith in the government. There are many countries that have corrupt governments; as cynical as this may sound, I do not find it that difficult to see that ours might be one of them.

Finally, I believe that no one will really know what happened, and that what happened in the country after JFK's assassination is more interesting that the conspiracy theories that surround the actual murder. JFK was killed--that is terrible. But the political implications of his death, rather than the governments' possible role in it, are more important to understand because they have led us to where we are today. Contemplating the details of JFK's assassination has gotten us nowhere.

How Kevin and Dana's Relationship Applies to Affirmative Action

During panel presentations this week, there was a paper entitled "Do I look like someone you can come home to from wherever you may be going: Remapping Interracial Anxiety in Octavia Butler's Kindred", and one of the author's arguments was that it is impossible to be colorblind--people must recognize the history of racial differences and conflicts that have occurred in this country. It struck me that this argument is relevant to the questions about affirmative action that have been coming up in college admissions discussions lately. Recently, about eight states have virtually banned the use of race as a factor in college admissions, and the Supreme Court has made it clear that if colleges intend to consider race, they must prove that "considering race is absolutely necessary to maintaining diversity". A court case last year, Fisher v. University if Texas, ruled that the use of race in determining college admissions was legal, but it might be brought up again in court with the different ruling. Some people argue that affirmative action is not a good thing because our goal should be a color-blind society rather than one that is aware of race and working to make different races more equal in education, and later income and job opportunities.

However, in the light of this book, it seems like bad logic. Butler seems to be saying that examining the past is a good thing for both the majority and minorities through Kevin and Dana's relationship. At first, there seem to be some unspoken tensions between Kevin and Dana; although they try to ignore them, they both realize that they do come from different backgrounds. When they spoke to their families, they essentially rejected them; it would be difficult not to feel some regret and tension about that. After they come back from the 1800s they seem to understand each other more, because they both realize that their backgrounds and their histories are very different. This applies to affirmative action because the history between whites and other races in America has always been filled with tension, and must be understood. While people do not like talking in terms of race, that is often the only way to address the issue. In principle, affirmative action at least recognizes this history, rather than trying to put it behind us. It is a gesture that says we want people to be more equal because we were not always and that is not right.

Rufus: Man or Monster?

Like Dana, I find it hard to not forgive Rufus, even when he has done something horrible and manipulative, so it surprises me that everyone in the class seems to have hardly any sympathy for him. He is actually in quite a bad situation; he grew up with a crazy woman for a mother, and a cold father, and his only "friends" as a child--Nigel and Alice--are unavailable to him (for friendship and love respectively) as he grows older. (Some people will probably complain at this point that I am trying the lessen the cruelty of the slave owners; I recognize that they did many terrible things, but the slaveholders were still complex people). Today we would probably look at his erratic behavior and, provided he wasn't enslaving anyone in the present time, diagnose him with a variety of psychiatric disorders related to neglect and identity confusion. I don't think he is bad to the core, and that is why I still sometimes find him sympathetic.

Strangely, I found it harder to like Kevin when he comes back after five years in the nineteenth century than to like Rufus throughout the novel. It must have been the contrast between Kevin's earlier kindness and his harshness when he returns to the present. The situation with Kevin is also more confused because although he usually seems very progressive and egalitarian, he exhibits flashes on strange behavior that makes you question his relationship with Dana. His insistence about her typing his manuscripts makes him seem less egalitarian and modern than he may have seemed at first. Of course, Rufus is no more predictable, but his unpredictability is expected because he lived in a time where it was okay to be kind sometimes and cruel other times. This makes him almost easier to understand. 

Finally, I'd like to comment on a remark that was made in class last week. Someone said something about whether or not Rufus was a "monster". I would like to argue that he cannot be a monster because Kindred is not a book about Dana's relationship with a monster. This is not a story about a monster, because a monster can exist in many time, and what makes this book so complicated and interesting in the effect of an era on a person's personality. I don't like the phrase "a man of his time" --it seems like a cop-out, a way to avoid passing judgement or blame--but I think there is a lot of validity to the phrase. Rufus was formed by his time, and although he has unique characteristics (we don't know if he was kinder or crueler than most of the men around him, though he was certainly different), I cannot imagine that he would act the same way in 1976 as he did in 1815.

Billy Pilgrim Reaches Nirvana

"The guide invited the crowd to imagine that they were looking across a desert at a mountain range on a day that was twinkling bright and clear. They could look at a peak or a bird or a cloud, at a stone right in front of them, or even down into a canyon behind them. But among them was this poor Earthling, and his head was encased in a steel sphere which he could never take off. There was only one eye hole through which he could look, and welded to that eye hole were six feet of pipe."

The Tralfamadorians believe that Billy is sadly limited by his inability to see that all of time is always occurring and that time itself is not at all linear. But Billy has a much better understanding of the Tralfamadorian idea of time. He cannot see all of time at the same time, but he has become unstuck in time, allowing him to understand that the order of events does not matter. This limited understanding seems to us almost like enlightenment (as in Buddhist enlightenment), even though it is not nearly as sophisticated as the Tralfamadorian viewpoint.

Englightment is a contested term; no one really seems to understand what it means. Western culture has adopted the idea of Buddhist enlightenment to use it in self-help books, but there is a very deep religious tradition based on it in both Buddhism and Christianity. The Buddhist idea of enlightenment seems more in line with Billy's attitudes.So what is Buddhist enlightenment? There are multiple terms for enlightenment that come from the various branches of Buddhism in different regions.

Kensho--"seeing one's true essence".
Bodhi--"to have woken up and understood".
Samyaksambodhi--"highest perfect awakening".
Satori--"comprehension, understanding".

Buddha's enlightenment involved three knowledges. He understood his past lives, how karma and reincarnation worked, and the four noble truths (the truth of suffereing, the orgin of suffereing, how to stop suffering, and the truth behind following that path). In this way, he "attained supreme security from bondage". It has been described as an awakening to some larger reality that most of us never understand.

Billy Pilgrim seems to have reached enlightenment in many ways. He has not escaped suffering so much as accepted and thus escaped it. Billy was a prisoner of war. He was in Dresden. Later, he was in a plane crash and his wife died in the same week. He has had his share of suffering, and he has lived through it. He does not let the sadness take him over on a daily basis; when it does surface, he cannot understand what it is about.For example, it takes him a long time to understand why the barbershop quartet affects him so strongly. "Unexpectedly, Billy Pilgrim found himself upset by the song and the occasion. he had never had an old gang, old sweethearts and pals, but he missed one anyway, as the quartet made slow agonized experiments with chords...Billy had powerfully psychosomatic responses to the changing chords. His mouth filled wit the taste of lemonade, and his face became grotesque, as though he really were being stretched on the torture engine called the rack" (173). The effects of his suffering have made their mark on him, but he worked through it, and as a result of becoming unstuck in time he seems to have reached a strange serenity.

Billy accepts everything. For example, when his father throws him into the pool, he does not attempt to paw his way to the surface: "...he was at the bottom of the pool, and there was beautiful music everywhere. He lost conciousness, but the music went on. He dimly sensed that somebody was rescuing him. Billy resented that" (44).When he was being shot at, he stood there and gave the sniper another chance. He lets his daughter make him feel like a child by patronizing him without getting upset. Everything just seems to drift by him, and he looks at it, understands that it has to happen that way because the moment is structured that way, and lets it go. In fact, this attitude is similar to the attitude that you are supposed to try to adopt when meditating, a practice that is intimately connected to enlightenment. When thoughts come into your head, you are supposed to let them pass you by without judging them, in an attempt to eventually become almost thoughtless. It seems that maybe Billy is living in a constant state of meditation., reaching a state of uninvolved presence that allows him to view the world more calmly.

Wayne and Sinatra in Slaughterhouse-Five?

I was reading through an interview with Kurt Vonnegut in the online version of the Paris Review (the link is at the bottom) and saw that Vonnegut had originally intended to tell his story as "a classy adventure". He really did intend to create a book that would be have roles for Frank Sinatra and John Wayne at the beginning of the writing process:

Others had so much more to write about. I remember envying Andy Rooney, who jumped into print at that time; I didn't know him, but I think he was the first guy to publish his war story after the war; it was called Air Gunner. Hell, I never had any classy adventure like that...Then a book by David Irving was published about Dresden, saying it was the largest massacre in European history. I said, By God, I saw something after all! I would try to write my war story, whether it was interesting or not, and try to make something out of it. I describe that process a little in the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five; I saw it as starring John Wayne and Frank Sinatra. Finally, a girl called Mary O’Hare, the wife of a friend of mine who’d been there with me, said, “You were just children then. It’s not fair to pretend that you were men like Wayne and Sinatra, and it’s not fair to future generations, because you’re going to make war look good.” That was a very important clue to me.

It surprised me that Vonnegut actually thought that he would right the typical war novel; it wasn't really even his intention to write an antiwar novel when he began. The first chapter had not given me that impression at all. I was also surprised that his conversation with Mary O'hare was true. The first chapter is Vonnegut speaking about his experience, but I didn't realize the extent to which he is present. Even the name Mary O'Hare is the same. Another comment interested me as well, all about his experience in the war. When the interviewer asked "What did you do when you got to the front?", he answered, "I imitated various war movies I’d seen."
These two statements made me realize that Slaughterhouse-Five would have been very different if Vonnegut had written it earlier on, just after he had come out of the war. Most of the war books and movies of the time starred soldiers who were patriotic, brave, masculine, and eager to fight on the front lines for their countries (and usually featuring large weapons to demonstrate the power of the United States and the other Allies). If Vonnegut had written Slaughterhouse-Five while he was caught up in the feeling of success of the postwar years, I think he might have written it like a war movie. I wouldn't want to say that he wasn't deeply affected and disturbed by the war at that time; he probably was--I think it would be hard to come back from the war without being kind of messed up. But he was still very young when he came back, and did not, even according to him, fully understand the gravity of what he had witnessed in Dresden.

When the city was demolished I had no idea of the scale of the thing . . . Whether this was what Bremen looked like or Hamburg, Coventry . . . I’d never seen Coventry, so I had no scale except for what I’d seen in movies.

Vonnegut waited all the way until 1968-1969 to write Slaughterhouse-Five. This was right before the Vietnam war, and there was a lot of anti-war protesting at the time which also might have influenced him to write about his experiences from an anti-war perspective. As an older adult, he better understood how young he was when he went to war, especially after he talked to Mary O'Hare. 

She freed me to write about what infants we really were: seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. We were baby-faced, and as a prisoner of war I don’t think I had to shave very often. I don’t recall that that was a problem. 

I don't that Vonnegut could have seen that if he was writing the book in his twenties, because people cannot see how naive and young they are--they can only look back and realize how little they knew and understood in the past. We would undoubtedly be reading a very different book if Vonnegut had written Slaughterhouse-Five in the forties; in fact, I don't think we would be reading it, because it would most likely be less controversial and less creative in its approach.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3605/the-art-of-fiction-no-64-kurt-vonnegut

The Aten-Aton Connection

I had no idea that the group called the Atonists, to which Hinckle and Hierophant 1 belong, comes from the group of Egyptians who worshiped Aton in the 1300s BC. This was because I've usually seen the name spelled Aten--had the group been called the Atenists, I think it would have been much more obvious.

I think that the most interesting part about this is the reversal of the accepted religions over time. During the time when Ahkenaten was forcing his people to worship Aton as the only God, religions with many gods were more common, and the pantheons of popular gods and goddesses often changed. There were some twenty-nine gods and goddesses in ancient Egypt, and they became more or less popular depending on what the people needed spiritual protection from. When forced to worship Aton, the people rebelled and eventually overthrew Ahkenaten's rule. Later, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism became the most prominent religions, all worshiping essentially the same God, although they called him by different names: God, El, and Allah. Of the 86% of people who consider themselves to be religious, 54% of those define themselves as monotheists, and the some most powerful nations in the world, though often theoretically secular, are built on Christianity and Islam.

As Jes Grew emerges, people are beginning to fight back against the Atonists and their strict rules, just like the Egyptians fougt for their right to worship their many gods. The religion of the Atonists does not, according to Reed, allow them to be close to nature or to sing the right songs or to know the true words. They cannot dance right, just like Set, while the people who are surrendering to Jes Grew are returning to the old ways, to the gods of Egypt and Africa. They are connected to nature and the cycles of the world. This does have basis in the religions; monotheistic gods are usually considered to be watching us from afar, creating everything but not getting involved in it anymore or having feelings, whereas gods from polytheistic religions are more fallible, emotional, and involved in the lives of their believers.

I can definitely see  the connections between the Atonists of Ancient Egypt and the Atonists of the modern world, and it is interesting to see how it could have been carried on through the ages. However, the book does seem to take a very negative view towards the Atonists. This was clear from the beginning, but this connection makes them seem even darker and more misguided. Ahkenaten's rule was a time of great conflict in ancient Egypt, and although monotheistic religions today have caused many problems and wars, they do have more merit that Reed is giving them credit for.

From Rags to Riches in Just a Few Pages

Tateh's life changes so suddenly that it is almost unbelievable. Before he sells his little flip books to the Franklin Novelty Shop in (page 133), he is struggling to support himself and his daughter by working on the street or in the mills for very little pay. Then we hear nothing about him until page 254, when we meet the Baron Ashkenazy and find out that he "had produced dozens of movie books for the Franklin Novelty Comapny. Then he had designed a magic lantern apparatus on which strips of paper printed with silhouettes turned on a wheel...the owners of the Franklin Novelty offered to make Tateh a partner...he sold his interests and went into the movie business...he invented a baronry for himself...his child was dressed as beautifully as a princess. He wanted to drive from her memory every tenement stench and filthy immigrant street. he would buy her light and sun and clean wind of the ocean for the rest of her life" (258-259). That was a long quote, but overall the time spent discussing Tateh's success was just a few pages. This makes it seem like it all happened very fast, although we do not actually know how much time passed between the two parts of his story.

In any case, Doctorow is clearly saying something about the immigrant experience. He even comments directly on it several times, making somewhat ironic-sounding generalizations about success in America as an immigrant. For example, he says "thus did the artist point his life along the lines of flow of American energy. Workers would strike and die but in the streets of cities an entrepreneur could cook sweet potatoes in a bucket of hot coals and sell them for a penny or two" (134). The narrator seems disappointed in Tateh in some ways. Instead of fighting for his rights, he made a living however he could, and succeeded at doing so. he escaped bad conditions, but he didn't work for the greater good. It is easy to imagine a mill worker feeling resentful towards Tateh; Tateh got out and made it big, while the mill worker has protested and been part of the I.W.W. and won against the mill owners, and has only gained "a few more pennies in wage" (130).

Doctorow also seems to be making fun of the idea that you could easily be successful in America by making it seem so easy. I'm not exactly sure why, but it seems pretty clear that Doctorow is not saying "Look, it really is that easy for immigrants to start their own businesses and become really rich". The speed with which Doctorow relates his rise makes it seem unreal, like a dream. Probably it was a dream for most of the immigrants who came to America, and remained one for their entire lives. Doctorow is saying that it was not a reality for most people by illustrating one of the people for which it was a reality.

However, it does seem like the narrator feels some admiration towards Tateh. He is not portrayed as a weak and sort of silly character, like Younger Brother is at the beginning of the book. He seems serious but intelligent before his transformation, and ebullient and jovial afterwards. He had "constructed [his happiness] without help", which is something he can be proud of. he is also clearly an innovative and enterprising man. Thus, although he is in the novelty and entertainment business, his success is respected and Tateh himself is respected.

Overall, Doctorow's depiction of Tateh's rise has mixed meanings. In may ways, the narrator seems to have the perspective of a person who had been born and raised in the U.S. but who worked in a mill or other factory and could not figure out a way to increase his wealth, status, or living conditions. He is jealous and annoyed that Tateh has managed to get out of the system rather than trying to improve it, admiring of his "pluck and luck" that enabled him to succeed, and, in the back of his mind, cognizant that such a rise does not happen to many people.

History = Fiction

It's odd that there is so much controversy concerning the distinguishing features of history and fiction when the two genres have only been separate for a thousand or so years. The Tale of Genji, a massive Japanese book by noblewoman in the Heian period (11th century), lays a claim on the title of "first novel ever written", and so does La Morte d'Arthur, which was written in the western world in the 1460s. Of course, 600-1000 years is a considerable amount of time, but if you consider that humans have been around for about 200,000 years, and that we have been writing for about 5500 years, that doesn't really seem too long ago.

History, for a long time, has been transmitted orally in the form of stories that were probably slightly altered with each retelling. Facts were virtually nonexistent, because dates and even reliable record of events were not completely set in stone (although you could argue that most "facts" about events in history are not really facts because all recollections of occurrences are subjective). Many historical stories were told with elements of fiction; many Greek epic poems could be considered fictional, although they were not novels. Many stories also had morals, and fables have been popular for a long time. So people didn't really distinguish between history and fiction as much as they do now.

Now, we have very clear distinctions between fiction and history that we impose on books. Facts are very important--with such huge databases of historical information, there is not much room for blurring the lines of history in novels, and fictional tidbits cannot be added into historical books (God forbid!). Writers of historical fiction usually have to carefully fact-check, write Historical Notes at the end of the book that talk about all the things they decided to change, and only change things where facts are unclear or absent from the historical record. That is why Ragtime is so confusing. It blends historical figures with fictional facts and events, and maybe fictional characters with real events. It is not history, it is not fiction, it is hardly even "respectable" historical fiction. In a world of about thirty different sections in the bookstore covering all the different types of books, Ragtime is not really anything in particular, which makes us puzzled and mildly uncomfortable. But the question is, why does it make us uncomfortable? Doesn't all fiction borrow liberally from history, and the same for history from fiction? Maybe they are really just the same thing, written in different styles and tones.

Morgan is Europe, Ford is America

Of course, both J.P. Morgan and Henry Ford are American, but in many ways, Doctorow's versions of Morgan and Ford personify the stereotypes that many Americans held at that time (and still today) about Europe and America, and what the "heroes" (or villains) of each culture should be like. Morgan is extremely wealthy, came from a wealthy background, and takes advantage of his wealth in intellectual pursuits and the trappings of royalty. Ford, though no less wealthy, appears to have been brought up in the countryside in a fairly poor family and retains his country manners intentionally. What is not clear though is whether Doctorow is satirizing Morgan, Ford, both, or neither.

Morgan fits the American stereotypes of Europe extremely well. He is part of the old world, and he imitates royalty (most Americans of his time and even in ours would probably have disdained royalty). He "affected fashions slightly out of date" and is surrounded by employees who make "obeisance" and "circl[e] him like birds" (137). The author says satirically that "Pierpont Morgan was that classic American hero, a man born to extreme wealth who by dint of hark work and ruthlessness multiplies the family fortune till it is out of sight" (138). This is not the typical picture of the American hero, and the disdain with which Doctorow seems to write about this is similar to the disdain that many average Americans would feel about wealthy, educated European business tycoons. Most of the descriptions of Morgan make him out to be overly privileged.

Ford fits the stereotype of a countrified conservative, a type of all-American man that we see even today in politicians who are trying to get the American people on their side, despite the fact that he is introducing a new and radical system of manufacturing. He doesn't attempt to educate himself about things that are not really in his line of work, and he is not interested in being one of the chosen ones that Morgan thinks that he is. It seems likely that some of his disdain comes from Morgan's attempt to imitate royalty and to connect himself to the pharaohs. Americans generally do not like royalty; it is the American dream to rise up from lowly conditions to success. Thus it seems that Ford is our American hero.

However, it doesn't seem like Doctorow is really putting it into such black and white terms. We feel sympathy for Morgan because he is so isolated, and when he presents his theories to Ford and is rejected, he is deflated and slightly pathetic. We know his mind, and then is it harder to dislike him. Ford also gains some of the reader's sympathies because he is down to earth and likable (despite his antisemitism). Therefore it seems like Doctorow is not making fun of one or the other, unless he is making fun of both. In any case he seems to be making fun of the idea that Morgan (or Europe) should be considered privileged and bad, and that Ford (or America) should be better because of his affable ignorance and ability to honestly rise to the top. Both men are unquestionably more complicated than that, and both are putting on an act, but the stereotypes are still there and suggest interesting social viewpoints of the time.