Ragtime

Father prepares for his trip to the Arctic. Mother allows him to have sex with her the night before he leaves, although she does not enjoy it. The next morning, the family says goodbye to Father. He takes the train to Manhattan and boards the expedition’s ship, the Roosevelt. As their ship departs along the East River, Father watches an incoming boat full of immigrants: “Father, a normally resolute person, suddenly foundered in his soul. A weird despair seized him” (13). He watches the ship until he can no longer see it on the horizon.

The narrator describes how most of America’s immigrants in the early 20th century were from Italy and Eastern Europe. The American populace did not welcome them with open arms, and they had a rough life in New York. Still: “People stitched themselves to the flag. […] They sang. They told jokes” (15). A Jewish artist named Tateh lives in Manhattan with his wife Mameh and daughter, The Little Girl. Mameh and the girl work as seamstresses. Mameh’s boss sexually assaults her. She tolerates the abuse because he gives her extra money after he molests her.

A journalist named Jacob Riis wanders the streets of New York and documents immigrants’ poor living conditions. Riis plans to interview architect Stanford White about forming plans to build improved immigrant apartments. That night, White goes to an opening night gala at Madison Square. As he enjoys the party: “The tenements glowed like furnaces and the tenants had no water to drink. […] Families slept on stoops and in doorways” (19). The city is suffering a massive heat wave.

That summer, Evelyn Nesbit is preparing to testify at her husband’s murder trial. Her husband, Harry K. Thaw, killed architect Stanford White at the night of the Madison Square Garden party because White was sleeping with Evelyn. She knows that it will be difficult to convince the jury that Harry is not a naturally violent man. Harry is infamous throughout the city for his eccentricity, wild temper, and jealousy. When Harry was courting Evelyn, he took her on a trip to Europe. One night, he tied her to a bed naked and whipped her. After Harry assaulted her a second time, Evelyn insisted on going back to America. When she returned, she found comfort in Stanford White’s arms. Their love triangle escalated until Harry killed White. Harry is now behind bars in a prison called the Tombs. Evelyn agreed to testify in Harry’s defense if he paid her $200,000. She is preparing to bleed him for more money through divorce proceedings.

Harry Houdini plans an escape trick at the Tombs, which brags about its inescapable cells. He is led naked to a cell, his clothes in the hallway out of reach. The trick relies on Houdini escaping the locked cell, redressing, and appearing in the Warden’s office within five minutes. As Houdini is escaping with a strip of metal that he hid on his body, he sees a prisoner across the hall from him. The prisoner strips naked and taunts Houdini, who races to escape and dress in order to get away from him. Houdini later realizes that the prisoner is Harry K. Thaw.

One evening, Houdini is commissioned to perform at a private party thrown by New York socialite Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish. He initially agrees to the commission for its high pay. However, when he gets there, he observes that there are a number of other acts at the party, including a string of circus “freaks.” He performs for the circus employees and becomes disgusted at Mrs. Fish’s party. Houdini storms out.

Famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud arrives in New York with his researchers Carl Jung and Sándor Ferenczi. Freud and his team spend the next few days touring the city. One day, they see a beautiful woman posing for an artist with a little girl. The scene gives all of the psychoanalysts pause. After touring the entire island of Manhattan and seeing some of Brooklyn, Freud concludes that the city— and America as a whole—is vulgar and messy: “He had seen in our careless commingling of great wealth and great poverty the chaos of an entropic European civilization” (39). Freud returns to Vienna, happy to be back in his old Europe. He tells one of his colleagues that “America is a mistake, a gigantic mistake” (39).

One day after visiting Harry K. Thaw at the Tombs, Evelyn Nesbit travels into Manhattan’s Lower East Side. She witnesses the organized chaos that the city’s working class immigrants inhabit. Suddenly, Evelyn sees a beautiful little girl all alone. She orders her car to stop and finds that the girl has a clothesline tied to her wrist. Evelyn traces the line back to an old man. The artist is Tateh. He lives alone with the little girl because his wife Mameh offered her body for prostitution to feed the family. Tateh, disgusted, drove Mameh out of their home “and mourns her as we mourn the dead” (43).

Evelyn, moved by Tateh and the little girl’s modest means, spends every day with the Jewish family. Each day that Evelyn ventures into the Lower East Side, Mother’s Younger Brother, her secret admirer, follows her. Evelyn notices but ignores him. One day, Evelyn arrives at Tateh’s apartment to find that the little girl has a fever. Evelyn offers to take care of her while Tateh is at work. She and the little girl bond. Evelyn considers kidnapping the girl, but does not go through with it. She cries with love over the child.