1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Karp concludes his "Ragtime" trilogy with a bang!, July 7, 2010
Larry Karp's excellent The Ragtime Fool concludes the trilogy which began with The Ragtime Kid. At the end of that book, its titular hero, Brun Campbell, departed Sedalia, Missouri, under a bit of a cloud. Now it's 1951, fifty-two years have passed, and he's a piano-playing barber in Venice, California, doing his best to spread the gospel of ragtime. But it's an uphill battle, so when he learns that Sedalia is planning to honor his mentor, Scott Joplin, Brun makes up his mind to go there, and he lets nothing--not his wife, not his finances, not even the police, who find him "of interest" in a suspicious death--stand in his way. Even more importantly, there's word that Joplin left a journal, and Brun is determined to get his hands on it and get Joplin the recognition he deserves. But others want that journal, as well, and not all of them are fans of Joplin; some others, in fact, want to make sure the journal never again sees the light of day.
In some respects, this book hovers on the verge of being a caper novel. There are, after all, six or seven partnerships, some of them pretty unlikely, prowling the streets of Sedalia on the track of this journal; and there are lots of near-misses as the journal changes hands. There's a sort of romance, too, between a young man who's also crazy about ragtime and the girl who believes in him enough to bankroll him. But there's also a vicious plot looming, to dynamite the high school where the tribute to Joplin is to take place. Indeed, violence frames this novel, from California to Missouri.
As in the previous novels in this trilogy, the cast of The Ragtime Fool is partly real and partly fictional, partly white and partly black, partly good and partly bad. Race plays an important part in the story of ragtime, and so it does in this novel--the casual ugliness of racial bias permeates every neighborhood but one. Happily, there are good people, both black and white, who look after each other and do the right thing. As always, Karp's impeccable research enables him to paint a vivid picture of 1950's Sedalia, and he's created some wonderful characters to tell his ragtime story, especially a precocious teen-aged investment whiz, and a wonderful heroic lady who has enough starch in her to keep everyone straight. Young Alan Chandler, Brun's fictional apprentice, is as single-minded as Brun, and as impulsive; and his short stay in Sedalia changes his life forever.
So who is The Ragtime Fool? Well, Brun and his sometime pupil, Alan, are surely fools for ragtime; and there are the ignorant fools who define a man's worth by the color of his skin; and then there are a lot of men who are fooled by their own self-importance. There's plenty of foolery to go around, and plenty of good reading in this book. Find yourself some ragtime music, sit down and read the whole trilogy, and see for yourself.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
His Version, June 22, 2010
This novel wraps up a trilogy about the life and times of Scott Joplin. The year is 1951, and the town of Sedalia, MO, is planning a ceremony to honor the ragtime king and place a plaque up on the wall of the "colored" high school. The only white pupil of Joplin, Brun Campbell, the old Ragtime Kid, who has lived as a barber in Venice, CA, for many years, playing his piano in his shop, wants to create a more fitting memorial to Joplin, hoping to play at the ceremony and induce the citizens of Sedalia to build a museum about ragtime.
Into this mix is a young 17-year-old New Jersey lad who becomes enthused about ragtime on hearing some tunes on the radio, the negotiations with Joplin's widow for a journal he wrote, the death of Brun's long-time friend and an assortment of complications, including members of the Sedalia Ku Klux Klan and competition among various persons to obtain control of the journal for a variety of reasons.
Entertaining in more ways than one, the novel, of course, as is the entire trilogy, is based loosely on historical fact and real and imagined persons. Well-written and constructed with an eye to keeping it suspenseful, "Ragtime" is recommended.
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