King of Rags By Eric Bronson
Book Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Neverland
Publishing
Release Date: May, 2013
Book Description:
King of Rags
follows the life of Scott Joplin and his fellow ragtime musicians as
they frantically transform the seedy and segregated underbelly of
comedians, conmen and prostitutes who called America’s most vibrant
cities home.
Inspired by Booker T. Washington and the Dahomeyan
defeat in West Africa, Joplin was ignored by the masses for writing
the music of Civil Rights fifty years before America was ready to
listen.
Excerpt One:
Whenever he had a
difficult decision to make, Scott set himself up on the small hill
with high grass and wildflowers. In the starlight he was especially
careful not to disturb the patient, purple flowers. A traveling white
schoolteacher once read to his class the story of the heliotrope from
Ovid’s
Metamorphoses.
Derided by the world and scorned by her lover the Sun God, a poor
nymph keeps her eyes ever fixed to the sun. Streaked with purple, she
is covered in leaves and flowers, roots that claw their way around
her helplessness, forever binding her to the earth.
“‘An excess of
passion begets an excess of grief,’” the schoolteacher quoted.
“Don’t reach so high. You’ll be much happier if you lower your
sights.”
But there was
something about the nymph’s undying faith that touched him inside.
She refused to be stuck here in this world, and that refusal brought
hope along with the pain. Scott thought he understood the nymph’s
eternal conflict. His music wouldn’t right the wrong, but it might
help ease the loss. Long after the sun abandoned her, Scott sat among
the heliotrope and played for her his coronet.
The hill had a
further advantage: it overlooked the new train station. He was there
one December day, ten years earlier, when the first Texas &
Pacific railway pulled in from Dallas, on its way to Fulton,
Arkansas. Since then his father had taught him to play the violin,
banjo and coronet, but none of them could take him beyond his
colorless world. Maybe the trains couldn’t either, but the tracks
held that promise, going outwards, ever away. His mother believed the
coronet was the Devil’s
instrument. Scott disagreed. Any instrument that brought relief to
others was useful. It shouldn’t much matter who was dancing at the
other end.
Under the wavering
light of a half-moon, Scott played with all the sounds of the night:
the high-pitched melody of cicada bugs over the running bass line of
lumber cars and freight trains, garbage crates and short hauls
sounding their syncopated iron rhythms: boom-chugga
boom-boom: boomchugga boom-boom.
The music of the night trains was the sound of waiting—waiting and
waning and wasting away. The greatest secrets in life, Scott knew,
lay not in the music or the people who played
it, but in the short, silent spaces that sometimes fell unexpectedly
off the beat. The Stop Man taught him that without hardly even saying
a word.
This is one of those books that I chose to read as a challenge to myself, as this is completely out of my comfort zone when it comes to genre or topics to read. I was expecting this to be an autobiography in many ways, but King of Rags is far from your standard biography. While the book does center around Scott Joplin, it goes further into the experiences that brought Joplin to be Joplin. There are snippets of stories that help the reader to become a behind the scenes onlooker to various ragtime musicians lives.
What I found in my journey through this music world was a better understanding, a connection to the musicians, a new look on the lives, feelings, and events that shaped the era. Eric Bronson was able to bring the whole book to life in a factual intellect with his writing, and I am hoping to read more of his works.
I recommend this book to those that would like to learn more in depth of the history behind the history of Scott Joplin and his fellow musicians. They all helped shape this music to be what the people needed in the era.
Author Bio: Eric Bronson teaches philosophy in the Humanities Department at York University in Toronto. He is the editor of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), Poker and Philosophy (Open Court, 2006), Baseball and Philosophy (Open Court, 2004), and co-editor of The Hobbit and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), and The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy (Open Court, 2003). In 2007 he served as the "Soul Trainer" for the CBC radio morning show, "Sounds Like Canada." His current project is a book called The Dice Shooters, based loosely on his experiences dealing craps in Las Vegas.
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