hollows of the Great America must be hollow.
In rings like tin, like the jingle of pennies
in a glass jar, an echo of a lost America,
refractions through a hollow prism.
This is epic English in an awkward way. Doctorow's skill nearly carries it off, but it is a charade. Like his subject, it shows more form than content: mystical images without context, crackling plot without mystery. He manipulated us with Ragtime, made us believe what we saw. In reality, Doctorow is just another Houdini, a conjurer of words.
LOON LAKE is political in an uncomfortable way. It is sexual in a strangely mechanical way. Its rhythm is charted, its course vaguely predictable, its ending a hollow punctuation to the entire novel. But its vision of America's past glows with more beauty than a lavender sunset over Loon Lake.