Crafting Creative Concepts with Charlotte

So far in this course, we've established that there's a fine line between history and fiction. The historian has the liberty to include or exclude specific details in their account of events in order to frame things in a certain way. I found Doctorow's Ragtime to be a perfect example of this phenomenon.  Though Doctorow isn't a historian, he poses as one throughout Ragtime as he weaves together history and fiction into a tightly meshed story. With the historical figures that he ropes into his story, he chooses to mention certain events and specific parts of their lives while ignoring other, less desirable details. For example, Evelyn Nesbit had a child while Harry K. Thaw was in an insane asylum (due to his murder of Stanford White). She claimed it was Thaw's child and had been conceived during one of her visits, but he denied paternity. This is some wild stuff! But because Doctorow tries to separate Evelyn from the gossip and scandals that surrounded her, he lef