Everything about Doctorow's career to date indicates that he considers the novel a vehicle for social and moral commentary as well as an art form which should stretch the author's resources to their limits. But success on the Ragtime scale in America almost automatically makes it more difficult for a writer to take himself seriously, partly because other, less successful writers begin to discount him….

This is not a metaphysical problem. It's one of the facts of life and writing in America today, and it's demoralized more than one good writer. Doctorow is not one to shirk it: You can almost hear the gritting of his teeth as he charges it head-on. It's no accident that Loon Lake has odd punctuation, excerpts of freeish verse written by one of the characters and passages jump-cut so that the reader has to figure out who's talking and what the time...