Sounding Real: Musicality and American Fiction… by Cristina L. Ruotolo (2013)

For those familiar with the work of author Ruotolo, this book comes with little surprise. Her article on James Weldon Johnson in 2000 already headed in this direction and was remarkable, so there is little wonder that she explored other novels where she suspected (and found) definite traces of a strong relationship between story, technique, development and sentiment with music as the connecting link and the one important media to express such associations.
On roughly 200 pages, she explores the naturalist’s way of incorporating music and musicality in the works of Willa Cather, Harold Fredric, Gertrude Atherton, Theodore Dreiser, Kate Chopin and of course James Weldon Johnson.

Routolo successfully integrates the respective musical styles such as operatic singing, classical music, ragtime and romantic compositions into her analysis. Since she is not only a literary specialist but also a trained musician (cello) she can provide the theoretical framework for the time, place and musical style, each corresponding with the development and the status of the novel at hand.
This information comes in quite handy since the reader moves through a number of genres and historical periods.

Her chapter on the last author is of particular interest for those readers involved with jazz fiction, since the text The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is the first approach to portray the very first jazz musicians; or, rather, those performers of a forerunner of the genre, namely ragtime. Furthermore, the author of the novel – originally published anonymously as an autobiography in 1912, then finally in 1927 released as fiction with his name – was black. A fact concealed, since in 1912 this would have caused some unfavorable uproar. Johnson together with his brother Rosamund and vaudeville pro Bob Cole created about 200 compositions for vaudeville, Broadway and the Theater.
Nevertheless, Johnson not only wrote about something he witnessed in the popular culture of the day (of the 1920s) but something that he, and his brother were very much involved in personally. Both of them for a while earned their living by publishing (and inventing) ragtime sheet music during their career, until James Weldon finally served as US Ambassador abroad.

Ruotolo’s final chapter compares the novels of two mostly forgotten music critics who seemingly simultaneously tried to put into words their experience of their everyday work not only with the tunes but the personalities of historical composers and professional singers (James Hunecker’s Painted Veils and William J. Henderson’s Soul of a Tenor). This serves as a particular climax of the study since this chapter actually tests the general ability to combine both topic and style.

Nonetheless, Ruotolo labeled her book “Sounding Real,” and naturalism and real-ness are at the center of her examination. While composed or spontaneous music is essential to the study, also other “new” sounds such as streetcars, traffic, machinery and the whole new sound scape of the modern city is being portrayed as a new agent who adds character to modern life.
As much as the ever-growing number of articles and books on texts dealing with both music (particularly jazz) and fiction keep growing, it is essential to see the very beginnings of modern incorporation of musical ideas and ideals into fiction even before the century of jazz began.

Review by Dr. Alexander Ebert (c) 2013

 

Cristina L. Ruotolo. Sounding Real: Musicality and American Fiction at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. (Studies in American Literary Realism & Naturalism) University of Alabama Press, 2013, 170 p.