There is only one escape artist in Ragtime that gets any note, Houdini of course. We know his character only in Ragtime as we are without the ability to travel into the past and speak with him. Houdini's career and the depiction of his performances are some of the most reliable pieces that Doctorow includes. We cannot know for certain what Houdini said or did in his private time but we do have records of his acts and the escapes and magic in his many performances. With this we try to answer the question, Why do we like to watch escape artists?
What makes magic and supernatural performances dazzle an audience is a suspension of disbelief. We know that, or should by now, that "impossible" escapes are just clever tricks that we are not in the know about. That leads to the second reason why. We are curious to see just how the artist performs his tricks. We want to be in on it and yet the irritation of not being so informed just reinforces our sense of disbelief. Escape artists play on both reasons by presenting a challenge, performing the impossible, yet letting us know that there is nothing that they do that can't be done by conventional methods.
In chapter 27 we see Houdini perform more and more recklessly. His feats are normally strange and are a little unusual, but here his mother's death has made him almost frantic in his attempt to do bigger and more dangerous tricks. I think that the story of Houdini's latest performance is a lot like Doctorow's telling Ragtime. In the start of Ragtime there are a series of events and narration that make us doubt the plausibility of the chapters. Coincidence follows coincidence which follows random events. We, like Houdini's, audience start doubting taking Doctorow's story at face value. Houdini's attempted explanation that all events are much safer, read relevant, than they appear is drowned out in the roar of an explosion which leaves us doubting the entirety of the story. I argue that the place that we are in has started to get even more unrealistic. Grandfather feels spry then breaks his pelvis immediately, Sarah dies in a odd coincidence of events. Doctorow is testing our limits as an audience before he shows the conclusion, which I hope is as spectacular as the end of Houdini's show.
