This latest cup is truly one to savor as Larry lets us in on the
process of writing his latest book, The Ragtime Kid--a book
that has been well-praised for its accurate depiction of a faraway
place in a long-ago time. Larry lets us know the answer to an
oft-asked question: "What does an author have to do to let his
words bring that very specific world to life?"
"When I wrote my three Music Box Mysteries, everything I
needed to know was in my head, so I did no research at all. Then, for First,
Do No Harm, a day in the Seattle Public Library, looking through Life
Magazines from 1943 and a couple of popular histories of the wartime home front
gave me all I needed to set scenes and cast speech. But when I started
to work on The Ragtime Kid, I saw right away that I was in a whole new
ball game. What did I know about the turn-of-the-century music scene, or life
in a bustling Missouri town in 1899? Not much at all.
The written word got me only so far. I read all I could get my hands on
regarding the history of ragtime and its pioneers, nineteenth-century American
music, slavery and abolitionism, and social, political and historical aspects of
life in Sedalia a hundred years ago. I studied Sanborn insurance maps for 1899
Sedalia; these gave specifics for every building in the city, every street,
every alleyway. No doubt I could have written a decent nonfiction
account of the amazing collaboration between Scott Joplin and John Stark, but a
novel? No way.
Something
important was missing, and I knew that to get it, I needed to go to the place
where it all happened.
Luck is important. My first
trip to Sedalia was in June, 2003. I pulled into town on a Sunday morning,
directly after the annual Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival. It was 94 degrees with
humidity to match. (This meteorology became the opening sentences of Chapter 4
in The Ragtime Kid: They say the devil once spent a week in Missouri in July,
then went back and set up hell to specifications. Only ten in the morning, but
the air was already a sopping blanket...). Ohio Avenue, the town's major
thoroughfare, was deserted, and as I followed the self-guided tour in a C of C
brochure, I came to see that many of the buildings I passed had stood since 1899
or earlier. In my imagination, Ohio Avenue filled with men in three-piece
suits, women wearing long dresses and big floppy hats, scampering children,
peddlers, horse-drawn wagons. I walked to Liberty Park, sat on the grass, and
could feel myself among picnickers and strollers from a century before,
listening to the band on the bandstand.
My story began to come to
life. But I knew I needed more, and right then, I planned to come back the next
June - but a little earlier, in time for the Joplin Festival.
Which I did. Aside from the
joy of hearing ragtime played by marvelous performers from all over North
America, the Festival proved to be of practical use. I'm not a musician, and
had been wondering how to portray Brun Campbell's piano lessons with his hero,
Joplin. My reading had given me a pretty good sense of what Joplin generally
would have expected from a student, but as to specific instructions, I was at
Square One. So I sat in on some master classes, where prominent ragtime
pianists showed and explained to their young counterparts how to play the
music. One more problem taken care of. I strolled through the town, this time
among crowds of people, many of them dressed in period apparel, and it became
easier and easier to imagine myself on those streets 104 years earlier. I spent
hours at the Carnegie Library, looking through microfilmed copies of the Sedalia
newspapers from the summer of 1899 - what were people saying, what were they
concerned about, how did they speak? The librarians opened locked cabinets to
allow me to look through histories of Sedalia and Pettis County, written and
independently-published through the years by local residents. (One particularly
helpful reference was a short section in W. A. McVey's History of Pettis County,
and Sedalia, MO, headed Sounds and Smells of Old Sedalia, worth at least double
its weight in gold).
At the State Fair Community
College's Maple Leaf Room, I looked over the mahogany bar from the Maple Leaf
Club, a large stained-glass window from Woods' Opera House, and a profusion of
photos and documents from the local ragtime era.
By the way, one does not go
hungry in Sedalia. All that research work produced a hearty appetite by
evening, and La Maire's Cajun Catfish and Seafood House, The Chuck Wagon
Bar-B-Q, and Kehde's Barbeque took care of that, with hearty portions of food
cooked just-so, at more than reasonable prices.
My greatest stroke of luck came
while I was at the microfilm machine. The woman at the machine next to mine
introduced herself as Betty Singer, said she was researching a book about local
rural cemeteries, and allowed that my own project sounded interesting. She
loved to do research, she told me, and if she could help me with material I
found I needed once I got home, she'd be only too glad to do so. That she did,
over the next two years, providing me with information I only realized I
required as the book developed. Without Betty's help, the characters of Dr.
Walter Overstreet and P. D. Hastain would never have developed.
Having written the story, I
feel as though I've made a personal connection to Scott Joplin, John Stark, Brun
Campbell, and many of the other real people who became characters in my book.
But I also felt that sort of connection to Sedalia. My on-site research into
the past of the city left me with an emotional attachment akin to the sensation
you get, thinking about your home town as your first came to know it. I'm
really looking forward to another trip to Sedalia this June, to attend the
Joplin Festival. Going home? Does kinda feel that way."--Larry
Karp
There is an e-mail address
for you to ask Larry questions about his writings, especially about
his latest book, The Ragtime Kid. Chick
here to find the page with that
e-mail address and also to see if the questions that you may have
already sent in have been answered yet.
