A Composition Noted by Its What-Ifs

THE KING OF RAGTIME

By Larry Karp

Poisoned Pen. 296 pp. $22.95

As this quirky little novel begins, it is August 1916 and black composer Scott Joplin, the King of Ragtime, has fallen on hard times. His glory days are long past. He's living in Harlem and is increasingly incapacitated by syphilis: "His brain didn't work right anymore because he once upon a time lay down in bed with the wrong woman." Although he's not yet 50, his memory is failing, his hands shake and fits of anger interrupt his frustrating attempts to write a symphony. On top of everything else, he's convinced that Irving Berlin, the 28-year-old boy wonder of popular song, stole one of his musical themes and made it the basis of Berlin's first great hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band."

In an afterword, author Larry Karp sorts out what is fact and what is fiction in all this. Apparently there were rumors that Berlin had borrowed from Joplin, but such things are almost impossible to prove: "Case dismissed, lack of evidence," Karp concludes. What matters, in the novel, is that Joplin believes he's been wronged. Nonetheless, his young friend Martin Niederhoffer, an accountant in Berlin's music-publishing firm, urges Joplin to show Berlin his new musical drama "If" for possible publication. Joplin reluctantly agrees, but on a visit to the publishing office, he comes upon the dead body of another employee. Niederhoffer, finding Joplin with the body, fears that if they call the police Joplin will be charged with murder. Instead, he persuades the composer to go into hiding.

Joplin has a dear friend, a white woman named Nell Stanley, whose father, John Stark, published Joplin's music in years past. She calls the 75-year-old publisher in St. Louis and persuades him to come to New York to help prove Joplin's innocence. The rest of the novel is devoted to the efforts of Stark, Nell and Niederhoffer to find the real killer. When Berlin denies having ever seen Joplin's new musical -- the score of which the composer insists he personally handed to him -- they pressure Berlin to admit the truth and either return or publish the new work.

It's a complicated plot and one that often lapses into melodrama. Niederhoffer recruits a cartoonish thug called Footsie Vinny, who warns Berlin to cooperate or "you'll be visitin' your dentist tomorrow to get yourself a new set a choppers." Niederhoffer's 17-year-old girlfriend, Birdie, is kidnapped by persons unknown, people unexpectedly fire guns at one another, and a second man is murdered. Karp does not help himself with such lines as "Nell's eyes were like dinner plates," and "Waterson's cheeks went the color of beets . . . [and he] began to bawl like an orphaned calf." As the whodunit unfolds, Joplin himself fades into the background and becomes just a sick, confused man trying in vain to write music. There is, however, a poignant moment when we learn that his new work "If" deals with the great what-ifs of his own life. What if he had been white? What if white publishers had given him more support?

Reading this, I found myself reflecting on my own what-ifs about this novel. Karp, who was a physician for 25 years before he turned to fiction, views ragtime as a major American art form and Joplin as a composer who ranks with Beethoven and Brahms. Unfortunately, he writes with more sincerity than skill. The book is at its best when the focus is on Joplin and his music. I kept thinking, what if Karp had not turned Joplin's story into a murder mystery? It may seem to be a commercial move, since there's a market for mysteries, but the puzzle here is the weakest part of the book. Joplin's life mingled triumph and tragedy, and a more ambitious novelist would have looked far more deeply into his tortured soul. The conflict between him and Berlin would have provided sufficient drama, without two fanciful murders and people running all over town trying to solve them.

In some ways, the 11-page afterword, when Karp discusses the history of ragtime, is the most interesting part of the novel. In the early 20th century, with great popular hits like "Maple Leaf Rag" and "The Entertainer," Joplin was hailed as the King of Ragtime. Berlin claimed that title after the success of "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911, although Karp says that purists don't consider Berlin's song genuine ragtime.

By the 1920s, ragtime's popularity faded as jazz became the sensation. It never disappeared, however. The soundtrack of the 1973 Paul Newman-Robert Redford movie "The Sting" introduced Joplin's classic rags to a new generation, and the great Eubie Blake, near the end of his long life (he died in 1983 at the age of 100), sparked a one-man ragtime revival.

Karp reports that Joplin died on April 1, 1917, not long after the events in his novel; and on that very day, Victor released the first recorded jazz tune, "Livery Stable Blues," by some white men who called themselves the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.