Works Cited, Ragtime

There, at an underground footbridge, a guide motioned the others back and took Freud’s elbow. Let the old fellow go first, the guide said. The great doctor, age fifty-three, decided at this moment that he had had enough of America. With his disciples he sailed back to Germany on the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. He had not really gotten used to the food or the scarcity of American public facilities. He believed the trip had ruined both his stomach and his bladder. The entire population seemed to him over-powered, brash and rude. The vulgar wholesale appropriation of European art and architecture regardless of period or country he found appalling. He had seen in our careless commingling of great wealth and great poverty the chaos of an entropic European civilization. He sat in his quiet cozy study in Vienna, glad to be back. He said to Ernest Jones, America is a mistake, a gigantic mistake.

Doctorow, E.L.. Ragtime (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) (p. 27). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.