E.L. Doctorow represents historical figures more thoroughly than he does fictional characters, often leaving his fictional characters without much detail, while making up extremely specific details about real historical characters. Perhaps turning fiction on its head like this is to demonstrate how little we know about historical figures. We are given all this "secret" information about people like Morgan, and we are given no choice but to think that things like this could never have happened. As outrageous as it is to think that J.P. Morgan had a secret room full of smuggled treasures, where he holds a meeting with Henry Ford that no one ever found out about, we realize that there are millions of intimate details in his life that we don't know about, but that did actually happen. Just as this hidden room being slotted into the hard facts of J.P. Morgan's life led to a trip to Egypt and a night in a pyramid, all the other details in Morgan's life that even Doctorow never found out about led to several other events that were important to him and the people around him. The same goes for all of the historical figures mentioned in Ragtime.
In highlighting fine details in the lives of historical characters, Doctorow is emphasizing the fact that famous historical figures were real people with real lives. What we know about them is only what historians choose to tell us. In showing us this, Doctorow is undermining the idea that there is some overarching metanarrative to history. Every tiny detail of someone's life has some importance and consequence, and which ones are important can be up to anyone to decide.
