Poe and Doctorow

I started Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow, and I am almost to The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe in my complete collection of Poe stories. Ragtime is interesting so far, it is set in the early 1900s and discusses many famous people of the time, such as Harry Houdini and Sigmund Freud. The one thing I find annoying is that the actual fictional characters don't have names - they are called The Little Boy and Mother's Younger Brother. Kind of weird.