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Invisible Man
First published in 1952 and immediately hailed as a masterpiece, Invisible Man is one of those rare novels that have changed the shape of American literature. For not only does Ralph Ellison's nightmare journey across the racial divide tell unparalleled truths about the nature of bigotry and its effects on the minds of both victims and perpetrators, it gives us an entirely new model of what a novel can be.
As he journeys from the Deep South to the streets and basements of Harlem, from a horrifying "battle royal" where black men are reduced to fighting animals, to a Communist rally where they are elevated to the status of trophies, Ralph Ellison's nameless protagonist ushers readers into a parallel universe that throws our own into harsh and even hilarious relief. Suspenseful and sardonic, narrated in a voice that takes in the symphonic range of the American language, black and white, Invisible Man is one of the most audacious and dazzling novels of our century.
As he journeys from the Deep South to the streets and basements of Harlem, from a horrifying "battle royal" where black men are reduced to fighting animals, to a Communist rally where they are elevated to the status of trophies, Ralph Ellison's nameless protagonist ushers readers into a parallel universe that throws our own into harsh and even hilarious relief. Suspenseful and sardonic, narrated in a voice that takes in the symphonic range of the American language, black and white, Invisible Man is one of the most audacious and dazzling novels of our century.
581 pages, Paperback
First published April 14, 1952
About the author
Ralph Ellison
82 books1,801 followersRalph Ellison was a scholar and writer. He was born Ralph Waldo Ellison in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, named by his father after Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison was best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). For The New York Times , the best of these essays in addition to the novel put him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus." A posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left after his death.
Ellison died of Pancreatic Cancer on April 16, 1994. He was eighty-one years old.
Ellison died of Pancreatic Cancer on April 16, 1994. He was eighty-one years old.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 8,684 reviews
March 20, 2008
Full disclosure: I wrote my master's thesis on Ellison's novel because I thought the first time that I read it that it is one of the most significant pieces of literature from the 20th century. Now that I teach it in my AP English class, I've reread it many times, and I'm more convinced than ever that if you are only going to read one book in your life, it should be this one. The unnamed protagonist re-enacts the diaspora of African-Americans from the South to the North--and the surreal experience of racism, rage, and manipulation rarely expressed with such force and eloquence. Ellison follows tried and true patterns from dramatic ritual to spell out his invisible man's journey from cocksure teenager to furious refugee hiding out in a basement in Harlem. The last lines of the book are haunting and almost hopeful through the despair.
May 29, 2023
welcome to...INVISIBLE MAY.
i've done it again. another impeccable pun combining the title of a seminal work with the month it currently is. another paragon of literature added to my currently reading. another several-week period that shall be spent reading it, one chapter at a time, daily.
it's another PROJECT LONG CLASSIC installment.
if saying you want to read long classics counts as reading them, i'm the smartest girl in the world. and now i'm reading them, also.
let's get started.
PROLOGUE
love to own a book for 8 years without ever picking it up and then immediately find it compulsively readable from the very first page. extremely cool nonsense behavior by me.
CHAPTER ONE
clear from the prologue this would be a solid read for me. clear from chapter one that it is going to be brutal and excellent.
CHAPTER TWO
the way the theme of what white people want and expect and reward in Black people here is shown and not told is brilliant. the dichotomy between how the intellectual student and the castout are treated by the millionaire...so fascinating.
CHAPTER THREE
kind of cool that there was very little that could ail you in old times that couldn't be cured by a glass of whiskey at a strip club.
CHAPTER FOUR
love a secret code.
CHAPTER FIVE
the OTHER thing is that, on top of everything else, this also has some of the most gorgeous and visual descriptions i've read in recent memory.
CHAPTER SIX
we're going to the big city!
CHAPTER SEVEN
it is very hard to come up with my goofy little entries for each day of this project when i think each chapter is very good and i keep finding myself taking it very seriously.
very.
CHAPTER EIGHT
okay cliffhanger!
it speaks to how invested i am in this that "something had to happen tomorrow, and it did. i got a letter" feels suspenseful to me.
CHAPTER NINE
a rich white daddy's boy telling our protagonist that he's the one who's "freed" while this spoiled kid is trapped, and that he can be his valet, since he really wants to help...
sheesh. "I could hardly get to sleep for dreaming of revenge" is the proper reaction to literally all of this.
CHAPTER 10
he's working in the Liberty White Paint factory...folks, we have officially moved into metaphor city.
CHAPTER 11
nothing is horror-movie-level scary like medical malpractice.
CHAPTER 12
"the cool splash of sleep" — that's so good.
nearly as good as this mary character and the idea of dumping a bucket of mop water on an actively preaching reverend.
CHAPTER 13
we're getting into the invisibility origin story. and also my origin story of accidentally reinventing the word "invisibleness" through a combination of parallel thinking and it being monday.
CHAPTER 14
it's party time!!!!
and the party is mostly an induction into the revolution. which is the best kind.
CHAPTER 15
breaking ugly decorations in a home should be the right of every single human. it's called the betterment of society — look it up.
also to throw things away? i thought that went without saying but then i encountered the plot of this chapter.
CHAPTER 16
let's get fired up!!!!! it's speech time!
CHAPTER 17
watching the beautiful and pastoral color-based descriptions switch to the same language and style for violence and suffering...wow.
CHAPTER 18
the worst kind of sabotage is when the person f*cking your sh*t up is not malicious. just dumb.
there's no coming back from that.
CHAPTER 19
the Woman Question? sounds like me asking my boyfriend why he loves me at the exact moment he's about to fall asleep, am i right? this guy gets it!
"And I wanted both to smash her and to stay with her..." little did ralph ellison know that in the future those would be synonyms.
CHAPTER 20
folks, i believe we are beginning to witness the titular invisibility.
CHAPTER 21
never mind. not yet. getting ahead of myself i guess.
CHAPTER 22
this has that specific high school assigned reading feeling of "I Am Culturally Relevant In A Way That May Fit The Syllabi Of Both Your History And Your English Classes." which is a bizarre sense to have in the midst of adult life.
CHAPTER 23
ah yes, literature's favorite problem-solving tactic: There Must Be A Woman Who Can Do This For Me
CHAPTER 24
welp.
crazy how you can be absolutely and totally on board for an entire book only for the penultimate chapter to just about lose you entirely.
CHAPTER 25
if we don't get invisible now, when will we.
we have found the time. and i fear i may be back on board.
EPILOGUE
and it all comes full circle.
OVERALL
this is a very clever and very incisive and very allegorical but still compelling plotwise book, which had one chapter i hated and 24 i truly enjoyed.
rating: 4
i've done it again. another impeccable pun combining the title of a seminal work with the month it currently is. another paragon of literature added to my currently reading. another several-week period that shall be spent reading it, one chapter at a time, daily.
it's another PROJECT LONG CLASSIC installment.
if saying you want to read long classics counts as reading them, i'm the smartest girl in the world. and now i'm reading them, also.
let's get started.
PROLOGUE
love to own a book for 8 years without ever picking it up and then immediately find it compulsively readable from the very first page. extremely cool nonsense behavior by me.
CHAPTER ONE
clear from the prologue this would be a solid read for me. clear from chapter one that it is going to be brutal and excellent.
CHAPTER TWO
the way the theme of what white people want and expect and reward in Black people here is shown and not told is brilliant. the dichotomy between how the intellectual student and the castout are treated by the millionaire...so fascinating.
CHAPTER THREE
kind of cool that there was very little that could ail you in old times that couldn't be cured by a glass of whiskey at a strip club.
CHAPTER FOUR
love a secret code.
CHAPTER FIVE
the OTHER thing is that, on top of everything else, this also has some of the most gorgeous and visual descriptions i've read in recent memory.
CHAPTER SIX
we're going to the big city!
CHAPTER SEVEN
it is very hard to come up with my goofy little entries for each day of this project when i think each chapter is very good and i keep finding myself taking it very seriously.
very.
CHAPTER EIGHT
okay cliffhanger!
it speaks to how invested i am in this that "something had to happen tomorrow, and it did. i got a letter" feels suspenseful to me.
CHAPTER NINE
a rich white daddy's boy telling our protagonist that he's the one who's "freed" while this spoiled kid is trapped, and that he can be his valet, since he really wants to help...
sheesh. "I could hardly get to sleep for dreaming of revenge" is the proper reaction to literally all of this.
CHAPTER 10
he's working in the Liberty White Paint factory...folks, we have officially moved into metaphor city.
CHAPTER 11
nothing is horror-movie-level scary like medical malpractice.
CHAPTER 12
"the cool splash of sleep" — that's so good.
nearly as good as this mary character and the idea of dumping a bucket of mop water on an actively preaching reverend.
CHAPTER 13
we're getting into the invisibility origin story. and also my origin story of accidentally reinventing the word "invisibleness" through a combination of parallel thinking and it being monday.
CHAPTER 14
it's party time!!!!
and the party is mostly an induction into the revolution. which is the best kind.
CHAPTER 15
breaking ugly decorations in a home should be the right of every single human. it's called the betterment of society — look it up.
also to throw things away? i thought that went without saying but then i encountered the plot of this chapter.
CHAPTER 16
let's get fired up!!!!! it's speech time!
CHAPTER 17
watching the beautiful and pastoral color-based descriptions switch to the same language and style for violence and suffering...wow.
CHAPTER 18
the worst kind of sabotage is when the person f*cking your sh*t up is not malicious. just dumb.
there's no coming back from that.
CHAPTER 19
the Woman Question? sounds like me asking my boyfriend why he loves me at the exact moment he's about to fall asleep, am i right? this guy gets it!
"And I wanted both to smash her and to stay with her..." little did ralph ellison know that in the future those would be synonyms.
CHAPTER 20
folks, i believe we are beginning to witness the titular invisibility.
CHAPTER 21
never mind. not yet. getting ahead of myself i guess.
CHAPTER 22
this has that specific high school assigned reading feeling of "I Am Culturally Relevant In A Way That May Fit The Syllabi Of Both Your History And Your English Classes." which is a bizarre sense to have in the midst of adult life.
CHAPTER 23
ah yes, literature's favorite problem-solving tactic: There Must Be A Woman Who Can Do This For Me
CHAPTER 24
welp.
crazy how you can be absolutely and totally on board for an entire book only for the penultimate chapter to just about lose you entirely.
CHAPTER 25
if we don't get invisible now, when will we.
we have found the time. and i fear i may be back on board.
EPILOGUE
and it all comes full circle.
OVERALL
this is a very clever and very incisive and very allegorical but still compelling plotwise book, which had one chapter i hated and 24 i truly enjoyed.
rating: 4
October 26, 2013
“I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquids- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible because people refuse to see me…When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination- indeed, everything and anything except me.”
When I first read the book last year, the above quote really stood out to me. It seemed very Dostevskyan. It has taken a second reading for me to truly process the content of this book, and still I can’t exactly say I understand all the symbolism.
I really enjoy coming of age books and this one is no exception. The book starts off with the narrator attending a college in the American South. Due to some events I won’t get into he moves to Harlem to look for work. We see the maturing process of the narrator as he goes from being an innocent boy to one who begins to question his identity but can’t seem to reconcile it with his role as a black man in (racist) 1950s America. And like any coming-of-age story, there is a lot of interior and external conflict.
It’s hard to really summarize this book because so much goes on. Of course the main issue is about race and how it was for a person of colour living in a racist society at the time. The book also gets political when it outlines different possible approaches for racial integration, one more radical than the other.
All in all a great book, a book which I will probably have to read again (or discuss it with someone!) to understand it better.
When I first read the book last year, the above quote really stood out to me. It seemed very Dostevskyan. It has taken a second reading for me to truly process the content of this book, and still I can’t exactly say I understand all the symbolism.
I really enjoy coming of age books and this one is no exception. The book starts off with the narrator attending a college in the American South. Due to some events I won’t get into he moves to Harlem to look for work. We see the maturing process of the narrator as he goes from being an innocent boy to one who begins to question his identity but can’t seem to reconcile it with his role as a black man in (racist) 1950s America. And like any coming-of-age story, there is a lot of interior and external conflict.
It’s hard to really summarize this book because so much goes on. Of course the main issue is about race and how it was for a person of colour living in a racist society at the time. The book also gets political when it outlines different possible approaches for racial integration, one more radical than the other.
All in all a great book, a book which I will probably have to read again (or discuss it with someone!) to understand it better.
May 5, 2020
Invisible Man is an extremely well written and intelligent novel full of passion, fire and energy: it’s such a force to be reckoned with in the literary world, and not one to be taken lightly.
“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.”
The biggest question the novel raises evolves around identity (or lack thereof) in a world that demands we conform and meet the expectations of others. The unnamed protagonist becomes invisible, well he feels invisible, because the world cannot accept his opinions, desires and intellectual freedom: he must think, act and talk in a way he is told; thus, his personality vanishes as he becomes what he must.
He cannot form his own identity because every time he creates a sense of individualism he is knocked back because his expression of self does no adhere to someone’s wishes. And this lack of self prevents him from finding any sense of belonging because wherever he goes he is not himself. And this isn’t just about blackness in the face of a white society. This isn’t just about the postcolonial state of slavery and hybrid identity in the face of a supposed freedom from the shackles that bound the blacks to their masters; this is about American society at large: it’s about the world at large.
“When I discover who I am, I'll be free.”
And that’s what makes the novel so powerfully emotive and raw. The narrator enters many different communities and societies, each of which impose an idea upon him about the way in which blacks should behave. Some argue for perpetuating the stereotypical uneducated negro, some suggest that the blacks should be violent and reclaim there lost African heritage and others suggest for science and rationality in dictating the future of blacks in America. In each instance the narrator finds himself detached and separate; he plays an inauthentic role in trying to adhere to ideas about himself that he does not feel are right.
So as he walks through the world lost and confused, dazed and downtrodden, he tries to find himself and fails miserably. The language Ellison tells the story through is remarkable and perceptive; he has a ridiculously keen ear for dialogue and speech patterns that allow the narrator to express himself in way that demonstrates his disillusionment with the world. He is not a happy man, and this is not a happy book. It bespeaks the blindness of society, ideology and those that profess to act in our best interests.
“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”
As I write these words, I’m about to begin my second read of this spectacular novel. There’s just so much in here that one read is simply not enough.
“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.”
The biggest question the novel raises evolves around identity (or lack thereof) in a world that demands we conform and meet the expectations of others. The unnamed protagonist becomes invisible, well he feels invisible, because the world cannot accept his opinions, desires and intellectual freedom: he must think, act and talk in a way he is told; thus, his personality vanishes as he becomes what he must.
He cannot form his own identity because every time he creates a sense of individualism he is knocked back because his expression of self does no adhere to someone’s wishes. And this lack of self prevents him from finding any sense of belonging because wherever he goes he is not himself. And this isn’t just about blackness in the face of a white society. This isn’t just about the postcolonial state of slavery and hybrid identity in the face of a supposed freedom from the shackles that bound the blacks to their masters; this is about American society at large: it’s about the world at large.
“When I discover who I am, I'll be free.”
And that’s what makes the novel so powerfully emotive and raw. The narrator enters many different communities and societies, each of which impose an idea upon him about the way in which blacks should behave. Some argue for perpetuating the stereotypical uneducated negro, some suggest that the blacks should be violent and reclaim there lost African heritage and others suggest for science and rationality in dictating the future of blacks in America. In each instance the narrator finds himself detached and separate; he plays an inauthentic role in trying to adhere to ideas about himself that he does not feel are right.
So as he walks through the world lost and confused, dazed and downtrodden, he tries to find himself and fails miserably. The language Ellison tells the story through is remarkable and perceptive; he has a ridiculously keen ear for dialogue and speech patterns that allow the narrator to express himself in way that demonstrates his disillusionment with the world. He is not a happy man, and this is not a happy book. It bespeaks the blindness of society, ideology and those that profess to act in our best interests.
“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”
As I write these words, I’m about to begin my second read of this spectacular novel. There’s just so much in here that one read is simply not enough.
June 14, 2023
Read in 2018
“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.”
Part a madman's rambling stream of consciousness, part a touching story of a confused young black man struggling with racial identity, Invisible Man is an important American classic. What made this novel special for me was the narration of Joe Morton. I rarely listen to audiobooks but I was lucky to get this one as an Audible offer. I am so glad I decided to listen to this book instead of reading it because the whole experience was enhanced by the wonderful narration. Highly recommended although I prefer Black Boy as a classic on race in US.
.“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”
“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.”
Part a madman's rambling stream of consciousness, part a touching story of a confused young black man struggling with racial identity, Invisible Man is an important American classic. What made this novel special for me was the narration of Joe Morton. I rarely listen to audiobooks but I was lucky to get this one as an Audible offer. I am so glad I decided to listen to this book instead of reading it because the whole experience was enhanced by the wonderful narration. Highly recommended although I prefer Black Boy as a classic on race in US.
.“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”
July 15, 2019
“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
Reading "Invisible Man" during a visit to New York was a deeply touching experience. What an incredible bonus to be able to follow in the footsteps of the young man struggling with racial and political identity questions. The physical presence of New York life enhanced the reading, and the city added flavour and sound to the story. Hearing the noise, walking in the lights of the advertisements, seeing the faces from all corners of the world made the main character's confusion and freedom of identity choice evident. And being a stranger in New York myself, I turned into an invisible woman, taking in the atmosphere without being noticed.
Following the successes and misfortunes of the narrator, this novel shapes the identity of the reader as well. You can't escape the big questions built into the story.
What is reality? What is scientifically true? How do we approach our given environment? Are words more powerful than actions or vice versa? Is there a logical chain of causes and effects between verbal instigation and violent action? Is there objective justice? How do we define it?
The answers are not straight forward, but the narrator encourages the reader to try to embrace and understand the various changing shapes human beings take on over the course of their lives. It is better to live your own absurd life fully than to die for the absurdity of others' ideas:
“I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.”
Must-read!
Favourite quote:
“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”
Postscript: Rereading this review in March 2017, after following the rapid change in America since last summer, I am filled with sadness that we can never take for granted that we have left a certain kind of populism and racist propaganda behind, and that human rights can still be treated with farcical disrespect. I won't return to New York for the time being. The novel, however, is more recommended than ever.
Reading "Invisible Man" during a visit to New York was a deeply touching experience. What an incredible bonus to be able to follow in the footsteps of the young man struggling with racial and political identity questions. The physical presence of New York life enhanced the reading, and the city added flavour and sound to the story. Hearing the noise, walking in the lights of the advertisements, seeing the faces from all corners of the world made the main character's confusion and freedom of identity choice evident. And being a stranger in New York myself, I turned into an invisible woman, taking in the atmosphere without being noticed.
Following the successes and misfortunes of the narrator, this novel shapes the identity of the reader as well. You can't escape the big questions built into the story.
What is reality? What is scientifically true? How do we approach our given environment? Are words more powerful than actions or vice versa? Is there a logical chain of causes and effects between verbal instigation and violent action? Is there objective justice? How do we define it?
The answers are not straight forward, but the narrator encourages the reader to try to embrace and understand the various changing shapes human beings take on over the course of their lives. It is better to live your own absurd life fully than to die for the absurdity of others' ideas:
“I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.”
Must-read!
Favourite quote:
“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”
Postscript: Rereading this review in March 2017, after following the rapid change in America since last summer, I am filled with sadness that we can never take for granted that we have left a certain kind of populism and racist propaganda behind, and that human rights can still be treated with farcical disrespect. I won't return to New York for the time being. The novel, however, is more recommended than ever.
April 15, 2022
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952.
The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He reflects on the various ways in which he has experienced social invisibility during his life and begins to tell his story, returning to his teenage years.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز چهاردهم ماه ژانویه سال2016میلادی
عنوان: مرد نامرئی؛ نویسنده: رالف الیسون (الیسن)؛ تهران: جنگل، سال1393خورشیدی = سال2014میلادی، در581ص؛ متن انگلیسی، افست از روی چاپ سال1997م، نیویورک؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
داستان درباره ی زندگی یک سياهپوست «آمریکایی» است؛ که به دلیل زندگی در جامعه ای پر از دشمنی و خشک اندیشی، حس هويت خویش را از دست میدهد، و انگار دیگر وجود بیرونی ندارد؛ نویسنده کتاب «رالف الیسون» هم برای همین، این نام را برای کتاب خویش برگزیده اند، چون باور دارند این مرد به راستی دیگر وجود ندارد؛ نام «مرد نامرئی» در ادبیات کلاسیک جهان، دو نویسنده را به یاد خوانشگران میآورد؛ از بین این دو نویسنده، شاید «اچ.جی ولز» نویسنده ی «انگلیسی» مشهورتر باشند؛ ایشان کتاب خویش «مرد نامرئی» را، در قالب یک رمان علمی- تخیلی در سال1897میلادی منتشر کردند؛ کتاب «مرد نامرئی» اثر «اچ.جی ولز»، سپس در قالب فیلم هم تولید و عرضه شد؛ اما این کتاب «مرد نامرئی»، نوشته ی «رالف الیسون» است؛ «الیسون» نویسنده، و منتقد سیاهپوست «آمریکایی» بودند، که از سالهای نخستین سده ی بیستم میلادی (سال تولد1914میلادی) تا سالهای پایانی آن سده (سال درگذشتشان در سال1994میلادی) زندگی کرده اند؛ تاکید بر سیاهپوست بودن «رالف الیسون»، عمدی است؛ چون کتاب «مرد نامرئی» ایشان، با تکیه بر تجربیات یک سیاهپوست نگاشته شده است؛ «مرد نامرئی» نوشته ی «الیسون»، یک تفاوت مهم با «مرد نامرئی» نوشته ی «اچ.جی ولز» دارد؛ در رمان «اچ.جی ولز»، داستان مردی را میخوانیم، که به اراده ی خود، و با تکیه بر یک ماده ی شیمیایی، نامرئی میشود؛ اما «الیسون»، به خوانشگرانش مردی را نشان میدهند، که برای بیتوجهی دیگران است، که دیده نمیشود؛ بسیاری رمان «الیسون» را، از رمانهای تاثیرگذار سده ی بیستم میلادی، در دفاع از سیاهپوستان میدانند؛ این کتاب سهم بسزایی در هموار کردن مسیر رشد سیاسی، و اجتماعی سیاهپوستان «آمریکا»، طی دهه های اخیر داشته است؛ برای همین ماجراست که مشهورترین جمله ی کتاب این است: «من نامرئی هستم؛ علتش هم بسیار ساده است؛ هیچکس نمیخواهد مرا ببیند.»؛
نقل از متن کتاب: (من از اینکه پدربزرگ و مادربزرگم برده بودهاند، شرمنده نیستم؛ اما از اینکه یکبار بخاطر برده بودن آنها، احساس شرمندگی کردم شرمنده ام.)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 09/04/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 25/01/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952.
The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He reflects on the various ways in which he has experienced social invisibility during his life and begins to tell his story, returning to his teenage years.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز چهاردهم ماه ژانویه سال2016میلادی
عنوان: مرد نامرئی؛ نویسنده: رالف الیسون (الیسن)؛ تهران: جنگل، سال1393خورشیدی = سال2014میلادی، در581ص؛ متن انگلیسی، افست از روی چاپ سال1997م، نیویورک؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
داستان درباره ی زندگی یک سياهپوست «آمریکایی» است؛ که به دلیل زندگی در جامعه ای پر از دشمنی و خشک اندیشی، حس هويت خویش را از دست میدهد، و انگار دیگر وجود بیرونی ندارد؛ نویسنده کتاب «رالف الیسون» هم برای همین، این نام را برای کتاب خویش برگزیده اند، چون باور دارند این مرد به راستی دیگر وجود ندارد؛ نام «مرد نامرئی» در ادبیات کلاسیک جهان، دو نویسنده را به یاد خوانشگران میآورد؛ از بین این دو نویسنده، شاید «اچ.جی ولز» نویسنده ی «انگلیسی» مشهورتر باشند؛ ایشان کتاب خویش «مرد نامرئی» را، در قالب یک رمان علمی- تخیلی در سال1897میلادی منتشر کردند؛ کتاب «مرد نامرئی» اثر «اچ.جی ولز»، سپس در قالب فیلم هم تولید و عرضه شد؛ اما این کتاب «مرد نامرئی»، نوشته ی «رالف الیسون» است؛ «الیسون» نویسنده، و منتقد سیاهپوست «آمریکایی» بودند، که از سالهای نخستین سده ی بیستم میلادی (سال تولد1914میلادی) تا سالهای پایانی آن سده (سال درگذشتشان در سال1994میلادی) زندگی کرده اند؛ تاکید بر سیاهپوست بودن «رالف الیسون»، عمدی است؛ چون کتاب «مرد نامرئی» ایشان، با تکیه بر تجربیات یک سیاهپوست نگاشته شده است؛ «مرد نامرئی» نوشته ی «الیسون»، یک تفاوت مهم با «مرد نامرئی» نوشته ی «اچ.جی ولز» دارد؛ در رمان «اچ.جی ولز»، داستان مردی را میخوانیم، که به اراده ی خود، و با تکیه بر یک ماده ی شیمیایی، نامرئی میشود؛ اما «الیسون»، به خوانشگرانش مردی را نشان میدهند، که برای بیتوجهی دیگران است، که دیده نمیشود؛ بسیاری رمان «الیسون» را، از رمانهای تاثیرگذار سده ی بیستم میلادی، در دفاع از سیاهپوستان میدانند؛ این کتاب سهم بسزایی در هموار کردن مسیر رشد سیاسی، و اجتماعی سیاهپوستان «آمریکا»، طی دهه های اخیر داشته است؛ برای همین ماجراست که مشهورترین جمله ی کتاب این است: «من نامرئی هستم؛ علتش هم بسیار ساده است؛ هیچکس نمیخواهد مرا ببیند.»؛
نقل از متن کتاب: (من از اینکه پدربزرگ و مادربزرگم برده بودهاند، شرمنده نیستم؛ اما از اینکه یکبار بخاطر برده بودن آنها، احساس شرمندگی کردم شرمنده ام.)؛ پایان نقل
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 09/04/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 25/01/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
February 20, 2015
"If social protest is antithetical to art," Ellison stated in an interview with The Paris Review, "what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?" I found the interview stimulating, especially since Ellison's narrator's voice seemed to reach across the pages of this book and coalesce with the myriad of current events. "Perhaps, though, this thing cuts both ways," Ellison continued in the interview, "the Negro novelist draws his blackness too tightly around him when he sits down to write—that’s what the antiprotest critics believe—but perhaps the white reader draws his whiteness around himself when he sits down to read. He doesn’t want to identify himself with Negro characters in terms of our immediate racial and social situation, though on the deeper human level identification can become compelling when the situation is revealed artistically." And here is when things get controversial, when some will stop reading, because to speak of race relations in America is to risk offending. Yet how can you not, when you've just watched someone you love go out for an early morning jog only to head back seconds later, with mounting nervousness, just to grab an ID?
Artistic revelation, yes, this is how I would describe this novel. "Though invisible, I am in the great American tradition of tinkers. That makes me kin to Ford, Edison and Franklin. Call me, since I have a theory and a concept, a "thinker-tinker." Only a few protagonists can bind you, hands and feet, to their inner thoughts like this narrator can; only a few chosen writers can combine dramatic dialogue with self-exploratory meanderings and controlled prose that vividly reveals the life of one black man in America. Consider the metaphorical language Fitzgerald dazzles us with in The Great Gatsby; think about the clairvoyance of George Orwell in 1984,how he produced scripted scenes that came to life years later; remember the racial debate in William Styron's Sophie's Choice,recall the language and riveting voice of Toni Morrison's main character in Home,and you will have considered this novel.
How can we not discuss race relations when a young boy just bled to death on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, his body left on the cold cement as a spectacle for hours, when even serial killers are fed elegant meals before they're executed in semi-private rooms? How can you not talk about the invisible man who was choked to death on the streets for selling loose cigarettes, even as he screamed, I can't breathe; or how about the invisible young man who was shot to death for strolling in his own neighborhood, wearing a hoodie? I could continue with the list that has been growing since the past year. "Right now in this country, with its many national groups, all the old heroes are being called back to life--Jefferson, Jackson, Pulaski, Garibaldi, Booker T. Washington, Sun Yat-sen, Danny O'Connell, Abraham Lincoln and countless others are being asked to step once again upon the stage of history…Destruction lies ahead unless things are changed. And things must be changed." I get chills when I think that those words were written years ago, and yet they are relevant today.
You don't talk about these things around peers-- it's a no-no, like speaking of religion or politics. Instead, when you must censor the confusing and nauseating moments you have once you consider how such tensions affect your life, you turn to books. I reached for this book off my shelf and Ellison's words placed within me a sense of understanding and calm like no other writer could at this moment (this makes me take a moment of silence for non-readers). This book is devastatingly beautiful in its cold-hearted truth and individual perceptions. This narrator grows and develops from a young, black, college boy who has not been around his white counterparts, to a learned young man who slowly understands his invisibility and most importantly, understands how everyone--black and white--contributes to his invisibility. It is simply a story of self-discovery as seen from the perspective of a black character. Both tragic and enlightening, it is rife with imagery, unique cadence, "dialect," and rhythmic expose (and a few choice words that could be off-putting for some). I'm glad I chose it and it chose me.
Artistic revelation, yes, this is how I would describe this novel. "Though invisible, I am in the great American tradition of tinkers. That makes me kin to Ford, Edison and Franklin. Call me, since I have a theory and a concept, a "thinker-tinker." Only a few protagonists can bind you, hands and feet, to their inner thoughts like this narrator can; only a few chosen writers can combine dramatic dialogue with self-exploratory meanderings and controlled prose that vividly reveals the life of one black man in America. Consider the metaphorical language Fitzgerald dazzles us with in The Great Gatsby; think about the clairvoyance of George Orwell in 1984,how he produced scripted scenes that came to life years later; remember the racial debate in William Styron's Sophie's Choice,recall the language and riveting voice of Toni Morrison's main character in Home,and you will have considered this novel.
How can we not discuss race relations when a young boy just bled to death on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, his body left on the cold cement as a spectacle for hours, when even serial killers are fed elegant meals before they're executed in semi-private rooms? How can you not talk about the invisible man who was choked to death on the streets for selling loose cigarettes, even as he screamed, I can't breathe; or how about the invisible young man who was shot to death for strolling in his own neighborhood, wearing a hoodie? I could continue with the list that has been growing since the past year. "Right now in this country, with its many national groups, all the old heroes are being called back to life--Jefferson, Jackson, Pulaski, Garibaldi, Booker T. Washington, Sun Yat-sen, Danny O'Connell, Abraham Lincoln and countless others are being asked to step once again upon the stage of history…Destruction lies ahead unless things are changed. And things must be changed." I get chills when I think that those words were written years ago, and yet they are relevant today.
You don't talk about these things around peers-- it's a no-no, like speaking of religion or politics. Instead, when you must censor the confusing and nauseating moments you have once you consider how such tensions affect your life, you turn to books. I reached for this book off my shelf and Ellison's words placed within me a sense of understanding and calm like no other writer could at this moment (this makes me take a moment of silence for non-readers). This book is devastatingly beautiful in its cold-hearted truth and individual perceptions. This narrator grows and develops from a young, black, college boy who has not been around his white counterparts, to a learned young man who slowly understands his invisibility and most importantly, understands how everyone--black and white--contributes to his invisibility. It is simply a story of self-discovery as seen from the perspective of a black character. Both tragic and enlightening, it is rife with imagery, unique cadence, "dialect," and rhythmic expose (and a few choice words that could be off-putting for some). I'm glad I chose it and it chose me.
Here beneath the deep indigo sky, here, alive with looping swifts and darting moths, here in the hereness of the night not yet lighted by the moon that looms blood-red behind the chapel like a fallen sun, its radiance shedding not upon the here-dusk of twittering bats, nor on the there-night of cricket and whippoorwill, but focused short-rayed upon our place of convergence; and we drifting forward with rigid motions, limbs stiff and voices now silent, as though on exhibit even in the dark, and the moon a white man's bloodshot eye.
September 15, 2020
Invisible Man is unique.
I went in without really having any expectations other than knowing that it was a classic novel addressing the trials and tribulations faced by the black community in the mid-1900s. While it is that, the experience of the tragic hero of the novel is very bizarre, trippy, and somewhat unexpected. It is told in a way to make sure it reflects on a variety of possible experiences a black man might face during the time period. But, because Ellison is covering so many in one book and they are delivered in such quick succession, your head might be spinning before it is done.
I was surprised at how accessible the writing is. Sometimes I am nervous going into a classic worried that I will be spending more time getting comfortable with the writing style than actually absorbing the story. With Invisible Man, the writing and narrative are very easy to follow, and it only requires a little extra concentration because of the sudden narrative jumps.
A lot of the frustrations encountered by our protagonist sound very familiar to what is encountered in America today. Maybe some of it a bit different because times have changed, but it is still concerning that a story written 70 years ago can feel so current. I will equate my feelings on this to a discussion I had with my wife about the show Mad Men. For those who have not seen it, the main storylines are always affected by what is happening in America in the late 50s and 60s. We noted how amazing it is how all the plots around the handling of racial inequality do not sound much different than today. Many may look at the news and say “Wow, 2020 is crazy! I cannot believe what the response to racial inequality has become!” But, if you take the time to look back, it has been this way for a long time – you may just not have been listening or watching close enough!
A very good book worth checking out – both because it is a good and interesting story, but also because of the message it has to share.
I went in without really having any expectations other than knowing that it was a classic novel addressing the trials and tribulations faced by the black community in the mid-1900s. While it is that, the experience of the tragic hero of the novel is very bizarre, trippy, and somewhat unexpected. It is told in a way to make sure it reflects on a variety of possible experiences a black man might face during the time period. But, because Ellison is covering so many in one book and they are delivered in such quick succession, your head might be spinning before it is done.
I was surprised at how accessible the writing is. Sometimes I am nervous going into a classic worried that I will be spending more time getting comfortable with the writing style than actually absorbing the story. With Invisible Man, the writing and narrative are very easy to follow, and it only requires a little extra concentration because of the sudden narrative jumps.
A lot of the frustrations encountered by our protagonist sound very familiar to what is encountered in America today. Maybe some of it a bit different because times have changed, but it is still concerning that a story written 70 years ago can feel so current. I will equate my feelings on this to a discussion I had with my wife about the show Mad Men. For those who have not seen it, the main storylines are always affected by what is happening in America in the late 50s and 60s. We noted how amazing it is how all the plots around the handling of racial inequality do not sound much different than today. Many may look at the news and say “Wow, 2020 is crazy! I cannot believe what the response to racial inequality has become!” But, if you take the time to look back, it has been this way for a long time – you may just not have been listening or watching close enough!
A very good book worth checking out – both because it is a good and interesting story, but also because of the message it has to share.
May 19, 2014
The writing is hypnotic in Invisible Man and the dread all-pervasive. Every time I sat down to read a bit more, I was sucked into the prose, even though it made me deeply uneasy and worried about what was going to happen next.
It is stark, it is poetic, it is difficult, and it is rewarding.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
It is stark, it is poetic, it is difficult, and it is rewarding.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
June 18, 2024
“¿Qué hice yo para ser tan negro, para ser tan triste?” (Black and blue)Soy hombre, una persona de raza blanca viviendo en un país de blancos, sin deficiencias físicas ni psíquicas reseñables y perteneciente a una clase media más o menos acomodada. Soy capaz de indignarme y/o conmoverme con las escenas de humillación y escarnio que tan bien relata Ellison, pero no me es nada fácil llegar a comprender en toda su magnitud lo que aquí se cuenta, lo que supone vivir como un ciudadano de tercera en un mundo dominado por aquellos que te usan, humillan y niegan toda posibilidad de reivindicación, que te tratan como si fueras nadie, un hombre invisible. Personas que para sobrevivir tendrán que adoptar una máscara que acabará formando parte de su propia personalidad, obligados a medir constantemente sus palabras, sus acciones y hasta sus propios pensamientos y sentimientos, a tener cuidado con todo y con todos. Un estado de cosas que se complica aun más al tener que convivir con el servilismo acomodaticio de muchos que en su misma situación la soportan resignadamente, cuando no la fomentan y la consolidan, o con los que cínicamente la aceptan y la utilizan en beneficio propio. Y todavía más si uno se siente, como el narrador y protagonista de la novela, responsable de tal estado de cosas y con la necesidad de ponerle remedio.
“Te enseñaron a aceptar la insensatez de los viejos como el que tienes ante ti, incluso en el caso de que los considerases unos lamentables payasos. Te enseñaron a actuar como si les respetaras y reconocieras en ellos una autoridad y un poder que tienen en tu mundo la misma naturaleza que la autoridad y el poder de los blancos ante los que ellos se humillan y mendigan, a los que ellos temen, aman e imitan. E incluso te enseñaron a aceptar la actitud de esta gente cuando furiosos o despectivos o ebrios de poder te amenazaban con un látigo o un palo, sin que tú pudieras permitirte contestar su ataque sino tan sólo evitar sus golpes...”Junto a esta cuestión racial, trasladable a cualquier otro campo de marginación social, la novela trata el problema de la organización de la lucha contra tal estado de cosas y en cómo funcionaban (funcionan) estas organizaciones. La crítica es furibunda, quizá demasiado.
La mucha inocencia y optimismo que caracterizaba la lucha obrera de principios del siglo pasado, plasmada en frases como “Día llegará en que el trabajo y la diversión sean una misma cosa, porque reinstauraremos el placer en el trabajo” , se mezclaba con el férreo control del pensamiento y la dura disciplina de partido que veía todo cuestionamiento como una traición a los fines y a las ideas. Un control y una disciplina cuyas consecuencias eran más sangrantes en cuanto que muchas veces respondían exclusivamente al ego y a las ambiciones de quienes lo ejercían.
“Ahora sé que los hombres se diferencian entre sí, que la vida está infinitamente dividida y diversificada, y que sólo en la diversidad cabe hallar el equilibrio verdadero.”La novela es dura y poética, valiente políticamente, febril emocionalmente y más que notable literariamente hablando. No comparto en absoluto la opinión de aquellos que califican su lectura de difícil o pesada. Es todo lo contrario, la novela está repleta de escenas emocionantes en más de un sentido, de grandes diálogos y, aunque abundan las reflexiones y disquisiciones políticas y sociales, también hay acción, intriga y suspense. Una gran obra.
February 16, 2009
after an almost intolerably harrowing and intense first chapter, this book is a major letdown. of obvious historical importance, but an inferior and turgid work of literature in which every character but the protagonist is reduced to an over-simplified archetype meant to represent a particular demographic of american society.
what i found most interesting, however, is that despite having lived another forty-two years, ellison never published another novel. from wikipedia:
In 1967, Ellison experienced a major house fire at his home in Plainfield, Massachusetts, in which he claimed 300 pages of his second novel manuscript were lost. This assertion is disproved in the 2007 biography of Ellison by Arnold Rampersand… …Ellison ultimately wrote over 2000 pages of this second novel, most of them by 1959. He never finished.
incredible, huh? one is reminded of malcolm lowry who wrote the (unfuckingbelievably great) masterpiece Under the Volcano in 1947 and never published again. at the time of lowry’s death many half-completed manuscipts were discovered which were meant to be part of a multi-volume cycle of novels of which he was too mad and drunk to properly control.
interesting to wonder what it is that separates those people who struggle to produce a single work from those who seem to vomit the stuff out – what separates a lowry from an updike? a vermeer from a picasso? a fassbinder from a kubrick?
and then there are those artists who clearly had a single vision and despite laying it all out... they continue. when i'm global dictator i’m planning on putting a stop to this. paul auster is at the top of the list. he's sent to siberia and everything after new york trilogy is ‘disappeared’.
anyone have any more suggestions?
(mention post-smiths morrissey and you're immediately unfriended)
what i found most interesting, however, is that despite having lived another forty-two years, ellison never published another novel. from wikipedia:
In 1967, Ellison experienced a major house fire at his home in Plainfield, Massachusetts, in which he claimed 300 pages of his second novel manuscript were lost. This assertion is disproved in the 2007 biography of Ellison by Arnold Rampersand… …Ellison ultimately wrote over 2000 pages of this second novel, most of them by 1959. He never finished.
incredible, huh? one is reminded of malcolm lowry who wrote the (unfuckingbelievably great) masterpiece Under the Volcano in 1947 and never published again. at the time of lowry’s death many half-completed manuscipts were discovered which were meant to be part of a multi-volume cycle of novels of which he was too mad and drunk to properly control.
interesting to wonder what it is that separates those people who struggle to produce a single work from those who seem to vomit the stuff out – what separates a lowry from an updike? a vermeer from a picasso? a fassbinder from a kubrick?
and then there are those artists who clearly had a single vision and despite laying it all out... they continue. when i'm global dictator i’m planning on putting a stop to this. paul auster is at the top of the list. he's sent to siberia and everything after new york trilogy is ‘disappeared’.
anyone have any more suggestions?
(mention post-smiths morrissey and you're immediately unfriended)
November 7, 2016
I put off reading this book for years, intimidated by its length and its venomous reputation. When I finally dove in, I definitely found lots of venom but lots of anti-venom too. Lurking behind all the nihilism in the title and particularly the struggles during his college years is a hidden (invisible?) optimism and dark humor I felt. In the US soon post-Obama, we have definitely moved forward superficially in the battle for equality and yet, Ferguson happened, Trump is happening and racism is still ever-present - rather than bodies hanging from trees from the Invisible Man's past, we are still in the car burning and rioting of the Invisible Man's "present" and have not moved on. This book made me once again interrogate my own feelings on racism and challenge my "idées reçus". It remains a text that is vibrant and relevant. I would recommend following this with Roth's The Human Stain which is another incredibly written novel about how Coleman Silk(zwieg) tries to be come invisible. If only the US would truly look into the deeper causes of racism, perhaps it would prevent another disaster like that of this present election cycle and I would not want to be invisible myself.
April 21, 2017
This is such an amazingfantasticincredible book. If I were making a list of the 10 Best Novels About America, this would be at the top.*
I first read Invisible Man in a college literature course, and my 19-year-old self liked it, but rereading it now was a really powerful experience. I definitely appreciated it more and admired Ellison's vision. This novel is the story of a black man in America. We never learn our narrator's name and we don't know what he looks like, but he feels invisible because of his color.
When we meet our narrator, he is living alone in an underground room in a building near Harlem. He tells stories from his life, and we see all the times he was treated unfairly, misunderstood, wronged, stereotyped, and ill-used. A good example is a famous early scene known as the "Battle Royal." Our narrator, who was a high school student at the time, was tricked into a boxing match, fighting other young black men, all of whom are blindfolded. The scene is horrifying and gut-wrenching for the way the white bystanders dehumanize the young men, laughing when they are brutally injured, and then rob them of their promised pay.
In the stories, we see how our narrator tried to play by the rules and work hard, but he is constantly thwarted or manages to make a misstep, because so many of the rules are unwritten. Another memorable scene is when our narrator, who is a good public speaker, catches the notice of a group called the Brotherhood and is asked to help better the conditions for residents of Harlem. Like so many of his other experiences, our narrator is misused and misled, and he has to think fast to survive. By the end of the book (which is also the beginning), we see how much faith he has lost in his situation ever improving. Our young narrator had such high hopes and grand ambitions! Now he's abandoned in a forgotten room, with electric light his only companion.
Truly, it's impossible to summarize the breadth of stories in this novel. There is so much meaning and symbolism in everything that happens to our narrator -- at one point, the poor man gets trapped in an underground coal bin and nearly starves to death -- that I can understand why this book is so widely assigned in literature courses. Lots to discuss!
I listened to this on audio, narrated by the actor Joe Morton, and it was an incredible performance. I highly recommend this novel, and if you like audiobooks, I encourage you to check out Morton's version. A very high five stars for Ralph Ellison.
*Note: As soon as I typed the words "10 Best Novels About America," my mind started racing to decide what else I'd put on the list. Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, for sure. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby would make the cut. Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, obviously. Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter would be good for the Puritan element. Wharton's The Age of Innocence and Connell's Mrs. Bridge are personal favorites. Mark Twain should probably get some billing. Hmm... I need to get Native American representation, plus something about the immigrant experience. If you have suggestions to round out the list, please share.
Opening Paragraph
"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me."
Favorite Quotes
"What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?"
"I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest."
"And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own."
"I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself."
"For, like almost everyone else in our country, I started out with my share of optimism. I believed in hard work and progress and action, but now, after first being 'for' society and then 'against' it, I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities. What a phrase - still it's a good phrase and a good view of life, and a man shouldn't accept any other; that much I've learned underground. Until some gang succeeds in putting the world in a strait jacket, its definition is possibility."
I first read Invisible Man in a college literature course, and my 19-year-old self liked it, but rereading it now was a really powerful experience. I definitely appreciated it more and admired Ellison's vision. This novel is the story of a black man in America. We never learn our narrator's name and we don't know what he looks like, but he feels invisible because of his color.
When we meet our narrator, he is living alone in an underground room in a building near Harlem. He tells stories from his life, and we see all the times he was treated unfairly, misunderstood, wronged, stereotyped, and ill-used. A good example is a famous early scene known as the "Battle Royal." Our narrator, who was a high school student at the time, was tricked into a boxing match, fighting other young black men, all of whom are blindfolded. The scene is horrifying and gut-wrenching for the way the white bystanders dehumanize the young men, laughing when they are brutally injured, and then rob them of their promised pay.
In the stories, we see how our narrator tried to play by the rules and work hard, but he is constantly thwarted or manages to make a misstep, because so many of the rules are unwritten. Another memorable scene is when our narrator, who is a good public speaker, catches the notice of a group called the Brotherhood and is asked to help better the conditions for residents of Harlem. Like so many of his other experiences, our narrator is misused and misled, and he has to think fast to survive. By the end of the book (which is also the beginning), we see how much faith he has lost in his situation ever improving. Our young narrator had such high hopes and grand ambitions! Now he's abandoned in a forgotten room, with electric light his only companion.
Truly, it's impossible to summarize the breadth of stories in this novel. There is so much meaning and symbolism in everything that happens to our narrator -- at one point, the poor man gets trapped in an underground coal bin and nearly starves to death -- that I can understand why this book is so widely assigned in literature courses. Lots to discuss!
I listened to this on audio, narrated by the actor Joe Morton, and it was an incredible performance. I highly recommend this novel, and if you like audiobooks, I encourage you to check out Morton's version. A very high five stars for Ralph Ellison.
*Note: As soon as I typed the words "10 Best Novels About America," my mind started racing to decide what else I'd put on the list. Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, for sure. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby would make the cut. Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, obviously. Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter would be good for the Puritan element. Wharton's The Age of Innocence and Connell's Mrs. Bridge are personal favorites. Mark Twain should probably get some billing. Hmm... I need to get Native American representation, plus something about the immigrant experience. If you have suggestions to round out the list, please share.
Opening Paragraph
"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me."
Favorite Quotes
"What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?"
"I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest."
"And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own."
"I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself."
"For, like almost everyone else in our country, I started out with my share of optimism. I believed in hard work and progress and action, but now, after first being 'for' society and then 'against' it, I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities. What a phrase - still it's a good phrase and a good view of life, and a man shouldn't accept any other; that much I've learned underground. Until some gang succeeds in putting the world in a strait jacket, its definition is possibility."
August 16, 2021
“It’s not an important novel. I failed of eloquence and many of the immediate issues are rapidly fading away.” said Ralph Ellison in an interview after Invisible Man was published in 1952 and was showered with praise & won the National Book Award (& since then is a regular in lists of greatest 20th century novels.)
Regarding the fading away of immediate issues : in one episode, a black guy is chased by a cop, turns and lands a punch on the cop, who falls, points his gun and shoots the black guy dead. This whole sequence up to and including the community’s outrage and the local politician’s grandstanding has been replicated beat for beat in all those recent police killings (and the next one when it comes) in the USA. The duplication was stunning. So with respect, Ralph was wrong about the fading away of some of his issues. Unfortunately.
WHERE DO I BEGIN
This is quite a tough book to review. It’s big and very loud. There is a long winding road our unnamed young black man takes from true believer to bitter cynic, and this happens not once but twice.
You could say he is an invisible man, not seen as a real person by anyone, and at the same time, it takes him a long time to see through the fabrications of other people. I guess you could say that!
Firstly he gets disillusioned with his black college – specifically with the nasty unprincipled Principal. Then he moves to Harlem and gets employed by the Communist Party, which RE calls the Brotherhood, and I’m not so sure he joins as a true believer, but he gets on board with the program :
We recognised no loose ends, everything could be controlled by our science. Life was all pattern and discipline.
But he fairly quickly sees that
I was simply a material, a natural resource to be used
And further, that when it comes to black people, the CP weren’t enlightened at all :
Outside the Brotherhood we were outside history; but inside it they didn’t see us. It was a hell of a state of affairs, we were nowhere
THE B WORD
About half of this large novel is about our guy and his struggles inside the Brotherhood, and sorry to say, the reader gets awfully tired of this B word. Maybe it is supposed to be a humorous exaggeration of the way communists talked, but it wears thin:
“Be more specific, Brother,” Brother Garnett, a white Brother, said .
and
Now several brothers started to speak at once, and Brother Jack knocked for order. “Brothers, please!” Brother Jack said.
WHAT THE NEW YORK TIMES SAID AT THE TIME
Parts of it consist of long and impassioned, sometimes hysterical, reveries which are frequently highly obscure. Other parts still seem grotesquely exaggerated or repetitious. And these strange interludes are overwritten in an ultra pretentious, needlessly fancy way. Spasms of torrential rhetoric, they obscure the point of some of Mr. Ellison's symbolic incidents and check temporarily the swift course of his story.
(it sounds like a one-star review, but they actually did like it!)
This is a book full of big talkers, and none bigger than our embattled narrator – really, it’s him doing all the talking. And it is perfectly true that RE loves to conjure up towering piles of lurid anguished frothy clogged meditations at the drop of a hat. It gives a stop-start feeling to the whole thing. Maybe this is sacrilegious, but it could possibly might be that some of the more repetitious bitter self-accusations could have been snipped.
LINGUISTIC NOTE
There is one f word, one more surprising c word, and several mentions of people being “motherfoulers”, which I haven’t come across anywhere else. Also one mention of the word “groovy” in an approbatory sense. Also : “You black and beautiful!” on p301.
CONFRONTING STEREOTYPES
There are stereotypes everywhere you look. There is the toadying stooge Dr Bledsoe. There is a character Ras the Exhorter, who promotes Black Nationalism. There is an older black woman who briefly turns into the mother he never had. There is a white woman who wants our guy to pretend to rape her. There are the party apparatchiks, especially Brother Jack, sincere programmed robots the lot of them. There are looters and rioters from central casting. Hopping and skipping and ducking and diving, always in a mad rush, our guy spends the whole novel trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Eventually he decides the best place to be is in a basement underground, hiding from the world.
It’s such a melancholy image.
Regarding the fading away of immediate issues : in one episode, a black guy is chased by a cop, turns and lands a punch on the cop, who falls, points his gun and shoots the black guy dead. This whole sequence up to and including the community’s outrage and the local politician’s grandstanding has been replicated beat for beat in all those recent police killings (and the next one when it comes) in the USA. The duplication was stunning. So with respect, Ralph was wrong about the fading away of some of his issues. Unfortunately.
WHERE DO I BEGIN
This is quite a tough book to review. It’s big and very loud. There is a long winding road our unnamed young black man takes from true believer to bitter cynic, and this happens not once but twice.
You could say he is an invisible man, not seen as a real person by anyone, and at the same time, it takes him a long time to see through the fabrications of other people. I guess you could say that!
Firstly he gets disillusioned with his black college – specifically with the nasty unprincipled Principal. Then he moves to Harlem and gets employed by the Communist Party, which RE calls the Brotherhood, and I’m not so sure he joins as a true believer, but he gets on board with the program :
We recognised no loose ends, everything could be controlled by our science. Life was all pattern and discipline.
But he fairly quickly sees that
I was simply a material, a natural resource to be used
And further, that when it comes to black people, the CP weren’t enlightened at all :
Outside the Brotherhood we were outside history; but inside it they didn’t see us. It was a hell of a state of affairs, we were nowhere
THE B WORD
About half of this large novel is about our guy and his struggles inside the Brotherhood, and sorry to say, the reader gets awfully tired of this B word. Maybe it is supposed to be a humorous exaggeration of the way communists talked, but it wears thin:
“Be more specific, Brother,” Brother Garnett, a white Brother, said .
and
Now several brothers started to speak at once, and Brother Jack knocked for order. “Brothers, please!” Brother Jack said.
WHAT THE NEW YORK TIMES SAID AT THE TIME
Parts of it consist of long and impassioned, sometimes hysterical, reveries which are frequently highly obscure. Other parts still seem grotesquely exaggerated or repetitious. And these strange interludes are overwritten in an ultra pretentious, needlessly fancy way. Spasms of torrential rhetoric, they obscure the point of some of Mr. Ellison's symbolic incidents and check temporarily the swift course of his story.
(it sounds like a one-star review, but they actually did like it!)
This is a book full of big talkers, and none bigger than our embattled narrator – really, it’s him doing all the talking. And it is perfectly true that RE loves to conjure up towering piles of lurid anguished frothy clogged meditations at the drop of a hat. It gives a stop-start feeling to the whole thing. Maybe this is sacrilegious, but it could possibly might be that some of the more repetitious bitter self-accusations could have been snipped.
LINGUISTIC NOTE
There is one f word, one more surprising c word, and several mentions of people being “motherfoulers”, which I haven’t come across anywhere else. Also one mention of the word “groovy” in an approbatory sense. Also : “You black and beautiful!” on p301.
CONFRONTING STEREOTYPES
There are stereotypes everywhere you look. There is the toadying stooge Dr Bledsoe. There is a character Ras the Exhorter, who promotes Black Nationalism. There is an older black woman who briefly turns into the mother he never had. There is a white woman who wants our guy to pretend to rape her. There are the party apparatchiks, especially Brother Jack, sincere programmed robots the lot of them. There are looters and rioters from central casting. Hopping and skipping and ducking and diving, always in a mad rush, our guy spends the whole novel trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Eventually he decides the best place to be is in a basement underground, hiding from the world.
It’s such a melancholy image.
September 29, 2024
Read this during a rainy spring week in my freezing walled-up patio room on Edgehill Road in Kingston, ON (the steep slope of it calling for such an artful architectural dodge on the part of my college digs' landlord) in 1973. I was cruising for another overdue psychiatric bruising with the stress of my courseload.
Henry Kissinger's overkill up the Mekong didn't help either.
Anyway, Invisible Man was the last of my required reading for my Modern Novel course towards my degree. As if I didn't need someone else to shake me brutally awake!
Invisible but deadly, the book was unintentionally an overdue addition to the planned adult demolition of my autism. I didn't think I needed another reason to hate myself...
Though apparently I did.
Now the modern world has turned blind. For the comfortable it is a blessing. In my autism (the world, as you know, judges it as immaturity) it is a curse.
I should have been comfortable, but kept peeking at life's underside - the side more obvious to the autistic.
In Elison's Harlem in the fifties (the world being blind to racial difference) it was obscene. Furthermore, the polite operative word for American blindness is now gentrification. Internet Gentrification comfortably screens out all differences.
Sex is the glue that holds all its comforts together.
The comfortable are blessed for life. The Aspie's jerky antsiness under sedation merely hides a traumatic nightmare. The nightmare is real. Elison's angry violence is a reflex reaction to a comfort that has never existed in his total nightmare.
It says GET REAL to the moral majority. Like, wakey, wakey. So which view is right?
Well, being autistic still (so many retreating segues later) I think the dream is in fact a nightmare, perhaps a total nightmare as in this book. That, at any rate, it was for me, awakening at 5AM this morning.
In that dream, its appalling debacle was, a voice said, the key to the bipolar curse in my life. And no, I don’t remember what the key was, except that it was deceitfully political in nature, like in the doomed political action of Elison’s novel, and intensely nightmarish.
The face of Medusa itself. Perhaps that's when I remembered Invisible Man!
***
This book was a winner of the National Book Reward in the early fifties.
Since then, for some reason, it has been dropped from published circulation in Canada -
Perhaps because the plot may be perceived as inciting racial violence -
And I am strangely not unhappy about this Medusa’s demise…
For reasons of public safety:
And my own.
Henry Kissinger's overkill up the Mekong didn't help either.
Anyway, Invisible Man was the last of my required reading for my Modern Novel course towards my degree. As if I didn't need someone else to shake me brutally awake!
Invisible but deadly, the book was unintentionally an overdue addition to the planned adult demolition of my autism. I didn't think I needed another reason to hate myself...
Though apparently I did.
Now the modern world has turned blind. For the comfortable it is a blessing. In my autism (the world, as you know, judges it as immaturity) it is a curse.
I should have been comfortable, but kept peeking at life's underside - the side more obvious to the autistic.
In Elison's Harlem in the fifties (the world being blind to racial difference) it was obscene. Furthermore, the polite operative word for American blindness is now gentrification. Internet Gentrification comfortably screens out all differences.
Sex is the glue that holds all its comforts together.
The comfortable are blessed for life. The Aspie's jerky antsiness under sedation merely hides a traumatic nightmare. The nightmare is real. Elison's angry violence is a reflex reaction to a comfort that has never existed in his total nightmare.
It says GET REAL to the moral majority. Like, wakey, wakey. So which view is right?
Well, being autistic still (so many retreating segues later) I think the dream is in fact a nightmare, perhaps a total nightmare as in this book. That, at any rate, it was for me, awakening at 5AM this morning.
In that dream, its appalling debacle was, a voice said, the key to the bipolar curse in my life. And no, I don’t remember what the key was, except that it was deceitfully political in nature, like in the doomed political action of Elison’s novel, and intensely nightmarish.
The face of Medusa itself. Perhaps that's when I remembered Invisible Man!
***
This book was a winner of the National Book Reward in the early fifties.
Since then, for some reason, it has been dropped from published circulation in Canada -
Perhaps because the plot may be perceived as inciting racial violence -
And I am strangely not unhappy about this Medusa’s demise…
For reasons of public safety:
And my own.
May 27, 2019
An American classic.
Not just a great African-American novel but a great American novel on the level of Moby-Dick or, The Whale, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Catcher in the Rye.
Written in the early 1950s and with a narrative power as great as any of our finest writers, Ralph Ellison proclaims himself to be one of our best. Crafting metaphor, simile, stream of consciousness, poetry, surrealism, absurdism, and a variety of narrative devices, Ellison’s masterwork must be read.
Using a narrator who is never named but from whose perspective Ellison explores themes of nationalism, race, identity, gender, equality, political reform and the rule of law. The style will remind some of Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground while the political and social commentary are reminiscent of Steinbeck and early Jack London.
We follow our narrator from a rural Southern origin, through an unsuccessful term in college to the multi-cultural and politically active streets of Harlem. There this natural leader and orator finds that he is nonetheless “invisible”: minimized and marginalized in the outer world even while being effective amongst “The Brotherhood”, Ellison’s amalgam of socialist / communist / progressive street wise organizations.
As smooth, original and innovative as jazz, Ellison’s great contribution to twentieth century literature should be on a list of books that should be read at least once in a lifetime.
Not just a great African-American novel but a great American novel on the level of Moby-Dick or, The Whale, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Catcher in the Rye.
Written in the early 1950s and with a narrative power as great as any of our finest writers, Ralph Ellison proclaims himself to be one of our best. Crafting metaphor, simile, stream of consciousness, poetry, surrealism, absurdism, and a variety of narrative devices, Ellison’s masterwork must be read.
Using a narrator who is never named but from whose perspective Ellison explores themes of nationalism, race, identity, gender, equality, political reform and the rule of law. The style will remind some of Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground while the political and social commentary are reminiscent of Steinbeck and early Jack London.
We follow our narrator from a rural Southern origin, through an unsuccessful term in college to the multi-cultural and politically active streets of Harlem. There this natural leader and orator finds that he is nonetheless “invisible”: minimized and marginalized in the outer world even while being effective amongst “The Brotherhood”, Ellison’s amalgam of socialist / communist / progressive street wise organizations.
As smooth, original and innovative as jazz, Ellison’s great contribution to twentieth century literature should be on a list of books that should be read at least once in a lifetime.
March 22, 2016
I have been seeing this on friends feeds lately. I read this for a college seminar African American History of the 1930s and 1940s. It was quite an interesting class as the demographics were literally half African American and half Caucasian, thus spurring provocative discussions. Our professor had us read Ellison's masterpiece and even though I do not remember it in its entirety, I remember the protagonist meeting Booker T Washington, George Washington Carver, discussing the talented tenth and black universities, the back to Africa movement, etc. All in all, Invisible Man stands out as one of the top three books I read in college and I will have to reread it when I have the time.
February 11, 2017
Well......I can't say I enjoyed this novel, but I don't think I was supposed to. It's more of a send a message to the reader type classic.
First published in 1953, an unnamed narrator and INVISIBLE MAN tells his life stories of fear, or maybe uncertainty is a better word of his place in the world. As a young and very naive black student, he proceeds through his tumultuous life while constantly haunted by his grandfather's dying words.
The beginning chapters share how (OMG!) he was treated in a Harlem basement just prior to being awarded a "scholarship to a state college for Negroes" for his important and memorable high school speech, but memorable for me was how he ever redelivered the speech in the horrific condition he was in at the time.
Our protagonist is a young man who tries to do everything according to the rules, but disaster always seems to follow him around causing chaos and big trouble. Believe me when I say this dude cannot get a break. He can't even dispose of trash without being hassled; he just goes on and on from one catastrophe to another, and all he wants is an education....a job...to be relevant...and to be visible.
Filled with treachery, dirty tricks and acts of betrayal, INVISIBLE MAN is a memorable and insightful must read especially as we look at our society today.
1953 National Book Award winner.
January 25, 2008
This is strongly reminiscent of German Expressionist drama from the early 20th century. It suffers from an inability to actually characterize anyone beyond the protagonist. Every other character is crushed by the need to represent a whole class or demographic. All of the other figures are episodes in his life, his personal development, his realization of society's deep-seated decay and his inexorable (and predictable) movement towards disillusionment. Which is to say that it is a heavy-handed, young, stereotype filled book.
Yes, it is a worthy historical object. Yes, it is an interesting foil to other pieces of American literature (which does not have too many books of this variety); but I don't think it deserves great praise if it is judged on its own merits. The prose is nothing special, the dialect isn't handled with particular grace, it has an irritating tendency to state the obvious and to self-interpret and the author actually takes the time to call attention to the fact that he is choosing to rant at you for the last five pages--a total admission of weakness.
I am, however, giving it two stars in the "it was okay" sort of fashion. I'm not upset that I read it. I just won't read it again, teach it or reccommend it to anyone.
Yes, it is a worthy historical object. Yes, it is an interesting foil to other pieces of American literature (which does not have too many books of this variety); but I don't think it deserves great praise if it is judged on its own merits. The prose is nothing special, the dialect isn't handled with particular grace, it has an irritating tendency to state the obvious and to self-interpret and the author actually takes the time to call attention to the fact that he is choosing to rant at you for the last five pages--a total admission of weakness.
I am, however, giving it two stars in the "it was okay" sort of fashion. I'm not upset that I read it. I just won't read it again, teach it or reccommend it to anyone.
May 15, 2016
This book was brilliant. I'm tempted to stop right there, because what else can be said? If I hadn't known that the novel was published in 1952, I would have sworn it was a contemporary tale. Does that mean Ralph Ellison was ahead of his time, or that time has stood still and nothing has changed in 64 years? So many of the quotes and positions of The Brotherhood could be taken right out of the mouths of our current crop of politicians on both sides of the U.S. presidential race today that it chilled me to the bone.
Some favorite quotes:
"My God, boy! You're black and living in the South - did you forget how to lie?"
"Play the game, but don't believe in it...that much you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a straitjacket or padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way. "
"Be your own father, young man. And remember, the world is possibility if only you'll discover it."
"They got all this machinery, but that ain't everything; we are the machines inside the machine."
"What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? What a waste, what a senseless waste!"
"For the first time, lying there in the dark, I could glimpse the possibility of being more than a member of a race."
"And I knew it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others"
"Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many....."
I choose to use Mr. Ellison ' s words instead of my own, but I will repeat my first statement: This book is brilliant.
Some favorite quotes:
"My God, boy! You're black and living in the South - did you forget how to lie?"
"Play the game, but don't believe in it...that much you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a straitjacket or padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way. "
"Be your own father, young man. And remember, the world is possibility if only you'll discover it."
"They got all this machinery, but that ain't everything; we are the machines inside the machine."
"What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? What a waste, what a senseless waste!"
"For the first time, lying there in the dark, I could glimpse the possibility of being more than a member of a race."
"And I knew it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others"
"Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many....."
I choose to use Mr. Ellison ' s words instead of my own, but I will repeat my first statement: This book is brilliant.
November 25, 2012
You should read this. You really should. It was eye opening, challenging, insightful, unsettling.... It made me think and research and discuss. It made me wish I had a teacher and classroom full of students to help me through it. It was refreshingly honest and bold and eloquent.
I struggled with this rating because my experience of reading this book was difficult and laborious. I think some context about the work would have helped me to engage. I wasn't sure what I was delving into when I started - only knowing that it was a book on the top 100 greatest American novels of all times. I spent the first half of the novel orienting myself to what the author was trying to do. It was jarring and confusing reading the book without the anchor of historical importance, literary context, etc... By the last quarter, I was fascinated and moved... but up until that point I found myself lost and often dreading opening the book.
With books of this type, books of cultural importance, books with deep symbolism and message, I find it helpful to have a preparation in reading it. My experience of the book was skewed because I went in expecting a good story but found instead a story that was heavily symbolic and in every turn. It took me a while to get my focus off the plausibility or likability of the story and characters and onto the message the book was trying to convey. I wonder if my experience would have been better had I known what I was reading. The plot was a framework on which to hang the ideas. The plot was secondary. I made a great error by skipping the introduction.
I often avoid reading the back of books or reviews or even the introduction before hand because they give away the story. However, here is a book where I did myself a great disservice by skipping all that. If I were going to be very responsible - I would start again on page one and reread this book from the platform on which I now stand.... but... its 600 pages and I've got a to-read list a mile long. I want to say that I will attempt this book again in the future knowing what I know now... but I can't promise.
In the meantime, I plan to read introductions more often.
This book not only taught me and challenged me on issues of race relations, questions of identity, problems with ideology, etc... but it challenged my understanding of what it means to be a good reader. I read this book wrong and therefore I nearly wasted it.
I struggled with this rating because my experience of reading this book was difficult and laborious. I think some context about the work would have helped me to engage. I wasn't sure what I was delving into when I started - only knowing that it was a book on the top 100 greatest American novels of all times. I spent the first half of the novel orienting myself to what the author was trying to do. It was jarring and confusing reading the book without the anchor of historical importance, literary context, etc... By the last quarter, I was fascinated and moved... but up until that point I found myself lost and often dreading opening the book.
With books of this type, books of cultural importance, books with deep symbolism and message, I find it helpful to have a preparation in reading it. My experience of the book was skewed because I went in expecting a good story but found instead a story that was heavily symbolic and in every turn. It took me a while to get my focus off the plausibility or likability of the story and characters and onto the message the book was trying to convey. I wonder if my experience would have been better had I known what I was reading. The plot was a framework on which to hang the ideas. The plot was secondary. I made a great error by skipping the introduction.
I often avoid reading the back of books or reviews or even the introduction before hand because they give away the story. However, here is a book where I did myself a great disservice by skipping all that. If I were going to be very responsible - I would start again on page one and reread this book from the platform on which I now stand.... but... its 600 pages and I've got a to-read list a mile long. I want to say that I will attempt this book again in the future knowing what I know now... but I can't promise.
In the meantime, I plan to read introductions more often.
This book not only taught me and challenged me on issues of race relations, questions of identity, problems with ideology, etc... but it challenged my understanding of what it means to be a good reader. I read this book wrong and therefore I nearly wasted it.
February 28, 2020
“I remember that I'm invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
I can't believe I waited so long to read this. But part of me thinks I needed to wait to read this. Maybe, and this is hard to admit, maybe I wasn't ready for Ralph Ellison's masterpiece in my twenties or thirties. It was a fever dream. A jazz narrative. A hallucination of pain, beauty, struggle, and life. It was a Hegelian dialectic. It was a black whale just as real as Melville's Moby Dick. It still has me firmly in its grip. There are scenes in this book that are burnt into my mind and tattooed on my soul.
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
I can't believe I waited so long to read this. But part of me thinks I needed to wait to read this. Maybe, and this is hard to admit, maybe I wasn't ready for Ralph Ellison's masterpiece in my twenties or thirties. It was a fever dream. A jazz narrative. A hallucination of pain, beauty, struggle, and life. It was a Hegelian dialectic. It was a black whale just as real as Melville's Moby Dick. It still has me firmly in its grip. There are scenes in this book that are burnt into my mind and tattooed on my soul.
July 5, 2022
At times a harsh, surreal, hilarious sequence of humiliations of a unnamed black boy from the South who is forced to seek refuge in Harlem; he connects with a leftist brotherhood, makes a career in this movement, but soon again falls from his pedestal and learns to see the hypocrisy of people and organizations. He decides now to stay 'invisible' and live an underground life.
This book reminded me of Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, with its almost unbearable openness, and Celine's Voyage au bout de la nuit, with its unadulterated negativity. The style is dazzling and at the same time concise. Only at the end I was a bit disappointed: after the apocalyptic scenes of riots and plunder the story expires on a false note, because we again turn to the starting point.
This is a harsh testimony of discrimination against African Americans in American society in the years 1940-50, but by extension it refers to all the 'little'/'invisible' people, even in our present society (migrants, refugees ...) and in some way also an illustration of Sartre's "L'Enfer c'est les autres". But still it ends with a clear call for commitment and action. No doubt, one of the great novels of the 20th century.
This book reminded me of Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, with its almost unbearable openness, and Celine's Voyage au bout de la nuit, with its unadulterated negativity. The style is dazzling and at the same time concise. Only at the end I was a bit disappointed: after the apocalyptic scenes of riots and plunder the story expires on a false note, because we again turn to the starting point.
This is a harsh testimony of discrimination against African Americans in American society in the years 1940-50, but by extension it refers to all the 'little'/'invisible' people, even in our present society (migrants, refugees ...) and in some way also an illustration of Sartre's "L'Enfer c'est les autres". But still it ends with a clear call for commitment and action. No doubt, one of the great novels of the 20th century.
July 8, 2024
The invisibility of the “invisible man” who narrates this classic American novel is social, not physical; it has nothing to do with science fiction or H.G. Wells. While Ralph Ellison begins Invisible Man (1953) by having his narrator state, “I am an invisible man,” he makes sure to have his narrator offer a quick precautionary stipulation: “No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind” (p. 3). Plainly, we are quite a long way from the insane Dr. Griffin of Wells’s The Invisible Man (1897), and from his synthesized invisibility serum.
Invisible Man’s narrator explains that, as an African American, he is “invisible…simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you sometimes see in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, anything and everything except me” (p. 3). When members of the white majority see him, in other words, all they see is skin tone, along with whatever negative stereotypes they have come to associate with that skin tone. They don’t see him. That is why he is “invisible.”
The narrator lives underground, in an overlooked space within a whites-only building. As he breaks segregationist laws, so he steals light – 1,369 light bulbs’ worth of light – from a power company that he refers to as Monopolated Light & Power. “Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death. I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility” (p. 6).
Most of the book takes the form of an extended flashback. Growing up in a small Southern town, the narrator recalls, he heard a great deal of advice from a great many people, but the advice he remembers is what his grandfather once told him: “Son, after I’m gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ’em with yeses, undermine ’em with grins, agree ’em to death and destruction, let ’em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open” (p. 15). The grandfather’s attitude of resistance contrasts with the accommodationist mindset that the narrator observes in other sectors of his community.
Graduating from high school, the narrator, with other young African American men, is summoned to a gathering of the town’s elite white men. There, the young men are forced to participate in a “battle royal,” a free-for-all fight for money that turns out to be worthless. Only after participating in the humiliating “battle royal” is the narrator given a scholarship to the state’s college for African American students.
The narrator’s time at the unnamed college may reflect Ellison’s own time at Tuskegee Institute, where he found that the institute’s nominal egalitarianism masked a decidedly class-conscious way of thinking among students and faculty alike. At one point, the narrator recalls with particular vividness “the bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold Father symbol, his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a kneeling slave; and I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place – whether I am witnessing a revelation, or a more efficient binding” (p. 35).
At first, the narrator excels at his studies, and even hopes that he might become a leader of his town’s African American community, like the college’s president, Dr. Bledsoe. The narrator’s description of Dr. Bledsoe, along with capturing the poetic qualities of Ellison’s prose, provides a sense of the narrator’s hopes for his own future at that time:
Going upstairs I visualized Dr. Bledsoe, with his broad globular face that seemed to take its form from the fat pressing from the inside, which, as air pressing against the membrane of a balloon, gave it shape and buoyancy. “Old Bucket-Head,” some of the fellows called him. I never had. He had been kind to me from the first, perhaps because of the letters which the school superintendent had sent to him when I arrived. But more than that, he was the example of everything I hoped to be: Influential with wealthy men all over the country; consulted in matters concerning the race; a leader of his people; the possessor of not one, but two Cadillacs; a good salary and a soft, good-looking and creamy-complexioned wife. What was more, while black and bald and everything white folks poked fun at, he had achieved power and authority; had, while black and wrinkle-headed, made himself of more importance in the world than most Southern white men. They could laugh at him but they couldn’t ignore him. (pp. 99-101)
Recall, however, the narrator’s words from the beginning of the novel: “I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!” (p. 15) The narrator’s hopes that a degree from the college will propel him toward a life of respectability, or even prominence, are undone when he is trusted with the task of driving one of the college’s white Northern trustees, a Mr. Norton, from one college function to another. Through a combination of circumstances, the narrator ends up inadvertently taking Mr. Norton to the proverbial wrong side of the tracks – the part of African American life in that town that Dr. Bledsoe does not want anyone from the college to see.
The narrator and Norton end up at a bar patronized by sex workers and patients from the nearby insane asylum. One of those patients, accosting Mr. Norton, takes on a role similar to that of the wise fools from Shakespeare’s plays, telling Norton that the narrator has “[a]lready…learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!” (p. 93) That theme of social invisibility is thus once again reinforced.
Expelled from the college by an angry Dr. Bledsoe, the narrator moves north and settles in Harlem. He secures employment at a paint factory called Liberty Paints – and notes how the values of his new employer emphasize the anomaly of his position as a black man in a society that valorizes whiteness. His boss, a man named Kimbro, exults in how white the company’s “Optic White” paint is – calling it “as white as George Washington’s Sunday-go-to-meetin’ wig” and adding that “It’s the purest white that can be found. Nobody makes a paint any whiter. This batch is heading for a national monument!” (p. 201). The narrator’s initial and understandable disillusionment – “To hell with the whole thing…I’ll find another job” (p. 205) – gives way to resignation, and to an attempt to make a go of working at the paint factory; but a jealous co-worker’s machinations result in a disastrous accident that leaves the narrator jobless and hospitalized.
At this grim point in the narrator’s life, his only source of stability is a kind woman named Mary who offers him a place to stay. But then things change for him once again: an impromptu speech that he makes inspires a spirit of resistance among a crowd watching an unjust eviction, and gains the narrator the attention of the leaders of a Marxist group that calls itself “the Brotherhood.” Invited to a meeting of the group’s leadership, the narrator finds that, among the group’s prominently Anglo leaders, he is once again invisible: “I felt extremely uncomfortable, although after brief glances no one paid me any special attention. It was as though they hadn’t seen me – as though I were here, and yet not here” (p. 300).
The Brotherhood leaders’ discussions of having “banded together in brotherhood”, because “Too many have been dispossessed of their heritage” (p. 303) seem inspiring to the narrator in some ways – but there are some troubling notes. He overhears a woman asking whether the narrator should be “a little blacker”, and is understandably outraged by what he has heard: “So she doesn’t think I’m black enough. What does she want, a black-face comedian?...Maybe she wants to see me sweat coal, tar, ink, shoe polish, graphite. What was I – a man, or a natural resource?” (pp. 301, 303)
It is comparably troubling when Brother Jack, a leader of the Brotherhood, tells the narrator that “You shall be the new Booker T. Washington, but even greater than he” (p. 307). In Ellison’s time, as before and after, Washington was an important but also a problematic figure – often charged with acquiescing in the segregationist mindset of leading Southern whites in order to secure greater economic access, for African Americans, to industrial and service jobs. The narrator resists being associated with Washington, but ultimately does agree to join the Brotherhood, and is given an apartment, a salary, and a variety of assignments to encourage “revolutionary consciousness” within the Harlem community.
The assignment is not an easy one – Harlem and its people face many challenges, and there are others competing for influence. Among them is a militant black nationalist named Ras the Exhorter, who angrily rejects the Brotherhood’s calls for interracial cooperation and calls for violent confrontation. Yet the narrator’s skills as a rhetor make him an effective spokesman for the Brotherhood, and he gains a great deal of attention – too much attention, for the liking of some Brotherhood members.
At one point, the narrator gives an interview to a journalist, making a Brotherhood member named Wrestrum jealous. Wrestrum subsequently launches accusations, before the Brotherhood leadership, that the narrator “aims to control the movement uptown. He wants to be a dictator!” (p. 400) The accusation is unfounded and nonsensical, but the leaders of the Brotherhood declare that the narrator must leave Harlem and begin lecturing on women’s issues downtown. This reassignment is profoundly disillusioning for the narrator; he states that “Being removed from Harlem was a shock, but one which would hurt them as much as me, for…my value to the Brotherhood…depended upon my complete frankness and honesty in stating the community’s hopes and hates, fears and desires” (p. 406).
Tod Clifton, an African American member of the Brotherhood, and a young man of particular strength and promise, leaves the Brotherhood and later is killed by police; tension in the community increases, and the narrator publicly expresses his own grief and that of Harlem, displeasing the Brotherhood leadership. When the narrator explains to Hambro, an attorney who mentored him in his early days with the Brotherhood, that he is worried about the district because “things are getting out of hand. Ras’s men tried to rough me up tonight and our strength is steadily going to hell”, Hambro replies that “That’s regrettable…but there’s nothing to be done about it that wouldn’t upset the larger plan. It’s unfortunate, Brother, but your members will have to be sacrificed” (p. 500).
The impact of this realization that there are limits to the supposedly race-blind comradeship of the Brotherhood is, for the narrator, overwhelming:
[I]t was dead quiet. I looked at the angular composure of [Hambro’s] face, searching for the sincerity of his words. I could feel some deep change. It was as though my discovery…had opened a gulf between us over which, though we sat within touching distance, our voices barely carried and then fell flat, without an echo. I tried to shake it away, but still the distance, so great that neither could grasp the emotional tone of the other, remained. (p. 500)
It is sad to see the depth of the narrator's disillusionment as he sees how, in the name of "theory," an organization to which he has given so much of his life is ready to throw under the proverbial bus an entire community of living people who are facing real injustices and challenges. In effect, the Brotherhood has revealed its willingness to declare the entire community of Harlem "invisible." It is one of the saddest moments in a novel that is filled with sad moments.
The community moves closer to the prospect of violence – reminding the reader of a passage toward the beginning of Invisible Man, when the narrator states that when one is invisible, “You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful” (p. 3). Ras the Exhorter reinvents himself as Ras the Destroyer, and eventually the reader learns of the specific events that drove the novel’s narrator underground.
Invisible Man is one of the greatest American novels ever written – a classic examination of the African American experience. It is a novel that everyone, and certainly every American, should read.
Invisible Man’s narrator explains that, as an African American, he is “invisible…simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you sometimes see in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, anything and everything except me” (p. 3). When members of the white majority see him, in other words, all they see is skin tone, along with whatever negative stereotypes they have come to associate with that skin tone. They don’t see him. That is why he is “invisible.”
The narrator lives underground, in an overlooked space within a whites-only building. As he breaks segregationist laws, so he steals light – 1,369 light bulbs’ worth of light – from a power company that he refers to as Monopolated Light & Power. “Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one’s form is to live a death. I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility” (p. 6).
Most of the book takes the form of an extended flashback. Growing up in a small Southern town, the narrator recalls, he heard a great deal of advice from a great many people, but the advice he remembers is what his grandfather once told him: “Son, after I’m gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy’s country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ’em with yeses, undermine ’em with grins, agree ’em to death and destruction, let ’em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open” (p. 15). The grandfather’s attitude of resistance contrasts with the accommodationist mindset that the narrator observes in other sectors of his community.
Graduating from high school, the narrator, with other young African American men, is summoned to a gathering of the town’s elite white men. There, the young men are forced to participate in a “battle royal,” a free-for-all fight for money that turns out to be worthless. Only after participating in the humiliating “battle royal” is the narrator given a scholarship to the state’s college for African American students.
The narrator’s time at the unnamed college may reflect Ellison’s own time at Tuskegee Institute, where he found that the institute’s nominal egalitarianism masked a decidedly class-conscious way of thinking among students and faculty alike. At one point, the narrator recalls with particular vividness “the bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold Father symbol, his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a kneeling slave; and I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place – whether I am witnessing a revelation, or a more efficient binding” (p. 35).
At first, the narrator excels at his studies, and even hopes that he might become a leader of his town’s African American community, like the college’s president, Dr. Bledsoe. The narrator’s description of Dr. Bledsoe, along with capturing the poetic qualities of Ellison’s prose, provides a sense of the narrator’s hopes for his own future at that time:
Going upstairs I visualized Dr. Bledsoe, with his broad globular face that seemed to take its form from the fat pressing from the inside, which, as air pressing against the membrane of a balloon, gave it shape and buoyancy. “Old Bucket-Head,” some of the fellows called him. I never had. He had been kind to me from the first, perhaps because of the letters which the school superintendent had sent to him when I arrived. But more than that, he was the example of everything I hoped to be: Influential with wealthy men all over the country; consulted in matters concerning the race; a leader of his people; the possessor of not one, but two Cadillacs; a good salary and a soft, good-looking and creamy-complexioned wife. What was more, while black and bald and everything white folks poked fun at, he had achieved power and authority; had, while black and wrinkle-headed, made himself of more importance in the world than most Southern white men. They could laugh at him but they couldn’t ignore him. (pp. 99-101)
Recall, however, the narrator’s words from the beginning of the novel: “I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!” (p. 15) The narrator’s hopes that a degree from the college will propel him toward a life of respectability, or even prominence, are undone when he is trusted with the task of driving one of the college’s white Northern trustees, a Mr. Norton, from one college function to another. Through a combination of circumstances, the narrator ends up inadvertently taking Mr. Norton to the proverbial wrong side of the tracks – the part of African American life in that town that Dr. Bledsoe does not want anyone from the college to see.
The narrator and Norton end up at a bar patronized by sex workers and patients from the nearby insane asylum. One of those patients, accosting Mr. Norton, takes on a role similar to that of the wise fools from Shakespeare’s plays, telling Norton that the narrator has “[a]lready…learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!” (p. 93) That theme of social invisibility is thus once again reinforced.
Expelled from the college by an angry Dr. Bledsoe, the narrator moves north and settles in Harlem. He secures employment at a paint factory called Liberty Paints – and notes how the values of his new employer emphasize the anomaly of his position as a black man in a society that valorizes whiteness. His boss, a man named Kimbro, exults in how white the company’s “Optic White” paint is – calling it “as white as George Washington’s Sunday-go-to-meetin’ wig” and adding that “It’s the purest white that can be found. Nobody makes a paint any whiter. This batch is heading for a national monument!” (p. 201). The narrator’s initial and understandable disillusionment – “To hell with the whole thing…I’ll find another job” (p. 205) – gives way to resignation, and to an attempt to make a go of working at the paint factory; but a jealous co-worker’s machinations result in a disastrous accident that leaves the narrator jobless and hospitalized.
At this grim point in the narrator’s life, his only source of stability is a kind woman named Mary who offers him a place to stay. But then things change for him once again: an impromptu speech that he makes inspires a spirit of resistance among a crowd watching an unjust eviction, and gains the narrator the attention of the leaders of a Marxist group that calls itself “the Brotherhood.” Invited to a meeting of the group’s leadership, the narrator finds that, among the group’s prominently Anglo leaders, he is once again invisible: “I felt extremely uncomfortable, although after brief glances no one paid me any special attention. It was as though they hadn’t seen me – as though I were here, and yet not here” (p. 300).
The Brotherhood leaders’ discussions of having “banded together in brotherhood”, because “Too many have been dispossessed of their heritage” (p. 303) seem inspiring to the narrator in some ways – but there are some troubling notes. He overhears a woman asking whether the narrator should be “a little blacker”, and is understandably outraged by what he has heard: “So she doesn’t think I’m black enough. What does she want, a black-face comedian?...Maybe she wants to see me sweat coal, tar, ink, shoe polish, graphite. What was I – a man, or a natural resource?” (pp. 301, 303)
It is comparably troubling when Brother Jack, a leader of the Brotherhood, tells the narrator that “You shall be the new Booker T. Washington, but even greater than he” (p. 307). In Ellison’s time, as before and after, Washington was an important but also a problematic figure – often charged with acquiescing in the segregationist mindset of leading Southern whites in order to secure greater economic access, for African Americans, to industrial and service jobs. The narrator resists being associated with Washington, but ultimately does agree to join the Brotherhood, and is given an apartment, a salary, and a variety of assignments to encourage “revolutionary consciousness” within the Harlem community.
The assignment is not an easy one – Harlem and its people face many challenges, and there are others competing for influence. Among them is a militant black nationalist named Ras the Exhorter, who angrily rejects the Brotherhood’s calls for interracial cooperation and calls for violent confrontation. Yet the narrator’s skills as a rhetor make him an effective spokesman for the Brotherhood, and he gains a great deal of attention – too much attention, for the liking of some Brotherhood members.
At one point, the narrator gives an interview to a journalist, making a Brotherhood member named Wrestrum jealous. Wrestrum subsequently launches accusations, before the Brotherhood leadership, that the narrator “aims to control the movement uptown. He wants to be a dictator!” (p. 400) The accusation is unfounded and nonsensical, but the leaders of the Brotherhood declare that the narrator must leave Harlem and begin lecturing on women’s issues downtown. This reassignment is profoundly disillusioning for the narrator; he states that “Being removed from Harlem was a shock, but one which would hurt them as much as me, for…my value to the Brotherhood…depended upon my complete frankness and honesty in stating the community’s hopes and hates, fears and desires” (p. 406).
Tod Clifton, an African American member of the Brotherhood, and a young man of particular strength and promise, leaves the Brotherhood and later is killed by police; tension in the community increases, and the narrator publicly expresses his own grief and that of Harlem, displeasing the Brotherhood leadership. When the narrator explains to Hambro, an attorney who mentored him in his early days with the Brotherhood, that he is worried about the district because “things are getting out of hand. Ras’s men tried to rough me up tonight and our strength is steadily going to hell”, Hambro replies that “That’s regrettable…but there’s nothing to be done about it that wouldn’t upset the larger plan. It’s unfortunate, Brother, but your members will have to be sacrificed” (p. 500).
The impact of this realization that there are limits to the supposedly race-blind comradeship of the Brotherhood is, for the narrator, overwhelming:
[I]t was dead quiet. I looked at the angular composure of [Hambro’s] face, searching for the sincerity of his words. I could feel some deep change. It was as though my discovery…had opened a gulf between us over which, though we sat within touching distance, our voices barely carried and then fell flat, without an echo. I tried to shake it away, but still the distance, so great that neither could grasp the emotional tone of the other, remained. (p. 500)
It is sad to see the depth of the narrator's disillusionment as he sees how, in the name of "theory," an organization to which he has given so much of his life is ready to throw under the proverbial bus an entire community of living people who are facing real injustices and challenges. In effect, the Brotherhood has revealed its willingness to declare the entire community of Harlem "invisible." It is one of the saddest moments in a novel that is filled with sad moments.
The community moves closer to the prospect of violence – reminding the reader of a passage toward the beginning of Invisible Man, when the narrator states that when one is invisible, “You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful” (p. 3). Ras the Exhorter reinvents himself as Ras the Destroyer, and eventually the reader learns of the specific events that drove the novel’s narrator underground.
Invisible Man is one of the greatest American novels ever written – a classic examination of the African American experience. It is a novel that everyone, and certainly every American, should read.
May 17, 2016
I’m embarrassed to admit that for many years I thought this book was the basis for the Claude Rains movie in which his wardrobe consisted largely of sunglasses and Ace wrap. Once disabused of that notion, I still was slow to read it because the title suggested a character that, while not literally invisible, was of so little importance that his very existence wasn’t noted by others. Obviously, this is a treatise on racism and, as I already know that racism is bad, what’s the point of reading it?
Fortunately, I read it anyway and found it to be a stunningly brilliant book, the National Book Award winning story of an unnamed young black man’s rise and fall as a community organizer in Harlem during the 1930s and 40s. It does have a lot to say about racism but does so without finger pointing or animosity, displaying it in all its forms, from the ultra-degrading smoker scene in chapter two to the ill-conceived gaffs by well-meaning acquaintances and Brother Jack’s imperious “The brother does not sing!” In places it felt as if no page was without some subtle, or unsubtle, slight being rendered to the point where I thought of the old torture called death by a thousand cuts.
While no assessment of the black experience in America would be complete without a discussion of racism, Invisible Man is so much more than that. I could talk for hours about the many, many fascinating ideas that Ellison imparts, but I will settle for describing one chapter out of the many great ones Ellison created. In this chapter, our narrator has managed to find a job at a paint factory. Approaching the building he sees a sign that says “KEEP AMERICA PURE WITH LIBERTY PAINTS”. Nothing more is said about the sign but I immediately flashed on a conversation in which a woman once told my aunt that “It’s so rare these days to find someone who is pure” (pronounced PEW-uhh). From there it was an easy leap to picture a Klan rally with a fiery orator expressing the need to “keep America pew-uhh”. Once on the job, our narrator is tasked with mixing Optic White paint, a paint so white you can paint a chunka coal and you’d have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through”. The joke, though is that in order to make this ‘purest white that can be found’ paint, you have to add to it 10 drops, no more and no less, of dead black dope. Again, Ellison makes no comment as to the absurdity of this but he didn’t need to for the day hasn’t passed since I read that chapter that I haven’t pondered and theorized what he meant by it.
Bottom line: Ralph Ellison is one of those brilliant authors who doesn’t tell his readers what to think but he tells you a story and lets you run with it. I suspect I will be running for a long time to come.
Fortunately, I read it anyway and found it to be a stunningly brilliant book, the National Book Award winning story of an unnamed young black man’s rise and fall as a community organizer in Harlem during the 1930s and 40s. It does have a lot to say about racism but does so without finger pointing or animosity, displaying it in all its forms, from the ultra-degrading smoker scene in chapter two to the ill-conceived gaffs by well-meaning acquaintances and Brother Jack’s imperious “The brother does not sing!” In places it felt as if no page was without some subtle, or unsubtle, slight being rendered to the point where I thought of the old torture called death by a thousand cuts.
While no assessment of the black experience in America would be complete without a discussion of racism, Invisible Man is so much more than that. I could talk for hours about the many, many fascinating ideas that Ellison imparts, but I will settle for describing one chapter out of the many great ones Ellison created. In this chapter, our narrator has managed to find a job at a paint factory. Approaching the building he sees a sign that says “KEEP AMERICA PURE WITH LIBERTY PAINTS”. Nothing more is said about the sign but I immediately flashed on a conversation in which a woman once told my aunt that “It’s so rare these days to find someone who is pure” (pronounced PEW-uhh). From there it was an easy leap to picture a Klan rally with a fiery orator expressing the need to “keep America pew-uhh”. Once on the job, our narrator is tasked with mixing Optic White paint, a paint so white you can paint a chunka coal and you’d have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through”. The joke, though is that in order to make this ‘purest white that can be found’ paint, you have to add to it 10 drops, no more and no less, of dead black dope. Again, Ellison makes no comment as to the absurdity of this but he didn’t need to for the day hasn’t passed since I read that chapter that I haven’t pondered and theorized what he meant by it.
Bottom line: Ralph Ellison is one of those brilliant authors who doesn’t tell his readers what to think but he tells you a story and lets you run with it. I suspect I will be running for a long time to come.
September 13, 2022
[update 4/27/2019]: I've spent years figuring out how to review this and maybe I'll never be satisfied, but here is an excerpt from elsewhere on this site: Though I had been reading a fair amount of books given to me up to the winter of 2004-2005, It would be an assignment to do a report on Ralph Ellison that would make me open my eyes to the world (and my place in it) in-general, and make me a serious book-reader in-particular. I do not consider myself a "bibliophile" at that time, but I was now on my way.
I have always felt it difficult to describe the impact that Invisible Man had on me, but it woke me from my dogmatic slumber. I had, as most did, gone through a world in which I knew things were more precarious arbitrarily cruel for me because my ethnicity, but I did not truly question—or should I say had the question put to me why this was in such an intense way. In truth, I was not aware enough to question why or what it meant to go through life as a black man— always having a set of rules to go by that were different from…the “mainstream” Americans that I heard of on T.V. Life in my neighborhood was a precarious one in which danger and the threat of death was the ever-present miasma. Into this I sat down and opened a borrowed, beat-up copy of Invisible Man and read that incredible first paragraph of the prologue:
By the time I had read the whole prologue, I was Godsmacked. I had felt like lightning had been written into my soul and was trying to understand what I had read. I was coming into my 14th year on this Earth and had never read any lines like that in my life. Maybe in the Bible there were epic passages close to that, but to find something that summed-up what my—and many peoples around me—life looked like and I had only read the first twelve pages of the novel. After a few months just reading that prologue and finally feeling confident enough to go on, I proceeded to read the rest of the novel and decided that I must read everything by this man and understand how to understand the world as he did.
[update 9/27/2013: OH BOY, seems like this book has made the news...and yes human stupidity is involved. I have never made it a secret on this site that I am a HUGE fan of this book. When I found out that this book had been banned by Randolph County [school board], North Carolina for not having any "merit", on the weekend before banned books week, the irony could not be more incredible. The book details the personal, cultural, and existential alienation and forced invisibility of the main character and others like him. It won the National Book Award in 1953 beating out Earnest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and John Steinbeck's East of Eden. It has been ranked in almost every list of greatest novels of the 20th century and is one of, if not the greatest, novel of post-war America. The fact that this book could be banned in the 21st century means that it is still important and the themes it brings up more alive than when it was written. The thing about banning a book is that you usually increase interest in it that way and it was no exception here as demand for the book doubled days after it was banned. What surprised me was how forceful and decisive public outcry was that only 10 days after it was banned(5-2 vote), the ban itself was overturned(6-1 vote). So it seems our nameless narrator can, for the time being, come out of his "hole" in Randolph County, NC.]
[Original Review]
...I don't know where to began with this one. I guess everyone who likes to read has that one book. This book is that to me. Before I read this book I didn't know that I had a opinion or view on anything really especially not race or politics. I picked this book up in the 8th grade as apart of an assignment I had to do on the author and my aunt just happened to have a beat up copy of this book. Let's just say that it opened my eyes to the world around me and I still can't fathom the impact that this book has had on me. I have read many books since some could be considered "better" but I still hold this book (closest) in my heart and well I know this isn't a proper review (I may yet do one of those later) this is a book I would not have to think twice on recommending to anyone.
I have always felt it difficult to describe the impact that Invisible Man had on me, but it woke me from my dogmatic slumber. I had, as most did, gone through a world in which I knew things were more precarious arbitrarily cruel for me because my ethnicity, but I did not truly question—or should I say had the question put to me why this was in such an intense way. In truth, I was not aware enough to question why or what it meant to go through life as a black man— always having a set of rules to go by that were different from…the “mainstream” Americans that I heard of on T.V. Life in my neighborhood was a precarious one in which danger and the threat of death was the ever-present miasma. Into this I sat down and opened a borrowed, beat-up copy of Invisible Man and read that incredible first paragraph of the prologue:
“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me.”
By the time I had read the whole prologue, I was Godsmacked. I had felt like lightning had been written into my soul and was trying to understand what I had read. I was coming into my 14th year on this Earth and had never read any lines like that in my life. Maybe in the Bible there were epic passages close to that, but to find something that summed-up what my—and many peoples around me—life looked like and I had only read the first twelve pages of the novel. After a few months just reading that prologue and finally feeling confident enough to go on, I proceeded to read the rest of the novel and decided that I must read everything by this man and understand how to understand the world as he did.
[update 9/27/2013: OH BOY, seems like this book has made the news...and yes human stupidity is involved. I have never made it a secret on this site that I am a HUGE fan of this book. When I found out that this book had been banned by Randolph County [school board], North Carolina for not having any "merit", on the weekend before banned books week, the irony could not be more incredible. The book details the personal, cultural, and existential alienation and forced invisibility of the main character and others like him. It won the National Book Award in 1953 beating out Earnest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and John Steinbeck's East of Eden. It has been ranked in almost every list of greatest novels of the 20th century and is one of, if not the greatest, novel of post-war America. The fact that this book could be banned in the 21st century means that it is still important and the themes it brings up more alive than when it was written. The thing about banning a book is that you usually increase interest in it that way and it was no exception here as demand for the book doubled days after it was banned. What surprised me was how forceful and decisive public outcry was that only 10 days after it was banned(5-2 vote), the ban itself was overturned(6-1 vote). So it seems our nameless narrator can, for the time being, come out of his "hole" in Randolph County, NC.]
[Original Review]
...I don't know where to began with this one. I guess everyone who likes to read has that one book. This book is that to me. Before I read this book I didn't know that I had a opinion or view on anything really especially not race or politics. I picked this book up in the 8th grade as apart of an assignment I had to do on the author and my aunt just happened to have a beat up copy of this book. Let's just say that it opened my eyes to the world around me and I still can't fathom the impact that this book has had on me. I have read many books since some could be considered "better" but I still hold this book (closest) in my heart and well I know this isn't a proper review (I may yet do one of those later) this is a book I would not have to think twice on recommending to anyone.
May 4, 2013
A powerful novel; one of the must reads. Written shortly after the Second World War it is the classic study of invisibility; what it means not be be "seen" in society. Set in the US it is an unflinching analysis of racism at all levels of society. The unnamed narrator starts in the South at college and continues in New York. Ellison pours into his writing his frustrations with the attitude of the left in America just after the Second World War.
There are some memorable characters, I would like to have seen more of Ras, who was a fascinating and complex character. There is a rich vein of humour in the book, but there is a brutal realism as well. The opening of the book is one of its great strengths as Ellison sets the stall for the whole novel. The narrator's initial hopes are gradually dashed and disillusionment very slowly sets in. He sees the suffering of those around him and the practical effects of racism and discovers he has a voiceand can move people. What to do with that voice? This is where the Brotherhood comes in.
The Brotherhood is a left-wing/Marxist organisation commited to radical change in society and Ellison is reflecting his own experiences with the left. The narrator is given a job with the Brotherhood, to assist with their efforts in Harlem. The Brotherhodd have sections which deal with different aspects of their work and the committee dictates policy and practice. The narrator is taken out of poverty and given a new flat, but is bound by policies which he does not always understand. At one point the narrator is taken away from Harlem to work on the issue of women's rights because the committee disapproves of some of his actions. The incendiary climax can clearly be seen coming, but is no less shocking and poignant; the futility of it all is striking. The real villains are the Brotherhood. The racists are, well, racist and behave as you would expect. However the Brotherhood are about equality and change in society and ought to know better, but they turn out to be just as racist and lacking in compassion as the rest.
I remember being involved in debates in my youth concerning left wing politics. Whether it was race, gender, sexuality, the environment; everything was secondary to the primacy of how Marx said things should happen in terms of revolution and change; economic issues were always primary. Others issues when it came down to it were irrelevant, a great mistake as Ellison powerfully shows. The Brotherhood use the race issue when it suits them and discard it when it does not without a thought for the people involved.
I'd like to say that things are completely different to when this was written; in many ways times have changed, but there are still indicators that old attitudes may be dormant rather than gone. When times are difficult people still vote for those who play on fears and prjudice (the last few days in the UK have shown that); outsiders are still stereotyped. That is what makes this book and Ellison's message so important.
There are some memorable characters, I would like to have seen more of Ras, who was a fascinating and complex character. There is a rich vein of humour in the book, but there is a brutal realism as well. The opening of the book is one of its great strengths as Ellison sets the stall for the whole novel. The narrator's initial hopes are gradually dashed and disillusionment very slowly sets in. He sees the suffering of those around him and the practical effects of racism and discovers he has a voiceand can move people. What to do with that voice? This is where the Brotherhood comes in.
The Brotherhood is a left-wing/Marxist organisation commited to radical change in society and Ellison is reflecting his own experiences with the left. The narrator is given a job with the Brotherhood, to assist with their efforts in Harlem. The Brotherhodd have sections which deal with different aspects of their work and the committee dictates policy and practice. The narrator is taken out of poverty and given a new flat, but is bound by policies which he does not always understand. At one point the narrator is taken away from Harlem to work on the issue of women's rights because the committee disapproves of some of his actions. The incendiary climax can clearly be seen coming, but is no less shocking and poignant; the futility of it all is striking. The real villains are the Brotherhood. The racists are, well, racist and behave as you would expect. However the Brotherhood are about equality and change in society and ought to know better, but they turn out to be just as racist and lacking in compassion as the rest.
I remember being involved in debates in my youth concerning left wing politics. Whether it was race, gender, sexuality, the environment; everything was secondary to the primacy of how Marx said things should happen in terms of revolution and change; economic issues were always primary. Others issues when it came down to it were irrelevant, a great mistake as Ellison powerfully shows. The Brotherhood use the race issue when it suits them and discard it when it does not without a thought for the people involved.
I'd like to say that things are completely different to when this was written; in many ways times have changed, but there are still indicators that old attitudes may be dormant rather than gone. When times are difficult people still vote for those who play on fears and prjudice (the last few days in the UK have shown that); outsiders are still stereotyped. That is what makes this book and Ellison's message so important.
June 23, 2024
Notes on 2nd reading.
1. I had forgotten what an indictment of Tuskegee Institute the novel is! It's reminds me of the conflict between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois over the means black men and women should embrace to advance themselves in a predominantly racist society. Washington advocating for a more fawning approach, which Du Bois found demeaning. For a fine overall account see Philip Dray's At the Hands of Persons Unknown, itself a compelling history of lynching. For De Bois's opinion, see his essay "On Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" in The Souls of Black Folk.
"And I remember too, how we confronted those others, those who had set me here in this Eden . . . who were unfamiliar in their familiarity, who trailed their words to us through blood and violence and ridicule and condescension with drawling smiles, and who exhorted and threatened, intimidated with innocent words as they described to us the limitations of our lives and the vast boldness of our aspirations, the staggering folly of our impatience to rise even higher; who, as they talked, aroused furtive visions within me of blood-froth sparkling their chins like their familiar tobacco juice, and upon their lips the curdled milk of a million black slave mammies' withered dugs, a treacherous and fluid knowledge of our being, imbibed at our source and now regurgitated foul upon us. This was our world, they said as they described it to us, this our horizon and its earth, its seasons and its climate, its spring and its summer, and its fall and harvest some unknown millennium ahead; and these its floods and cyclones and they themselves our thunder and lightning; and this we must accept and love and accept even if we did not love." (p. 112)
2. Ellison is very good at sustaining mood in his nameless first-person narrator. His writing can have moments of intoxicating sonority. The backstory before his expulsion from the southern black college drags, but this will soon end.
3. Incest scene hasn't aged well. I refer here to Jim Trueblood's story. It is way too long and creepy, like passages (in their creepiness) from Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater.
4. Golden Day scene similarly too long. The pace seems almost Victorian. I have to remind myself that this book was published in 1952. Literary fiction is snappier these days.
1. I had forgotten what an indictment of Tuskegee Institute the novel is! It's reminds me of the conflict between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois over the means black men and women should embrace to advance themselves in a predominantly racist society. Washington advocating for a more fawning approach, which Du Bois found demeaning. For a fine overall account see Philip Dray's At the Hands of Persons Unknown, itself a compelling history of lynching. For De Bois's opinion, see his essay "On Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" in The Souls of Black Folk.
"And I remember too, how we confronted those others, those who had set me here in this Eden . . . who were unfamiliar in their familiarity, who trailed their words to us through blood and violence and ridicule and condescension with drawling smiles, and who exhorted and threatened, intimidated with innocent words as they described to us the limitations of our lives and the vast boldness of our aspirations, the staggering folly of our impatience to rise even higher; who, as they talked, aroused furtive visions within me of blood-froth sparkling their chins like their familiar tobacco juice, and upon their lips the curdled milk of a million black slave mammies' withered dugs, a treacherous and fluid knowledge of our being, imbibed at our source and now regurgitated foul upon us. This was our world, they said as they described it to us, this our horizon and its earth, its seasons and its climate, its spring and its summer, and its fall and harvest some unknown millennium ahead; and these its floods and cyclones and they themselves our thunder and lightning; and this we must accept and love and accept even if we did not love." (p. 112)
2. Ellison is very good at sustaining mood in his nameless first-person narrator. His writing can have moments of intoxicating sonority. The backstory before his expulsion from the southern black college drags, but this will soon end.
3. Incest scene hasn't aged well. I refer here to Jim Trueblood's story. It is way too long and creepy, like passages (in their creepiness) from Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater.
4. Golden Day scene similarly too long. The pace seems almost Victorian. I have to remind myself that this book was published in 1952. Literary fiction is snappier these days.
March 27, 2021
Κάνοντας μια αναφορά κάπου θυμήθηκα πως δεν έχω γράψει τίποτα γι' αυτό το βιβλίο. Και όμως, χρειαζόταν και είναι κάτι που βλέπω σαν χρέος. Δεν έψαχνα κάτι να με συγκλονίσει το περασμένο καλοκαίρι. Πειραματιζόμουν με τον εαυτό μου, προσπαθώντας να με ξυπνήσω από μια λαίλαπα κακομοιριάς, αυτοοικτιρμού και κολλήματος με επεισόδια του Πουαρώ στο youtube. Στην πορεία, παράτησα πάρα πολλά βιβλία. Το βιβλίο αυτό δεν το παράτησα, γιατί με δάγκωσε στα μούτρα. Δεν είχα κανένα βαθμό διάθεσης να συγκινηθώ, δεν είχα καμία όρεξη να εμβαθύνω, ούτε να ξενυχτήσω, ούτε να καπνίσω πολλά τσιγάρα. Αυτό που ήθελα ήταν, σχολώντας απ' τη δουλειά, να ξεχνάω πως υπάρχω. Δε μπορώ να αποφύγω το κλισέ που λέει ότι βλέπεις τι συμβαίνει στον κόσμο σου και λες ξύπνα ρε κακομοίρη, ρε παρεξηγημένε και δες πως κάποια πράγματα έχουν συμβεί και έχουν αποκτήσει μια δολοφονική ομορφιά, σαν ιστορίες, που όμως δεν ήταν ιστορίες. Μπορεί αυτό το βιβλίο να μην είναι η Ισπανική Διαθήκη, που περιγράφει μια κορυφή. Αλλά μιλάει για τον αργό θάνατο, που μπορεί να καταφέρει η πλειοψηφία πάνω σε ένα λαό, που παρόλ' αυτά δεν παράτησε την κουλτούρα του, δεν αφέθηκε τόσο πολύ. Και όμως αυτό, αποτελείται από πολλές μικρές ιστορίες ανθρώπων, που δεν τα πήγαν τόσο καλά. Που συμβιβάστηκαν, που έσκυψαν το κεφάλι, που είπαν συγνώμη και σας ευχαριστώ που μου πατάτε το πόδι. Είναι μια ιστορία ενηλικίωσης και εμβάθυνσης κι αυτοπροσδιορισμού. Και μπορεί να μη τα λέω τόσο καλά, να μην τα αναλύω ιδιαίτερα, αλλά είναι ένα βιβλίο που μιλάει για το βάθος. Το βάθος που υπάρχει μέσα από τα μάτια, μέσα από το αί��α, αυτή την κεντρική ιδέα που συνδέεται με νευρώνες και φλεβίτσες με την κεντρική εικόνα, που τόσο πολύ διαφορετικούς μας κάνει και την ίδια στιγμή, τόσο πολύ κύκλωπες. Και όλοι έχουμε υπάρξει αποκλίνοντες και όλοι έχουμε συμβιβαστεί και όλοι θα θέλαμε να μην υπάρχει κάτι παραμέσα και να ποδοπατάμε με ευχαριστημένο μαζοχισμό τον εαυτό μας, μαζί με τους άλλους. Έλα όμως, που κάτι υπάρχει. Κι αυτό που υπάρχει δε θα πάψει ποτέ να φαίνεται, όσο μικροί σα μπαλάκια κι αν γίνουμε, όσο απαρατήρητοι κι αν επιτρέπουμε να γίνουμε. Η ουσία μας είναι εκεί.
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