Ellison, Ralph (Vol. 3) - Ellison, Ralph 1914–
Ellison, Ralph 1914–
A Black American whose reputation as a major novelist still rests on Invisible Man, his first and only novel, Ellison is also a short story writer and essayist. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 9-12, rev. ed.)
What astonishes one most about Invisible Man is the apparent freedom it displays from the ideological and emotional penalties suffered by Negroes in this country—I say "apparent" because the freedom is not quite so complete as the book's admirers like to suppose. Still, for long stretches Invisible Man does escape the formulas of protest, local color, genre quaintness and jazz chatter. No white man could have written it, since no white man could know with such intimacy the life of the Negroes from the inside; yet Ellison writes with an ease and humor which are now and again simply miraculous….
Ellison has an abundance of that primary talent without which neither craft nor...
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