Volume 54, Number 10 · June 14, 2007
The Visible Man
By Darryl Pinckney
Ralph Ellison: A Biography
by Arnold Rampersad
Knopf, 657 pp., $35.00
Invisible Man has never been out of print. Acclaimed when it appeared in 1952, the novel's reputation has only risen since. For a long time black audiences could admire this indisputably great work, but were unable to embrace Ralph Ellison, because he seemed so determined to be unavailable to them. In 1953, Ellison received the National Book Award, which gave him one of the worst cases of Negro Firsterism in postwar US history. His time coincided with that of fellow stars of integration, Jackie Robinson and Ralph Bunche and Thurgood Marshall and the astonishing Leontyne Price. Yet Ellison was splendid as a brilliant, boldly pro-American Negro writer who declined to believe that another black person could write or had written a novel as deserving as his of a place in the front rank of modern American literature. He became something of a grand old man early on, while still in his fifties, so hoisted up was he by his literary achievement. He was beautifully dressed, elegant in manner, but a man's man; someone welcomed in the highest academic circles and sought out by presidents. However, his desire to stand apart from, if not above, other black writers meant that he had to pretend he wasn't worried some African-American was going to come along and top his performance before he had had the chance to outdo himself.
Review, 4800 words
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