Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#53 in my 2007 book challenge was Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. This was a long,uncomfortable read for me. It reminded me of my experience reading Confederacy of Dunces. I didn’t like it. I knew it was supposed to be funny but I didn’t find it so. Yet I also could see why it was important, well done, and in the case of IM, a classic.
An unnamed black everyman careers through a series of circumstances that are often excruciating. Slowly, he learns about society, race, and the pressures of history. It’s frustrating to read because of the main character’s naivete and frequent inaction. Also unpleasant are the many injustices done unto him. But his journey to the end and his transformation make this a kind of bildungsroman. Interestingly, my use of a German term isn’t as incongruous as it might be. Ellison was clearly influenced by the philosophy of Hegel, as well as many other dead, white, males. He took a great deal of criticism for this in the wake of the book’s publication and subsequent success–it won the National Book Award, among other plaudits. He notes in the 1981 introduction, though, that he was trying to have an intellectual black main character, something he found lacking in most other literature.
I noticed several writing themes throughout the book. Ellison used terms for light and black deliberately and with positive and negative connotations, respectively. He rarely, if ever, identified characters by their race, and left it to the reader to piece together whether they were white or black through other details. And his prose was influenced by the musical style of the blues. It often had a dreaming, wandering quality that nevertheless carried the narrative through with strength.
I did not enjoy reading this book, but race is always an uncomfortable subject. As an example, I’ve used “black” in this review rather than the more modern and PC “African American”. This book is well worth reading, and I’m glad I did.