Invisible Man (original 1947; edition 1952)

This was one of the books we read in the only English class I took in college, Literature of Existentialism. I'm not sure I really understood existentialism then or now, but this is certainly a book worthy of inclusion on this or any other list. ( )

Well, this is a very complicated book. Sometimes infuriating; at its best exhilarating. Spoilers will follow.

It gets off to a terrific start with a sequence originally published in 1947 as a standalone story called "Battle Royale," which lets you know in no uncertain terms that you're in for some symbolism. That first segment contains the entire story that's to come.

But then it runs almost catastrophically off the rails with a lengthy description of our narrator chauffeuring his school's white benefactor, Mr. Norton, from a bizarre encounter with a man who raped and impregnated his daughter while sleeping (which, as far as descriptions of these things go, I'm sad to say, ZODIAC MOTHERFUCKER did better, to a brawl in a brothel. I don't really understand why this part happens. It serves a point, but it takes too long to do it. And it's followed by one of the things I dread most in any novel: a friggin' church scene. Rule #57 of novels: if the protagonist enters a church and a preacher steps to the pulpit, you're about to be bored. It doesn't matter whether the message is religious or anti-; either way, there's gonna be a message, and it's gonna be lengthy. You're about to be told, not shown.

(I'd like to say that the Jonah speech in [b:Moby-Dick|153747|Moby-Dick|Herman Melville|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327940656s/153747.jpg|2409320] is an exception, but it's not, really; it's still telling instead of showing. It's just unusually entertaining telling.)

I finally clicked in around a quarter of the way in, with a blistering speech from our (thrice-named but never identified) protagonist's headmaster: "You're nobody, son. You don't even exist...I'll have every Negro in the country swinging from tree limbs before morning if it means staying where I am." This is a novel that always knows where it's headed, even though it might take a scenic route to get there that you kinda wish it hadn't.

Oh, but then there's the whole paint factory bit. Kaion warned me about this, and it's a perfect example of the worst tendencies of Ralph Ellison: It surely means something, it's certainly symbolic, but I don't know what the fuck it's about. I have a theory? The blackness is the root, the foundation, but it disappears in the end? Down in the basement, there's a black guy, alone and unhelped and unloved, without whom the whole glossy white product can't exist...but man, do we really need this? Doesn't the latter half of the book get this message done perfectly well? Couldn't we have skipped the paint cans?

Ralph Ellison was severely disenchanted with the Marxist movement - as eventually was his mentor, Richard Wright, who was strongly pro-Marxist in 1940 when the mighty [b:Native Son|15622|Native Son|Richard Wright|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348705494s/15622.jpg|3159084] was published. And as Invisible Man finally, for-good-now gets into the story at around halfway through with this line: "I accuse you of relishing hog bowels!" - we will fins a blistering attack on the rotting Marxist movement. From here on out it's riveting and stunning. The protagonist's first, impromptu speech to an angry mob, urging them to turn the other cheek while inciting them to do the opposite, surrounded by the relics of slavery - relics that will collect like silt throughout the book; Ellison's fierce, uncompromising update on the situation that cause Bigger Thomas so much trouble - "Why did they insist on confusing the class struggle with the ass struggle?" in one of the best lines Chuck D didn't come up with - and then the crazy, apocalyptic Harlem riot that presage everything from Do The Right Thing* to (bear with me for a moment) [b:Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.|59960|Batman The Dark Knight Returns|Frank Miller|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327892039s/59960.jpg|1104159] The book ends with a bang, and it's been worth the confusion. Hey, my favorite book ever also didn't get started til halfway through.

This is a long book, and there's a lot going on. I don't think it's as good as [b:Native Son.|15622|Native Son|Richard Wright|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348705494s/15622.jpg|3159084] (Must we compare Black books to each other? No, but these books are cousins. In a quieter way, Invisible Man owes a lot to [b:Notes from Underground|17876|Notes from Underground|Fyodor Dostoevsky|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327865826s/17876.jpg|19376] too, and Dostoevsky was only part Black.) Our unnamed protagonist lacks the sheer power of Bigger Thomas; the novel isn't as successful. But it's very, very good. Five stars for what it achieves, which is much larger than what it doesn't.

* Also check out Spike Lee's underappreciated joint Bamboozled for more shit Spike clearly got out of Ellison's briefcase. ( )

A fearsome nightmare, a hallucination of a book. The Battle Royale sequence in the beginning has the terrifying grip of a fever dream, of sleep paralysis.

But Invisible Man, although steeped in allusions from science fiction, existentialism, Dostoevsky, and the Bildungsroman, is also very real, in its conveyance of an experience again that many of us simply cannot otherwise ever know. ( )

The year is 1952. An aspiring author, encouraged by some of the most reputable artists of his day, comes from the Harlem Renaissance with a debut novel that leaves readers speechless. The story begins with one of the most vivid introductions and jumps into a first chapter that is enthralling. Critics heap praises on the work and compare it to the works of Doestoevsky. Within a year the novel has won the National Book Award. It is perhaps the most eye-opening account of the black experience in America ever written in novel form. It opens the door to a new era of respect for the black novelist.

Flash forward over fifty years and there are many conclusions one could make about what happened between 1952 and today for this novel, Invisible Man. Of course its author, Ralph Ellison, went on to write many more successful works, each becoming stronger until he was regarded on an equal literary stance with other greats such as Hemingway, Faulkner, and Twain. Someone in Hollywood has attempted to make at least one decent film adaptation of the novel. And of course it is heralded by the likes of Oprah who praise it for its insight and its five decades of influence for black youth.

None of this happened, though. It is as if Ellison’s Invisible Man was invisible itself.

That’s not to say that there is not still great respect for the book—it appears on nearly every list of greatest books of the 20th century. Personally, I expect more, though. Perhaps this is some fault of Ellison’s. He did, after all, spend nearly forty years writing a second book that he couldn’t finish. Had he completed three or four equally compelling works, would he be celebrated today as a great? Or perhaps the overarching themes of Invisible Man—multi-dimensional race relations and the pitfalls of ideology—are too much, even today, for some.

Whatever the case, I went into this book with some apprehension. I had read the first chapter a couple years back and had put it down to let it all marinate in my mind. I knew the rest of the novel couldn’t live up to that beginning, but I was curious. Finally, I relented and proceeded to finish Ellison’s masterpiece. Naturally the intensity unleashed at the beginning dies down–it would be cloying if it didn’t. The same wonderful imagery and evocative story-telling continues throughout, however, and Invisible Man lives up the title “classic.”

The only disappointment I felt upon completing this book was the knowledge that there was never another. A debut novel this grand deserves another. ( )