Invisible Man

Read it twice, fiercely written from the first page where the narrator looms out of his underworld existence to punch an angry white man in the face, then laughs at how absurd it must be to be beaten up by an invisible man. Also striking is the down south boxing and speech, and the by turns patronising and manipulative ways that the protagonist is used by white communists and artists as much as he is abused by outright racists, until the book reaches its climax in Harlem riots.

37. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
OPD: 1952
format: 596-page paperback (1995 edition)
acquired: February 2022 read: May 7 – Jun 12 time reading: 18:29, 1.9 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: Classic novel theme: Richard Wright sorta
locations: Manhattan, circa 1930s? or maybe post-war.
about the author: 1913-1994. American writer and critic from in Oklahoma City, mostly famous for this novel.

What a monster of a book, laying out long gangly arms every which way, rolling as it wants, until suddenly there is structure and its slowly locks into a reality, and then stays there a long time, but not entirely. It pushes a little surreal one way, a little the other, wobbly between literary states. Ellison uses American communism to work his ideas of show more racism, blindness, and the truth of conformity as an argument used for power grabs. But it's gloriously complex while staying completely within reach. Long, wandering, and very powerful. Not sure what I expected, but this was certainly richer and more rewarding than whatever I imagined.

A plot summary, it opens in the present, with famous opening lines:

"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."

We never learn the man's name, or names. But after setting his underground Manhattan situation, he reflects back on his history, attending a Jim Crowe era southern black college, and being expelled for mishandling a white trustee's visit. Arriving and stumbling through Manhattan and especially Harlem. He becomes the spokesperson for a lightly disguised equivalent of the communist groups active in New York in the 1930's. Communists were the first only non-all-black group of this era to openly recruit black members and support black issues and equality. Most of the book is about his role in this organization, how they use him and he uses it, how he learns and manages his community. But his success brings unexpected responses and lessons. It's here, where equality is preached, racism and blindness stand out so clear, and incontrovertible. In many ways, this world falls apart.

This is a demanding, but smart, creative and rewarding 5-star read.

2023
https://www.librarything.com/topic/351556#8169193 show less

I'm deeply saddened that once again this is a book I wasn't introduced to until adulthood. I missed out on so many wonderful works of literature simply because of my proximity to whiteness. And though I'm rectifying it now, I wonder what younger me would have gained from the thoughts and themes around race and identity in this work. Would she have been less ashamed of her blackness? Would she have embraced being biracial sooner? We'll never know.

Invisible Man's nameless southern protagonist forces the reader to run the gamut of emotions: by turns we are frightened, touched, shocked, amused, even pitying and hopeful. When we first meet him, he lives on the hem of society in an unused part of the basement of a building for whites. He steals shelter and electricity like a boogeyman. He is truly invisible. There comes a point in time when he tries to reach the light by going to college only to be expelled after being accused of offending a white man. Invisible again. Through various trials and tribulations this nameless young man finally makes it to New York where he is confronted with the reality of his race. His lack of identity allows him to be mistaken for someone else. As he show more becomes more and more invisible, the more and more I wanted him to rage against it. The problem is, when you are a young black man trying to escape the white man's thumb in the 1940s, rage is the last emotion you are allowed to express. Every endeavor leads him closer to destruction. Like a horror movie, I wanted to read Invisible Man with one eye closed against all the gross misunderstandings prejudice and racism can bring. show less

I'm really struggling with how to review this book exactly. Let's start with the easy part. Even if you don't try to understand the political commentary that underlies the story, the book stands alone as an interesting and compelling read. The focus is on one black man as he comes of age in New York City. He tries so hard to do things the right way, and yet over and over again, he finds that situations (job, school, etc.) are not working out as he anticipates, in part because he is naive.

In terms of the deeper meaning, there's a lot of meat. I actually used Spark Notes as I read just to see what others thought. It spoke to the black experience, but also to how political groups use people for their own ends to assert power and control. show more Ellison does an amazing job of helping the reader really empathize with the protagonist, and I thought that was one of the great strengths of the book. Here, I, a white female, really could feel the pain of these situations that the protagonist found himself in. Ellison never loses sight of the fact that he's telling a story. It would be easy to be derailed from that mission given all that he wants to communicate, but he never does. Impressive, educational, and honestly, a book I can see picking up a second time. show less

Okay! I've just finished this towering novel, listening throughout to Joe Morton's narration. It's easy to see why reading it in my old edition, from my college years and probably in 7 point type, might have bogged me down, because the jazz rhythms are so important and often carry the listener by their sheer momentum through what might seem repetitive on the page . Morton gives each character its own voice and cadence, which makes the dialog clear and the characters vivid and diverse.

The story is a classic Bildungsroman, detailing the growth of a naive character through episodes that both damage and enlighten him. It is also an existential novel of a man struggling to gain self-knowledge too often through the definitions of others, show more until he has no choice but to look deeply into himself. The episodes are brilliantly delivered, from the first abysmal racist entertainment to the last riot in Harlem. Some of them made me wriggle with discomfort or anger or impatience at this innocent man's blindness; that might speak to my own naivety as much as anything.

Some details that are relevant: it is set in the thirties, principally in Harlem; the times are infused with the aftermath of the depression; the Great Migration north; the growing ideology of socialism; the racism we still cannot escape. References that might be somewhat obscure to a current reader: Marcus Garvey and Booker T. Washington as two models of behavior promulgated from within the black community.

Some details that are delightful: trolley cars on 125th Street! Double-decker buses. Wide-shouldered suits. And a time when $300 was a fortune with which to pay back rent and board and still have money left over for a new suit of clothes. Hot sweet yams from a corner cart - but maybe they still sell those in Harlem.

I was afraid the book would not hold up after so many years; I was mesmerized. show less

Beginning with a prologue that reminds the reader of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Ralph Ellison creates one of the best first novels I have ever read. His writing in Invisible Man, while filled with literary references, is truly in the tradition of the great American novel as he pens the evolution of a modern underground man. His protagonist grows invisible to those who look beyond him as he experiences disappointment in the hypocrisy of white and black men alike. The result is a novel that rejects conventional social protest to proclaim the humanity of the individual by making him invisible.

In a similar manner to Dostoevsky's Underground Man, Ellison begins the story by telling us that the only thing he has accomplished in the show more world is to experience rejection from it, but at least he has opened his mind to its essence. The protagonist of Dostoyevsky's novel was addressing the naive idealism of Russian social reformers of the time, who believed that equality and justice would come about through labor and effort. The main character of Ellison is aware of this presumption as being Booker T. Washington's thinking. He quotes a Washington speech to the town's white elite in the opening chapter, however it is not credited to Washington. Instead of saying "social responsibility," which causes the storyteller to choke, he or she says "social equality," earning the ire of the audience.

The protagonist of the book describes his existence as a black man in modern-day (1930s or 1940s) America. His experiences have exposed every aspect of civilization and every social lie. The understanding is dark, yet at its core, it belongs to a lone, invisible human being. Therefore, the narrator waits in what he refers to as "hibernation" at a subterranean location. According to him, "a hibernation is a concealed preparation for a more overt action," and "not every sickness is unto death, neither is invisibility," thus he believes he may return to the world. But by the end of the story, we know that he will continue to live underground, at least psychologically. show less