From Publishers Weekly
Rampersad's new biography sweeps every cobweb out of every nook and cranny of the life of Ralph Ellison (1913–1994), author of one of the seminal works of 20th-century fiction,
Invisible Man. Rampersad, a professor of humanities at Stanford and biographer of Langston Hughes, was given unprecedented access to Ellison's extensive correspondence, and it shows: he seems to leave nothing out, including every cold Ellison ever came down with, though the details often add nothing to the developing portrait. The details will make this the definitive biography for now, but work remains to be done, because Rampersad fails to address the lasting question of Ellison's legacy: why he could never produce a second novel in his lifetime. (The biographer doesn't cover the posthumous publication of Ellison's unfinished
Juneteenth.) Ellison never truly embraced the Civil Rights movement, quietly supporting the fight from afar while maintaining that his writing would represent his contribution to the cause. Still, Rampersad does plot how Ellison drew on his experiences in Jim Crow America to produce his groundbreaking novel. He reveals Ellison to have been prickly, short-tempered, self-absorbed and chronically bad to women, but also charming enough to win over influential people. Rampersad provides a wealth of material about Ellison, but synthesizing it all will be up to readers to do for themselves. 24 pages of photos.
40,000 first printing. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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From Booklist
Time has reduced Ralph Ellison's image to that of a one-book wonder, a famous and esteemed black author estranged from black people. Rampersad offers a nuanced look at the complex and enigmatic author of the highly acclaimed
Invisible Man (1952). The breakthrough novel, a first-person allegorical narrative plumbing race and identity, was widely believed to be autobiographical. It was not, but it did have parallels to Ellison's life and was amazingly prescient about the racial violence that was to come in the 1960s, a period when Ellison distanced himself from the turmoil in urban black America. Ellison arrived in New York in 1936, and his love of literature and yearning for an intellectual's life led him to embrace communism and eventually to develop close friendships among struggling authors and later literary lions, including Langston Hughes, Saul Bellow, Robert Penn Warren, and John Cheever. Despite the passion he displayed in essays on music, literature, and race relations, Ellison could be quite cool in relationships with his family, his wife, rising black authors, and friends who offended him. With driving ambition, Ellison garnered for himself many accolades and awards. But this highly individualistic author could not get beyond the distrust he provoked in black people who were seeking iconic racial solidarity. Nor could Ellison overcome the anguished paralysis that kept him from producing another novel. With access to Ellison's papers, Rampersad evokes the personal and artistic struggles of an unyielding man as well as the literary and political times in which he lived and on which he left an enduring impression.
Vanessa BushCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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