It’s hard to watch a hero disintegrate on the page.
Close readers of this blog, all six of you, will know that Ralph Ellison’s "Invisible Man" is perhaps the most influential novel I have read — more than any other book, it made me want to write fiction.
Its brilliantly rendered imagery, the surrealistic dreamworld it creates, and sense of tragedy and comedy make it just about perfect. If I could write the white-man’s version of "Invisible Man," I will have done something amazing, since no white person could actually write such a tale.
I first read "Invisible Man" in high school. Today, I’m plowing through "Ralph Ellison: A Biography," which is as illuminating as it is depressing, and as complex as the title is straightforward. Not surprisingly, the story of a man who published just one novel in his life is a cautionary tale about success. As a fan of Ellison’s work, his life story and personality is difficult to swallow; as a writer, it’s chilling to the bone.
It’s disorienting to find out that Ellison was often calculating with his acquaintances, and would (sometimes) make friends on the basis of how they would help his career. He could be casually cruel with his family, and comes across as a little more than prickly. He did not help or encourage other writers, especially Black writers, who he disdained more than praised.
Not as if that makes Ellison different than most, but I’d always hoped that Ellison just wasn’t any other writer.
"Invisible Man," the tale of a nameless African-American narrator who navigates his way though fantastical adventures in college and New York in the 1930s and ’40s, is loosely based on Ellison himself, who, rising from a dirt-poor childhood in Oklahoma, became a world-famous writer on the basis on his one and only novel.
Ellison, like the narrator, attended a historically black university in the South (Tuskegee University), and migrated to New York before getting his degree. An autodidact of the highest order, Ellison virtually willed himself to become a novelist, in more ways than one: not only did he systematically educate himself in the Western canon (from the Greeks all the way through the present), but he clearly charted a course in which he would be a Writer, hitting each step along the way.
He joined a proto-Communist arts journal when such things were all the rage during the Depression, and got his start writing left-wing propaganda disguised as literary criticism. Slowly, over the years, he learned to think for himself — to think like an artist — and disowned his former sponsors on the left.
The book that changed everything
Upon his arrival in New York, he sought out friendships with Langston Hughes and Richard Wright, one famous writer and one about to become famous. Ellison would break with them, too. Whether it’s because Hughes and Wright, whose importance as writers dimmed in the late 40s, were no longer useful or that he grew apart from them, is not clear.
I’m about half way through "Ralph Ellison." He’s published "Invisible Man" to universal acclaim, won the National Book Award, and spent three disastrous years in Rome with his wife as part of a fellowship. He’s had an affair in Rome, all but blaming his poor wife Fanny for it, and has made no progress on his highly anticipated second novel.
It’s playing out like a horror movie in which the pretty girl is going to get killed. The audience knows it, but she doesn’t. Ellison is never going to finish that second book. You know it, but Ralph doesn’t.
He becomes trapped by his own grandeur, in a sense: so steeped in symbol and allegory is "Invisible Man" that Ellison simply cannot write something else as pedestrian, as, say, Hemmingway and his old man. The second book has to be even more complex than his first, lest the world think that he’s off his game. It’s perfection or nuthin’.
Again, this doesn’t make Ellison unique, but as a Black man trying to thrive in a white world, he probably felt as if his second book had to top his first. He didn’t want to be known as a "Black writer" — he wanted to be considered a Writer, period, a successor to Faulkner, Joyce, Dostoyevsky, and other universalist giants of the page. If he did not consider himself their equal, Ellison became so obsessive and self-absorbed in becoming so that he ruined his literary career.
Another cautionary tale
It’s a Behind the Music tale for writers, minus the booze, drugs, and sex (substitute fame, self-importance, and arrogance). Though he was in his late 30s when "Invisible Man" was published, he really was never the same afterward.
The worst part of this is the book has forced me to examine my own motives for why I write. If Ellison, a true giant, was looking for acceptance more than anything else, where does that put me? Does one’s motives shine a light on one’s art?
Starting later this week, I’m going to answer that question in an irregular 13-part series, "Why I Really Write."
Unfortunately for you, I’m not joking.
See you on the couch. The psychiatrist’s couch, I mean.
I think there is no limit to the complexity of why each of us really writes. I look forward to your self-revelation.
Interesting! This book has been sitting on my to-read table, giving off creepy vibes. Too close to home, maybe, since I’ve failed to come up with a second novel after *coff coff* eight years *coff coff*.
Looking forward to the Why BF Writes series.
Your statement about a 13-part series reveals in itself that why we write can be a complicated business. An examination of my own motives showed that it is not restricted to the delusion that I think I can, or that I’ve wanted to since I was a kid.
I’ll be reading.
Yeah, I heard about him too.
Still love the book, though.
michele: i’ve always been flummoxed by the “why i write” genre, in that people trying to assign one or two motives for why.
you may look forward to my self-revelation; me, not so much.
reellis: creepy vibes indeed. (i assume you mean the ellison biography that lies unread, not “invisible man.” for which i would proselytize you mercilessly to read).
so you’re looking forward to the series, too, eh? i guess i actually have to write it.
bakannal: yeah, i guess i promised a 13-part series. it seemed like a good number, you know, a baker’s dozen and all that.
you are correct: it is a complicated business.
kofi: i kinda knew ellison was churlish but didn’t want to really believe the rumors, such as it is. his personal failings don’t detract from his work, however.
most writers are dull and/or disappointing when compared with their actual writing. you pose a very interesting question and one that every writer should think about. i feel that the minute you expose your writing to others…it changes things.
I’ve been so interested in reading this book, I think now I will definitely find a copy. How sad that Ellison essentially sabotaged his writing career with so worrying that he’d have to do better than the first time around. That kind of pressure would make anyone crack.
“It’s disorienting to find out that Ellison was often calculating with his acquaintances, and would (sometimes) make friends on the basis of how they would help his career.”
What, he was a screenwriter?
“He did not help or encourage other writers, especially Black writers, who he disdained more than praised.”
Not to condone this behaviour, but I understand that this was true of a few minority authors during those times.
“The worst part of this is the book has forced me to examine my own motives for why I write. If Ellison, a true giant, was looking for acceptance more than anything else, where does that put me? Does one’s motives shine a light on one’s art?”
Please try and not let past authors negatively influence you. I read Hammett and then read his biography…then I proceeded to have writer’s block for a few months.
Try to take the best from you heroes and learn from their worse. You don’t need to shoot the apple or heroin, to be Burroughs.
meander: i agree that most writers are usually nowhere near as exciting or interesting as their on-page personas would indicate. and true, once you expose yourself to others, it can change both their view of you, and yours of them.
verbivore: he really set an impossible standard for himself. what he wrote for his second novel — what people have seen of it — are stunted and half-baked, filled with stilted symbolism and weak metaphor. it’s sad.
write procrastinator: funny, he was actually asked to write a screenplay, not to mention non-fiction books. but he always refused, citing the need to work on his fiction. which never went anywhere.
he may have been like other writers of his time, but i think the biggest problem was his insecurity, which led to a rather penurious view of his time and affection. i think that having to examine one’s motives is always a good thing; it may or not help one’s art, but it’s certainly beneficial to the soul. or so i hear.
great post
i have been compared to him and richard wright
my fiction that is
Hi Bookfraud,
Good post. I too love the book. Not the bio, I haven’t read that, but it sounds interesting.
“He did not help or encourage other writers, especially Black writers, who he disdained more than praised.”
When in the last time you heard of Jonathan Frazen helping out other writers? This is a a popular criticism of minority successes (not just writers) that somehow the author is now supposed to stop midway up the ladder and help other people out of the kindness of his/her heart. From my understanding, few successful writers help anyone. But it is always more interesting (and more gasp worthy) when it is a minority not helping out its own. Writers (most of them regardless of colour) are self-absorbed, paranoid and jealous narcissists. This ‘non-encouraging to other writers’ behaviour is just common everyday stuff, not too surprising if you leave ethnicity out of it.
How brutal that Ellison spent so many years with his doubts strangling him. Sounds awful to have to live with that every day. I wonder if it made him worry that he only had one good novel inside of him. God, that would kill me.
I look forward to your ‘why I write’ series.
Wonderful post - I am stunned that you can work full time, manage a family (especially with a baby), make time to read and write so beautifully about the process itself. I look forward to your new series.
It is my sense that writing is like every other business - there are those who mentor and those who view a colleague’s success as a threat. I am embarrassed to admit I haven’t read Invisible Man - I will add it to my list.