Take a photo of a barcode or cover
ollie_reading 's review for:
Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
**
a rollicking picaresque; surreal, ambitious, penetrating, and very funny. the entire first half is glorious, illuminating socio-political realities not through blunt polemic but through metaphor; episode after episode of absurd, grotesque, hilarious, terrifying, batshit cartoonish events that reveal so much more than dry literalness ever can. in this way it reminds me so much of Donald Glover's 'Atlanta', and feels like a forefather to it. there are obvious echoes of Dickens, and Twain, but here there's a certain chaos, an anarchic quality that appeals to me a great deal more than the overly formalist style of Dickens.
my only gripe is that once our protagonist joins the brotherhood, things start to get a great deal less metaphorical and a lot more literal. the bulk of the novel from this point onwards is actually pretty straightforward, and entire chapters go by without anything overly surreal; it almost feels like a different novel. this is understandable; Ellison himself had lived this very experience of being part of a communist group, believing that he was contributing to a cause that valued him and would change society for the better, only to discover that they saw racism as a minor ill and saw their black comrades merely as useful pawns. It's pretty clear that entire chunks of the last half of this novel are inspired by direct experiences and wounds that still smart. I'm all for the utter cluelessness of stalin-worshipping tankies being exposed and lampooned, and between them Richard Wright & Ralph Ellison essentially provide the black american version of Orwell's takedown of soviet-inspired ideology, but I can't help being disappointed that a novel of such dizzying absurdity should spend so long bogged down in the relatively sober & mundane. Ellison's understandable desire to share his experience of american communism and provide a realistic expose just doesn't flow with the improvisational chaotic jazz of all that preceded it.
still, at it's worst it's very well written and witty and interesting, and at it's best it's extraordinary.
a rollicking picaresque; surreal, ambitious, penetrating, and very funny. the entire first half is glorious, illuminating socio-political realities not through blunt polemic but through metaphor; episode after episode of absurd, grotesque, hilarious, terrifying, batshit cartoonish events that reveal so much more than dry literalness ever can. in this way it reminds me so much of Donald Glover's 'Atlanta', and feels like a forefather to it. there are obvious echoes of Dickens, and Twain, but here there's a certain chaos, an anarchic quality that appeals to me a great deal more than the overly formalist style of Dickens.
my only gripe is that once our protagonist joins the brotherhood, things start to get a great deal less metaphorical and a lot more literal. the bulk of the novel from this point onwards is actually pretty straightforward, and entire chapters go by without anything overly surreal; it almost feels like a different novel. this is understandable; Ellison himself had lived this very experience of being part of a communist group, believing that he was contributing to a cause that valued him and would change society for the better, only to discover that they saw racism as a minor ill and saw their black comrades merely as useful pawns. It's pretty clear that entire chunks of the last half of this novel are inspired by direct experiences and wounds that still smart. I'm all for the utter cluelessness of stalin-worshipping tankies being exposed and lampooned, and between them Richard Wright & Ralph Ellison essentially provide the black american version of Orwell's takedown of soviet-inspired ideology, but I can't help being disappointed that a novel of such dizzying absurdity should spend so long bogged down in the relatively sober & mundane. Ellison's understandable desire to share his experience of american communism and provide a realistic expose just doesn't flow with the improvisational chaotic jazz of all that preceded it.
still, at it's worst it's very well written and witty and interesting, and at it's best it's extraordinary.