Invisible Man
First novel by Ralph Ellison, published in 1947.
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via Wikipedia: Invisible Man · see source
It was first published by the British magazine Horizon in 1947.[1]
Making and release
Ellison began writing what became Invisible Man in the summer of 1945 while on sick leave from the Merchant Marine, in a barn in Fayston, Vermont.[2] He wrote the first sentence, "I am an invisible man," sitting in that barn one morning.[3] In his 1953 National Book Award acceptance speech, Ellison said he considered the novel's chief significance to be its "experimental attitude"[4] Ellison acknowledged borrowing the first line from Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground in his 1981 introduction.[5]
Ellison spent five years writing the book, pausing for twelve months to work on what he described as an "ill-conceived short novel"; the complete work came out in 1952.[2] According to his biographer Arnold Rampersad, Ellison's approach to racial themes was deeply shaped by Herman Melville.[6] Ellison counted T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway among his chosen "ancestors."[7]
What the cited sources add
A 2020 Vermont Public article notes that the barn where Ellison started writing Invisible Man is now gone.[3] The same review noted that Invisible Man is "a book shorn of the racial and political clichés that have encumbered the 'Negro novel'"[8] Ellison told the Paris Review in 1955 that he studied Hemingway to grasp sentence construction and story organization.[9]
References
- Wikipedia, "Invisible Man" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/bitstreams/602885c0-7fbc-4377-bcf1-85e33f8da874/download#:~:text=In%20October%201947%2C%20Ralph%20Ellison%27s%20first%20published (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Invisible Man" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Anna Van Dine, "How Invisible Man Was Born in a Vermont Barn", Vermont Public, June 30, 2020; Ellison, Ralph Waldo 1982. Invisible Man. New York: Random House.; "Ralph Ellison, The Art of Fiction", Spring 1955, p. 113 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Anna Van Dine, "How Invisible Man Was Born in a Vermont Barn", Vermont Public, June 30, 2020. facts only, no text reused. vermontpublic.org
- Wikipedia, "Invisible Man" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Herbert William Rice, "Ralph Ellison and the Politics of the Novel", Lexington Books, 2003, p. 107 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Invisible Man" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bloshteyn, "Rage and Revolt: Dostoevsky and Three African-American Writers", Comparative Literature Studies, 2001, p. 277–309; Bloshteyn, 295. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Invisible Man" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Rampersad, Arnold (2007). Ralph Ellison: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-40827-4. (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Invisible Man" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ellison, "An Interview with Ralph Ellison", The Iowa Review, 1 October 1989, p. 1–10 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Mayberry, "George Mayberry's 1952 Review of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man", September 26, 2013. facts only, no text reused. newrepublic.com
- "Ralph Ellison, The Art of Fiction", Spring 1955, p. 113. facts only, no text reused. theparisreview.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Invisible Man (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Invisible Man (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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