Just Finished Reading: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (FP: 1952)

It was a stupid mistake, a stupid, thoughtless mistake. But it was done now and there was no going back especially with the letters, the letters that he had delivered himself. How honest of him, how trusting, how stupid. But that was it. There was nothing he could do except work hard, get his bearings and move on. Maybe something would turn up. Eventually, after the shock, after the disorientation, after the feeling of loss something did. On seeing an elderly family being evicted he could simply observe no longer – so he spoke and, much to his surprise, people listened and then, to his even greater surprise, acted. Watching with bemusement as the riot he had apparently initiated began to unfold he had to be told, forced, to flee before the police sirens arrived. Once safe, away from the action, he could relax and take stock but others who had listened to his unscripted outburst had other ideas. Approached in the street they had a proposition for him – join the Brotherhood and they would take care of his financial needs. Listen to them, follow their directives, read their literature, talk when they told him too, talk to the people them told him to, never deviate from the plan and all would go well. At first he couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe his luck and despite everything just couldn’t stay on message. He tried hard, very hard, to make sense of what they told him, what his priorities were, that he should take the long view, that individual lives didn’t matter where history was concerned and they were, above all else, representatives of historical forces. There was no place for individual effort, individual insight, individual thought. The Brotherhood knew best no matter how things looked, no matter who left the organisation and no matter who died. The only crime, the worst crime of all, was to question the will and the resolve of the Brotherhood and slowly, so slowly he began to do exactly that – to question.

Not only is this an American classic but also a recognised classic of Black American writing. You can certainly see why – especially considering the era in which it was published. It did take me a while to get into it. In my earlier years I would have abandoned it after 50-60 pages but, being more mature these days, I persevered and was glad I did. Still this is not an easy read, or at least I did not find it easy. The style, as far as I could tell, varied throughout the book moving from almost ‘stream of consciousness’ to magical realism, to unreliable narrator, to dream state to harsh realism. Sometimes I had to put my faculties into neutral and just let it glide over me. But there were definite moments when I found it very interesting indeed. Although I don’t recall what age it was supposed to take place in I had the definite feeling that it was the 1930s/early 1940’s – although to be honest it had an almost timeless quality about it (those with more knowledge of American culture than me will probably pick up on the references especially to clothes and hairstyles that would help pin the year down) – so I was rather surprised at the argument between the unnamed narrator and an advocate of Black Nationalism on the streets of New York. After reading Malcolm X fairly recently I found that I could appreciate both sides as they shouted at and threatened each other. Although never explicitly mentioned I couldn’t help thinking that the Brotherhood were Marxists of the old school (pre-World War 2 Stalinists by the sounds of their rhetoric) which probably explains why the narrator had to tie himself in knots keeping up with the ideological shifts that swept through the organisation and the criminal disregard for both individual dignity or value. However, despite its classic status (from multiple directions) this still displayed many of the faults of a first novel – where the author essentially tries too hard to pack every good idea he has into the narrative in fear that he’d never get another shot at being published. Invisible Man is a rambling and sometimes incoherent narrative bloated to almost 600 pages in my Penguin edition. Cutting out 100 or maybe even 200 pages with some judicious editing would’ve created, in my opinion at least, a much more focused and, potentially at least, hard hitting novel. Still it’s worth the time, and the undoubted effort, to read it. More than reasonable though somewhat less than great.