African-American literature

(Marvins-Underground-K-12) #1

in his literature courses and discovered the work
of T. S. Eliot. The modernist style and content of
Eliot’s poetry would later influence Ellison’s Invis-
ible Man. In 1936, at the end of his junior year, he
left Tuskegee for New York City. He never returned
to complete his degree.
Instead, Ellison decided to stay in Harlem and
study sculpture with the famed HARLEM RENAIS-
SANCE artist, Augusta Savage. While at Tuskegee,
Ellison had met the “New Negro” critic ALAIN
LOCKE. Ellison ran into Locke at a YMCA in New
York City the following year. Locke introduced
the young Ellison to one of Harlem’s most influ-
ential figures, LANGSTON HUGHES. Hughes, in turn,
introduced Ellison to Duke Ellington (whom El-
lison had briefly met at Tuskegee) and to RICHARD
WRIGHT. Both encounters influenced the rest of
Ellison’s life. Ellington offered Ellison a chance
to play with his band but later had to cancel. This
missed opportunity to play the trumpet in a New
York City big band led Ellison to reconsider his
goals, and the developing friendship with Wright
gave Ellison access to the Harlem literati. It also
brought him to the Harlem headquarters of the
American Communist Party.
While never a member of the party, Ellison did
write pamphlets for the organization and pub-
lished pieces in the New Masses. He also found
work writing for the Federal Writers Project. As
part of the work for the project, Ellison was re-
quired to collect African-American folklore and
slave narratives. At this time many of the ideas and
images that would later be found in Invisible Man
took form. Over the next couple of years, several
of Ellison’s short stories were published. By 1938
Ellison was married (to Rose Poindexter) and was
well on his way to becoming a writer. As the man-
aging editor of Negro Quarterly in 1942, Ellison
was also able to help nourish the careers of other
young writers.
The beginning of World War II forced Elli-
son to put his writing career on hold. He enlisted
with the merchant marine, but, nevertheless, he
was able to publish several of his most renowned
short stories, including “King of the Bingo Game”
and “Flying Home.” In “King of the Bingo Game”
an unnamed protagonist (a precursor to the nar-


rator of Invisible Man) fights to aid his ailing
wife by playing for money on a wheel of fortune.
Having coming north looking for work, the man
represents the thousands who were led by their
dreams to a false “promised land.” Unable to beat
the odds, which clearly have been stacked against
him, the man loses his mind. Historical and cul-
tural forces are in control of his identity and his
future. Similar themes can be found in “Flying
Home.” Though a young Tuskegee pilot believes
he has finally found a way to break free from the
forces that confine him to the ground below, he is
sent crashing back earthward after his plane hits a
bird—a “jim” crow.
By the end of the war, Ellison had gained solid
ground as a writer, but his personal life suffered
dramatically. In 1945 he divorced Rose. The pre-
vious year Langston Hughes had introduced Elli-
son to Fanny Buford, a writer and JAMES WELDON
JOHNSON’s former secretary. The two married in
1946, and Fanny worked as Ellison’s unofficial
editor for the remainder of his life. After the war,
Ellison wrote and supported himself and his wife
through counseling work in a psychiatric clinic
and as a stereo repairman. Ellison also began work
on the novel that would become Invisible Man.
In 1952 Random House published Invisible
Man. The novel received accolades from nearly
every important literary voice in the country. Some
criticized it, however, for its negative portrayal of
the American Communist Party. The novel has
since gone on to win dozens of awards and a sub-
stantial body of criticism. Besides the National
Book Award, Ellison received the Rockefeller Foun-
dation Award in 1954 and the Chevalier de l’Ordre
des Artes et Lettres and the Medal of Freedom in


  1. By the end of the century, Invisible Man was
    included on many critics’ lists as one of the most
    significant works of American literature.
    Ellison began work on his second novel almost
    immediately after the publication of Invisible
    Man. Some sections of the novel were published as
    short stories, but a fire destroyed the manuscript
    in 1967. Ellison tried to reconstruct the novel for
    the rest of his life. After his death in 1994, the ex-
    ecutor of his literary estate, John Callahan, and
    Fanny worked on bringing the pieces of the work


168 Ellison, Ralph

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