Invisible Man

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Lore & Background

Ellison started writing what would become Invisible Man in a barn in Waitsfield, Vermont (actually in the neighboring town of Fayston), in the summer of 1945 while on sick leave from the Merchant Marine. The book took five years to complete with one year off for what Ellison termed an 'ill-conceived short novel.' Invisible Man was published as a whole in 1952. Ellison had published a section of the book in 1947, the famous 'Battle Royal' scene, which had been shown to Cyril Connolly, the editor of Horizon magazine by Frank Taylor, one of Ellison's early supporters. In his speech accepting the 1953 National Book Award, Ellison said that he considered the novel's chief significance to be its 'experimental attitude.' Before Invisible Man, many (if not most) novels dealing with African Americans were written solely for social protest, notably, Native Son and Uncle Tom's Cabin. The narrator in Invisible Man says, 'I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either', signaling a break from the usual protest novel. Ellison resisted being pigeonholed by his peers, stating to Irving Howe that 'while one can do nothing about choosing one's relatives, one can, as an artist, choose one's 'ancestors'. Wright was, in this sense, a 'relative'; Hemingway an 'ancestor'.'

Ellison's 'ancestors' included, among others, T. S. Eliot. In an interview with Richard Kostelanetz, Ellison states that what he had learned from his The Waste Land was imagery and also improvisation techniques he had only before seen in jazz. Some other influences include William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. The first line of Invisible Man ('I am an invisible man') is a conscious echo of Notes from Underground ('I am a sick man'). Ellison acknowledged this borrowing in his 1981 introduction to his novel. Arnold Rampersad, Ellison's biographer, says that Herman Melville had a profound influence on Ellison's way of writing about race: the narrator 'resembles no one else in previous fiction so much as he resembles Ishmael of Moby-Dick.'

Reader's Guide

Invisible Man won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, making Ellison the first African-American writer to win the award. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Invisible Man 19th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its 100 Best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 list, calling it 'the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century.' Malcolm Bradbury and Richard Ruland recognize a black existentialist vision with a 'Kafka-like absurdity.' According to The New York Times, Barack Obama modeled his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father on Ellison's novel. Placing Invisible Man within the canon of either the Harlem Renaissance or the Black Arts Movement is difficult. It owes allegiance to both and neither. Ellison's resistance to being pigeonholed led to criticism from some black writers, such as John Oliver Killens, who once denounced Invisible Man by saying: 'The Negro people need Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man like we need a hole in the head or a stab in the back. ... It is a vicious distortion of Negro life.' The letters Ellison wrote to fellow novelist Richard Wright as he started working on the novel provide evidence for his disillusion with and defection from the Communist Party USA for perceived revisionism. Ellison resisted attempts to ferret out such allusions in the book itself, however, stating 'I did not want to describe an existing Socialist or Communist or Marxist political group, primarily because it would have allowed the reader to escape confronting certain political patterns.'

Did You Know?

• Ellison started writing Invisible Man in a barn in Waitsfield, Vermont (actually in the neighboring town of Fayston) in the summer of 1945 while on sick leave from the Merchant Marine.
• The first line of Invisible Man ('I am an invisible man') is a conscious echo of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground ('I am a sick man').
• Ellison learned imagery and improvisation techniques from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land that he had only before seen in jazz.
• In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Invisible Man 19th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
• According to The New York Times, Barack Obama modeled his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father on Ellison's novel.