• INVISIBLE MAN
• by Ralph Ellison
• [rated by pbs readers as #72]
• 581 pages

Well. I am initially slapping myself on the back by choosing this book after the last one, making my wildest blog fantasies come true by the sheer width of the writing involved. From The Hunger Games, where I never went back for a word or even felt I had to, due to its sheer velocity, to a book where I instantly went back over and over, a sentence or a paragraph, to make sure I got every word.

But that feeling was gotten over quickly as I got out of Ellison’s foreward (glad I had that, though) and into the book.

A man living off the grid by living in a basement that no one knows about, lighting the ceiling and walls with bright light that he bootlegs, reflects on what got him here and to the truth that, as a black man, he was essentially invisible. So far, in the first third, Ellison gives us amazing and horrifying stories and asks us to experience them with him, understanding the transition to having no hope.

Yet, for that, it is an amazing read so far, with amazing layering; telling a simple story with ramifications that carry out into infinity.

In the “black man not seeming human to those out of reality” genre, I prefer James Baldwin, due to his ability to employ such rich language at every turn. But this is already delivering the devastating blow that it is aiming for. And, like so many of these great reads, I have no idea where it is headed. Could that be the hallmark of many a classic? I don’t know, but this is amazing writing.

One last point before I leave off. I was supposed to read this in high school. I did. I remember not really getting it. But the thing is – I barely think I’m old enough to read it now! This book is way too mature, in about five senses of the word to be taught in high school. A most ambitious choice and one I doubt is made too much these days.

I’m completely in favor of introducing complex ideas, though, and I’m so glad the young adult market has blown up in success and offers so many fine choices. Because this isn’t a young adult book in any way, shape or form.

Now, college? Have at it!

ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH.

In the literary playground, there is a room, I fancy, that very few people play in. Admittance to it is sorta like someone at an art gallery asking someone in a uniform why the three splashes of blue on a huge canvas add up to art. The person asked just sighs, as if to say you either get it or you don’t.

The Invisible Man belongs in that room; the room that I don’t have admittance to. Why? Because I’m sure that the way he writes is genius to the ones that get it. But to me on the outside looking in, without that awareness of the high art people, it just seems wildly uneven.

So, in this book, we are observing why a black man who started off wanting to succeed in white people’s world with the most dignity and striving possible eventually gets that it is all bullshit and turns away from it, seeing it for the fallacy that it is.

I get that! Good storyline! But from there, he veers wildly through the story, taking time for a speech, for instance, that goes for hours and he has us read it for hours! Every single world. Does it pertain to the story? Well, yeah. But not every word of it!

Here is where the people in that room shake their heads sadly at people like me. What can you do? they think. She just doesn’t get it.

At one point, he goes into this Toni Morrison-like soliloquy of ten pages or so of swirling images, not linked together, going nowhere. And I’m slogging through it, going, wait a minute, what?

Oh now see? the people say, suppressing a smile. She doesn’t get Morrison either. That explains a lot.

I will continue, realizing that the literary landscape of this type of writing is going to be hidden to me.

Yet I can’t sign off without reiterating my feeling that this isn’t for high schoolers. I have earned the right to say it just doesn’t make sense to me, after reading literally thousands of books in my life. But if even one high schooler would read this and say, I guess reading just isn’t for me, that would be an unforgivable crime.

DONE.

And so, over a month since the last entry, I am done.

Let me be clear. Nothing that is hard for me about this book is the slightest encumbrance to it being a masterpiece. It is that.

Ellison’s ability to create the most pungent and poignant images and scenes to make his point are unparalleled. Upon an amazing dark and pungent scene, he adds layers and layers and layers of images in every line. It is the reader’s challenge to stop and take them in. Though amazingly rendered, the urge to drop the gauntlet and skim is constant and almost impossible to ignore.

Having said that, this was one of my hardest reads, by far. The last hundred pages or so, I asked myself why. You gotta think of something when you are paused between all the images….

And I think that, maybe, it gets real simple. I’m just not this kind of reader. I don’t know if this it true, but in my imagination, there might be two purest camps involved in writing fiction. One is description and the other is pacing.

Of course, no one has both feet in either, but I’m pretty darned sold on pacing. I read about 10 extra Jack Reacher books more than were any good because the pacing made me feel so good. When Hemingway describes the sky in war time, after bombs have just gone off, as “yellow” that is pretty much all I need! The perfect amount of description! I yearn for simplicity and pace.

None of which takes a mite out of this opus. It is brilliant, it hatched all the Toni Morrisons that will come after it and it deserves to be read by the minds and hearts that find a home and a light in it.

I hope that Invisible Man continues to find its audience for years and decades to come. To question the plight of people of color in this weird nation we live in, it is all in there.

And now, I am deeply hoping for a book with some plain talking in it. Adios.

PS One additional kudo. Love that it’s called Invisible Man. I sort of hate titles that start with The.