1B: Ralph Ellison (1914-1994), the Invisible Man, and Jeff Wall

Ralph Ellison (March 1,1914--April 16,1994)

A PBS American Masters profile of Ralph Ellison offers a good  overview of his life.  You can follow it with brief biographies at bio.com and the Library of Congress, and an interview that was conducted with Ellison and published in the Paris Review in 1955. NPR commemorated his birth with a broadcast on May 30, 2014. (Different sources list his birth year as 1913, 1914, and 1915.) Here's part of what Ellison had to say in the Paris Review interview about the "Battle Royal" section that we read from Invisible Man:

I don’t know whether I’m getting this over or not. Let’s put it this way: Take the “Battle Royal” passage in my novel, where the boys are blindfolded and forced to fight each other for the amusement of the white observers. This is a vital part of behavior pattern in the South, which both Negroes and whites thoughtlessly accept. It is a ritual in preservation of caste lines, a keeping of taboo to appease the gods and ward off bad luck. It is also the initiation ritual to which all greenhorns are subjected. This passage states what Negroes will see I did not have to invent; the patterns were already there in society so that all I had to do was present them in a broader context of meaning. In any society there are many rituals of situation which, for the most part, go unquestioned. They can be simple or elaborate, but they are the connective tissue between the work of art and the audience.

There are two websites that provide information about the history of the Battle Royal: Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferrus State University, and SB Nation Caged Seats. 

Invisible Man, the novel from which "Battle Royal" is taken, has found itself on the banned book list.  The Los Angeles Times reported the news, Sept. 19, 2013, in "Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man Banned in North Carolina" It appears that, based on a Los Angeles Times article, Sept. 24, 2013,  the ban may be rescinded.  After you read "Battle Royal" (or Invisible Man) can you think of a reason why someone would want it banned?

Invisible Man was published in 1952, a novel that Ellison began writing in 1945.  Thought by many to be among the 20 greatest novels of the 20th century, it would be Ellison's only novel published in his lifetime. However, he would go one to write noteworthy short stories and essays with music being a frequent topic. Ellison began his life as a student at Tuskegee Institute studying music in 1933.

Page 1 of the Prologue from Invisible Man.

A 28 minute video interview with Ellison, produced by New York public television.
To see the video with Closed Caption click on this, or click on the YouTube icon for the above video.

Farah Griffin, above, discusses Ralph Ellison. Griffin, an author,

 is the William B. Ransford Professor of English

 and Comparative Literature and African American Studies

 at Columbia University. This video can also be found here. 

In fall 2010, Joey Naranjo, an English 1B student, told me how much he liked Jeff Wall, a great contemporary photographer. I think highly of Wall, too, and told Joey of this one image of Wall's that was inspired by Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.  Now that we are reading "Battle Royal," a selection from Invisible Man, I wanted to show you some of Wall's work and one photograph, in particular.

This is the room, as envisioned by Jeff Wall, that the Invisible Man made for himself underground.  Wall's photographs are often staged: he designs sets and poses individuals, in scenes that pay homage to other works of art and literature, as he does here.  His works are then mounted in lightboxes, so large that you could step into it and become a part of the moment. Click on After "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, the Preface, 1999-2000 to get a larger reproduction and its dimensions.  Here's a video of Jeff Wall talking about his 

"After Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, The Prologue": 

Photographer Jeff Wall on "After 'Invisible Man'
 by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue" (1999-2000)

Photographs like painting | Video of the day by DW_English

Though the following words are not included in our anthology, they are pertinent to understanding Ellison's protagonist and Wall's photograph.  For your reading pleasure, from Ellison's Invisible Man, the protagonist describes the place where he makes his home:

My hole is warm and full of light.  Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway.  Or the Empire State Building on a photographer's dream night.  But that is taking advantage of you.  Those two spots are among the darkest of our whole civilization--pardon me, our whole culture (an important distinction, I've heard)--which might sound like a hoax, or a contradiction, but that (by contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang. (Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang.  Keep a steel helmet ready.) I know; I have been boomeranged across my head so much that I now can see the darkness of lightness.  And I love light.  Perhaps you'll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light.  But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible.  Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form. (6-7) 

"Invisible Man: A Memorial to Ralph Ellison" by Elizabeth Catlett. Situated in Harlem in 2003 at Riverside Park at 150th Street, across from Ellison's former home of 50 years. Follow this link to see a short film about "Invisible Man: A Memorial to Ralph Memorial" and biographical notes about the author.

Something to consider: How well does each work of art, the Jeff Wall photograph and Elizabeth Catlett's sculpture, above, capture the character of the Invisible Man, as presented in the selection "Battle Royal" from Ellison's novel, Invisible Man? You can post your response by clicking on  "comments."  I look forward to reading what you have to say.

Ralph Ellison U.S. Stamp, above.

First day of issue, February 18, 2014, Kansas City.

Ellison is remembered by scholars and writers at a USPS site.
An excerpt of one remembrance appears below.

"Ralph Ellison loved letters. His rich correspondence began in 1933 after he rode the rails of Depression freights from Oklahoma City to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. There, he wrote letters to his mother, always in his own hand. In New York City, where he moved in 1936, she remained his favored correspondent. By then he composed on the typewriter, often scrawling a P.S. in the margins or on the back of the envelope.

"In his last years, though an early, passionate aficionado of the personal computer, he held off switching to email. He preferred to print out his letters, perhaps add a note or two in his bold script, pick out appropriate stamps from the stash on his desk, and walk the letters to the mailbox. An American man of letters, he loved the letter as a form of communication, and the U.S. Mail® as a network of conveyance between writer and reader."

---John F. Callahan, Morgan S. Odell Professor of Humanities at Lewis & Clark College and the editor of Ellison’s posthumously published volumes of work.  More of Callahan's remembrances of Ellison and that of other writers and scholars can be found here.