Ralph Ellison Biography
African-American Novelist and Essayist, Famous for the Invisible Man
Apr 21, 2009
Ralph Ellison is best known for his novel, Invisible Man, claimed to be where his reputation lies as a writer. This book provides a study of racism and its effect on a person's identity. It became a classic of modern American literature.
Life of Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison was born on March 1, 1914, in Oklahoma City. He won a state scholarship and was educated at Tuskegee University.
Music was his first love, especially jazz and blues, and big influence in his life. As a music major, Ellison played the trumpet. He was a friend of the blues singer Jimmy Rushing and knew members of Count Basie's band.
From Love of Music to Career in Writing
At the age of 22, Ellison went to New York City, where he met Richard Wright who encouraged him to become a writer. He began writing reviews and short stories then embarked on what became his best-known work, Invisible Man. It was published when Ellison was 38, and it received the National Book Award for fiction.
The Invisible Man and Search for Identity
The book tells the story of a young, Southern black man's search for identity in a world in which he is virtually "invisible" to white people. It is narrated by an unnamed black man in 1952, from one of the rooms underground in Harlem. The novel was one of the first to describe the modern racial problems in the US from a standpoint of African-American.
James Joyce, author of the classic epic, Ulysses, was a major influence in his book writing. The Invisible Man has much in common with the mission of Joyce's character, Stephen Dedalus, both forging a national identity. Along with the search for identity is the influence of his love for jazz music which to him is a special American art form that the black people had given to the Americans.
The success of Invisible Man troubled Ellison. Also, to a great extent it overshadowed his other achievements, which included awards and lectureships as well as other writing.
Ellison's Other Writings
His essay collections Shadow and Act and Going to the Territory commented on different aspects of American culture. Insightful essays on jazz and the blues appear in Shadow and Act.
Apart from a collection of essays, Ralph Ellison published so few. For many years Ellison was said to have worked on a second novel, but parts of it were destroyed in a 1970s house fire. It still remained unfinished when he died on April 16, 1994, at the age of 80.
Books by Ralph Ellison
- Invisible Man, 1952
- Noble Savage I, 1960
- Shadow and Act, 1964
- Going to the Territory, 1986
Sources:
- Goring, Rosemary, Ed. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. New York: Larousse, 1994.
- McGovern, Una, Ed. Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers / Harrap Publishers, 2002.
- Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers. London: Carlton, 1997.
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