The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison

by Ellison, Ralph Callahan, John F.

• ISBN13: 9780812968262
• ISBN10: 0812968263
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-09-09
• Publisher: Modern Library

Summary

Compiled, edited, and newly revised by Ralph Ellison's literary executor, John F. Callahan, this Modern Library Paperback Classic includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collectionsShadow and Act(1964), hailed by Robert Penn Warren as "a body of cogent and subtle commentary on the questions that focus on race," andGoing to the Territory(1986), an exploration of literature and folklore, jazz and culture, and the nature and quality of lives that black Americans lead. "Ralph Ellison," wrote Stanley Crouch, "reached across race, religion, class and sex to make us all Americans."

Author Biography

<b>John F. Callahan</b> is Morgan S. Odell Professor of Humanities at Lewis and Clark College. He edited Ralph Ellison’s <i>Juneteenth</i> and co-edited, with Albert Murray, the Modern Library edition of <i>Trading Twelves</i>.<br><br><b>Saul Bellow</b>, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, has written thirteen novels and numerous novellas, stories, and essays.

Table of Contents

Biographical Note	v
Acknowledgments	vii
Preface by Saul Bellow	ix
Introduction by John F. Callahan	xvii
February	1	(4)
A Congress Jim Crow Didn't Attend	5	(14)
Flamenco	19	(8)
"Tell It Like It Is, Baby"	27	(20)
SHADOW AND ACT	47	(294)
Introduction	49	(14)
I. THE SEER AND THE SEEN
That Same Pain, That Same Pleasure: An Interview	63	(18)
Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity	81	(19)
Change and Joke and Slip the Yoke	100	(13)
Stephen Crane and the Mainstream of American Fiction	113	(15)
Richard Wright's Blues	128	(17)
Beating That Boy	145	(6)
Brave Words for a Startling Occasion	151	(4)
The World and the Jug	155	(34)
Hidden Name and Complex Fate	189	(21)
The Art of Fiction: An Interview	210	(17)
II. SOUND AND THE MAINSTREAM
Living with Music	227	(10)
The Golden Age, Time Past	237	(13)
As the Spirit Moves Mahalia	250	(6)
On Bird, Bird-Watching and Jazz	256	(10)
The Charlie Christian Story	266	(7)
Remembering Jimmy	273	(5)
Blues People	278	(13)
III. THE SHADOW AND THE ACT
Some Questions and Some Answers	291	(11)
The Shadow and the Act	302	(8)
The Way It Is	310	(10)
Harlem Is Nowhere	320	(8)
An American Dilemma. A Review	328	(13)
Working Notes for Invisible Man	341	(10)
A Special Message to Subscribers	351	(6)
Indivisible Man	357	(44)
James Armistead Lafayette	401	(8)
Commencement Address at the College of William and Mary	409	(10)
Address to the Harvard College Alumni, Class of 1949	419	(12)
Haverford Statement	431	(6)
Homage to William L. Dawson	437	(6)
Alain Locke	443	(10)
Roscoe Dunjee and the American Language	453	(12)
Presentation to Bernard Malamud of the Gold Medal for Fiction	465	(8)
Introduction to the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition of Invisible Man	473	(20)
GOING TO THE TERRITORY
The Little Man at Chehaw Station	493	(31)
On Initiation Rites and Power: A Lecture at West Point	524	(22)
What These Children Are Like	546	(10)
The Myth of the Flawed White Southerner	556	(11)
If the Twain Shall Meet	567	(14)
What America Would Be Like Without Blacks	581	(8)
Portrait of Inman Page: A Dedication Speech	589	(6)
Going to the Territory	595	(22)
An Extravagance of Laughter	617	(46)
Remembering Richard Wright	663	(17)
Homage to Duke Ellington on His Birthday	680	(8)
The Art of Romare Bearden	688	(10)
Society, Morality and the Novel	698	(32)
"A Very Stern Discipline"	730	(29)
The Novel as a Function of American Democracy	759	(11)
Perspective of Literature	770	(17)
"A Completion of Personality": A Talk with Ralph Ellison	787	(36)
On Being the Target of Discrimination	823	(10)
Bearden	833	(8)
Notes for Class Day Talk at Columbia University	841	(6)
Foreword to The Beer Can by the Highway	847	(6)
Address at the Whiting Foundation	853