Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon

Preface

Preface t goes a long way back, some twenty years." Thus begins chapter 1 of Invisible Man, and thus begins this book on Invisible Man, which is being published almost twenty years to the day from the time I wrote, as an undergraduate at Brooklyn College, my first words on Ellison's novel. The assignment was to compare two books, at least one of which had to appear in the syllabus, that is, the canon. The canonized text I chose was Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Because I was poor and for the preceding couple of years had been more or less self-supporting, I chose the second book from a small paperback library I had accumulated two summers earlier, when I worked at near-minimum wage in a book warehouse near the Red Hook docks. It was a place in many ways not unlike-at least as I imagine itInvisible Man's Long Island City paint factory. Each day just before closing I would duck behind the stacks and slip a book under my shirt. Thus I was first exposed to an array of writers, including Sartre, Moravia, and Ellison. At the time I wrote that undergraduate comparison between Ellison's work and Twain's, I was primarily concerned that the paper was overdue and, equally, that its completion would bring me that much closer to graduation and therefore to the draft. My literary concerns were secondary; I was wholly ignorant, moreover, of the issues of canonicity, historicity, and cultural criticism this fortuitous comparison suggested. I soon became very aware, however, that many similarities existed between the texts-allusions and swerves-which no one else seemed to have noticed. I had never seen the word "hernleneutics," but I knew some encoded relationship was present; I had never heard of "intertextuality," but I knew that in some way the meaning of the text at hand depended greatly on its relationship to other texts with which it had not been commonly grouped; I had never considered the concept of "rehistoricism," but I knew Ellison's book was pointing toward some gap, some omission, some blindness in the way we read the past or wrote about it. Or at least I think I knew these things, at some level, as I tried to fathom the uncanny resonance I found between two American novels. Perhaps I just dreamed that I knew those things. If so, as the invisible man's last sentences in chapter 1 say, "it was a dream I was to remember and dream again for many years after. But at the x Preface time I had no insight into its meaning. First I had to attend college" (or, in my case, graduate school). As my reading broadened, I found myself returning periodically, with ever-increasing insight, to Invisible Man and, through Invisible Man, to American literature and American studies. For this I am indebted to Ralph Ellison's prophetic novel. Frequently I was also struck with the sense that I had seen something no one else had. Or if others had seen what I had, they had not understood. Or if they had understood, they were not saying so. Or perhaps I was dreaming. I am indebted, therefore, to Ralph Ellison himself, who read an earlier version of my manuscript and responded with an invaluably generous letter convincing me that, like my original term paper, this work on Invisible Man was long overdue. Gratitude goes also to Vincent Leitch, who helped me sharpen the Introduction ; Carolyn Karcher, who gave advice on some aspects of chapter 1; Patricia Harkin, who was similarly helpful with some of the material in chapter 2 (a portion of which appeared in the Georgia Review); Andrew Welsh, who read an early version of chapter 3; Donald Gibson, who supervised my dissertation on Ellison; Carol Smith, who was the second reader; and Paul Fussell, who not only read the work with wit and dispatch but also has had, in more general ways, a profound effect on my education. Of course, as Huck might add, I don't blame him none, he didn't mean no harm by it. Finally, lowe the most intangible debt to my wife, Amy, without whom, for reasons that transcend logic and doubt, this book would not have been. ...