Invisible Man: Many of the social and intellectual issues confronting African Americans in the early twentieth century are addressed, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and Booker T. Washington’s reformist policies and individuality and personal identity issues.
Invisible Man was the first African American writer to receive the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. In addition, invisible Man was placed 19th on the Modern Library’s list of the 100 finest English-language paperbacks of the twentieth hundred in 1998.
In 1945, while on weak leave of the Merchant Marine, Ellison started writing what would ultimately grow Invisible Man in a lean-to in Waitsfield, Vermont, according to his introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition. The book took five years to write, with one year off for an “ill-conceived short novel,” according to Ellison.
Invisible Man was first published in its entirety in 1952. In 1947, Ellison released a part of the book, the famous “Battle Royal” scene. One of Ellison’s early supporters, Frank Taylor, had presented to Cyril Connolly, the editor of Horizon magazine.
Ellison stated that the novel’s paramount significance was its “experimental approach.” Before Invisible Man, many African-American books, such as Native Son and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, were written exclusively for social protest.
On the other hand, Invisible Man begins with the narrator saying, “I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either,” indicating Ellison’s departure from the standard protest book.
Some of Ellison’s leadership had a more direct influence on his product, like when he explains in his foundation to the 30th anniversary of Invisible Man that the “character” who had introduced himself on his page he “identified, ever so distantly, with the narrator of Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground.”
However, despite the “distantly” statement, it appears that Ellison made use of the novella on more than one occasion. Invisible Man’s introduction, for example, appears to be constructed similarly to Notes from Underground: “I am a sick man” vs. “I am an invisible man.”
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