Reading: The Invisible Man

host: Tom Freeland

1. FrayVader - July 27, 1998 - 11:27 AM PDT
Allow me to turn over duties to Tom Freeland, who will be hosting this thread, as we discuss Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man." Take it away, Tom...

2. TheCatintheHat - July 27, 1998 - 1:01 PM PDT
I can't see you, Tom.

==):-)

3. tomfreeland - July 27, 1998 - 1:03 PM PDT
Thanks, FrayVader, for asking me to lead this thread. I've greatly enjoyed the previous two book threads, and hope this one is as interesting.

By way of introduction, I would like folks to take a look at the web site I have set up for readers of this thread. It discusses some of the themes from INVISIBLE MAN that I will be raising in this thread, and has links to other web resources about Ellison and his book.

I'm going to go through the book two chapters at a time; I read the book thinking carefully about the best "unit" and was surprised at just how much the novel breaks into two-chapter units. This may have to do with the fact that the novel is so episodic. So we'll begin with the Prologue and Chapter One after I've provided a little background information.

For anyone wanting to contact me directly with questions or suggestions (but not with discussion of the book, which I want to occur in this thread!), I have set up a hotmail account, ellisonthread@hotmail.com.

4. tomfreeland - July 27, 1998 - 1:38 PM PDT
I'm going to quickly allude to some issues to watch as you read the book. These are also discussed (in slightly different form) on the aforementioned web site. Ellison once noted that a major organizing device for the plot of this book has to do with EXCHANGES OF PIECES OF PAPER, which, Ellison stated, all amounted to instructions to "'Keep those Negroes running-but in their same old place.'" I would add in objects-as the book proceeds, the narrator adds things to the collection of papers he carries in his brief case. What they are, what the signify, and what happens to them are all important.

Another major organizing feature BLACK HISTORY AND FOLKLORE. The book has been seen as an allegory of Black history; I'll point out why as we proceed. Just as a taste of why this might be, compare this description of the statute of the Founder of the college in the book-"[I]n my mind's eye I see the bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold Father symbol, his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a kneeling slave; and I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding." from Ch.3 on p. 36-to this photograph of a statue. One aspect of Black history that we will talk about is the GREAT MIGRATION. One of the great population shifts of twentieth century history is the move of Black Americans from South to North, beginning largely after WWII; this is an important social factor driving the plot of INVISIBLE MAN.

5. tomfreeland - July 27, 1998 - 2:05 PM PDT
An issue of great importance to me is Ellison's MUSIC REFERENCES. Here (and in his use of folklore) you can see the connection Ellison himself felt to the literature that inspired him to be a writer. The book makes frequent allusion to songs and other outside sources; I am familiar with a number of theme and will provide more detail (lyrics & etc.) as we proceed. There are a few I didn't "run down", either because I didn't see recognize the source or because I don't have the record cited. Perhaps someone else will be able to fill in some of the blanks; I'll note apparent references I can't track down.

SPEECHES AND RHETORIC and their roles in Black culture are major issues for obvious plot-driven reasons-the main character's talent is a speechmaker-and for reasons that tie back into Black history and culture.

Finally, the book's central theme is the relationship between AN INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY in which he lives. I want to repeat one of my Ellison web site about that: "The pre-individualistic Black community discourages individuality out of self-defense. Having learned through experience that the whole group is punished for the actions of the single member, it has worked out efficient techniques of behavior control."

6. tomfreeland - July 27, 1998 - 2:07 PM PDT
That should be plenty to start folks out. The next batch of information I'll post will be biographical, about Ellison; after that background, we'll do the Prologue and Chapter 1.

How about it, folks?

7. CLLRDR - July 27, 1998 - 3:30 PM PDT
Looks great so far, Tom. I've just been giving the website a quick once over. I gather you'll be talking about "Shadow and Act" as well. My boyfriend is a great Ellison fan and will be putting his two cents in from time to time. Meanwhile, back to the book.

8. tomfreeland - July 27, 1998 - 3:34 PM PDT
CLLRDR, a lot of my background info was gleaned from a recent reading of SHARDOW & ACT.

9. SharonSchroeder - July 27, 1998 - 4:25 PM PDT
Tom, I am in the middle of the first chapter and will be looking forward to this discussion. Your preparedness is quite impressive.

10. jeancox - July 27, 1998 - 5:29 PM PDT
I'm reading more books simultaneously than I ever have before. Invisible Man makes three. I wasn't going to read it but I get so much out of this thread--I'll just have to find more time to read. Picked up IM today. Going to Louisville, Ky. for a few days, maybe I'll have some time to read on the trip down and back, or in the evenings.

Your info site is grand, Tom. That's what drew me in.

11. glendajean - July 27, 1998 - 5:38 PM PDT
Two things strike me about the prologue and chapter one. The first is the ethereal nature of the protaganist's voice. It comes out of haziness: the abstract description of the encounter with the blue eyed man on street; the marijuana induced vision while listening to Louis Armstrong, the grandfather's deathbed speech and warning and then finally the harrowing "smoker" with the white businessmen and its "battle royal." The smoker was especially vivid, and yet still almost dreamlike, as if the narrator was speaking out of some personal visionary trance.

Second, there is a biting and fierce independence in this writing. While particularly white language had controlled the narrator (in the smoker scene, in the newspaper description of the encounter with the blue eyed man, his determination to grab the reader's lapels and pull him or her into the narrator's understanding is powerful, forceful, with great purpose.

I am looking forward to this reading group, and believe that we will gain much for reading and discussing "Invisible Man."

12. tomfreeland - July 27, 1998 - 6:14 PM PDT
Great comments, GlendaJean. Since you've launched into the Prologue, I'm going to post this: The lyrics to Fats Waller's "Black and Blue," as performed by Louis Armstrong (who recorded it in 1929. The recording is available on CD on Louis Armstrong THIS IS JAZZ/23 LOUIS ARMSTRONG SINGS (Columbia Legacy CK 65039. Here are the lyrics:

"(What Did I Do To Be So) Black And Blue"
Cold empty bed
Springs hard as lead
Feel like old Ned
Wished I was dead

What did I do to be so black and blue?

Even the mouse
Ran from my house
They laugh at you
And spurn you to

What did I do to be so black and blue?

I'm white inside
But that don't help my case
Cause I can't hide
What is in my face

How it end
Ain't got a friend
My only sin
Is in my skin

What did I do to be so black and blue?

13. glendajean - July 27, 1998 - 7:00 PM PDT
Now, what about those 1,000 odd light bulbs ... any thoughts?

14. SharonSchroeder - July 27, 1998 - 7:09 PM PDT
Glenda, I was also intrigued by the light bulbs. I am interested by the thought of an invisible man desiring to be surrounded by so much light.

15. tomfreeland - July 28, 1998 - 7:53 AM PDT
I want to sidestep the discussion of the Prologue and Ch.1 for a minute to lay out some biographical facts. Those who are well into the novel will immediately see their relevance. Before moving into it, I want to point out a criticism Ellison made of Richard Wright's NATIVE SON-that Wright (who was a friend and mentor of Ellison's) had not put anything of Wright into the main character, Bigger Thomas. OTOH, Ellison was always determined to make clear that he was not the narrator of IM.

Ralph Ellison was born in 1914 in Oklahoma City. His father had been a soldier in China and the Philippines and served in the Spanish-American War. Ellison's father was an avid reader (naming his son after Ralph Waldo Emerson). Later, Ellison saw his achievement as a writer as a realization of his father's ambitions. Ellison's father died when he was three.

He spent all but a few years of his childhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the exceptions where the years of the Tulsa race riots of 1921. He was in school with jazz guitar great Charlie Christian and knew Jimmy Rushing and other members of the local territory band that combined with the Bennie Moten band to make up the Count Basie orchestra. In 1933, he hoboed to Alabama, where he spent three years at Tuskegee.

16. tomfreeland - July 28, 1998 - 7:54 AM PDT
Ellison's original ambition was to become a symphonic composer. This lead him to go to Tuskegee for three years and then on to Harlem; he went to New York in 1936, hoping to earn money to complete Tuskegee. Instead he stayed except for six months in Dayton, Ohio at the time of his mother's death in 1937.

As a boy, Ellson sold newspapers, shined shoes, collected bottles for bootleggers, was a lab assistant, waited on tables, played football, and was first chair trumpet in the school orchestra.

Ellison frequently cited an enounter with T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" while at Tuskegee an experience that transformed him and his view of writing; thereafter, while in Ohio at the time of his mother's death in 1937, he began to take writing seriously. "This occurring at a time I was agitating for intervention in the Spanish Civil War, my personal loss was tied to events taking place far from these shores. Thus the complexity of events forced itself to my attention even before I had developed the primary skill for dealing with it. I was forced to see that both as observer and writer, and as my mother's son, I would always have to do my homework." (this is from an interview in Robert Penn Warren's WHO SPEAKS FOR THE NEGRO)

17. tomfreeland - July 28, 1998 - 8:01 AM PDT
Ellison began writing at the suggestion of Richard Wright, who was editing a magazine (briefly) in NYC and published Ellison's first essay. He also accepted Ellison's first short story, but the magazine folded before it ran. Thereafter, Ellison published essays & reviews in journals like SATURDAY REVIEW, THE MASSES, and THE NATION. During WWII he served in the merchant marines; while on leave, working on a novel set in a prisoner of war camp in Germany (in which the ranking officer and also the only Black was an air corp pilot), (I'm going to quote Ellison from here):

"But then, one afternoon, when my mind was still bent on its nutty wanderings, my fingers took over and typed what was to become the very first sentence of the present novel, "I am an invisible man"-an assertion so outrageous and unrelated to anything I was trying to write that I snatched it from the machine and was about to destroy it. But then, rereading it, I became intrigued. And as I sat musing, the words began to sound with a familiar timbre of voice. Who, I asked myself, would make such a statement-and out of what kind of experience? And suddently I could hear in my head a blackface comedian bragging on the stage of Harlem's Apollo Theatre to the effect that each generation of his family was becoming so progressively black of complexion, that no one, not even its own mother, had ever been able to see the two-year-old baby. The audience audience roared with laughter, and I recognized something of the same joking, in-group Negro American irony sounding from my rumpled page."

That's from an intro to IM written for the Franklin Library edition.

18. tomfreeland - July 28, 1998 - 8:04 AM PDT
That done, I'll re-raise the question someone else mentioned: What's the deal with the lights? As a partial answer, I'll note that you can't discuss the lights independently of the idea of invisibility and what it means to the narrator, and that there isn't a coincidence between the songs Ellison mentions, their lyrics, and the adjoining text (he was consciously trying to create for American culture, specifically Black American culture something like what he saw Eliot do in his poetry), and refer ya'll back to the lyrics of "Black and Blue" in Message #12

19. CLLRDR - July 28, 1998 - 8:10 AM PDT
Ellison criticizes Wright, the better to separate his persona from Wright's in the mind of his ideal reader. Baldwin did a job on Wright (far more blatatly) for much the same reasons. And then there was the number Eldridge Cleaver did on Baldwin. Do we see a pattern here? Of course we do. Ellison, like every black Amerian who ever drew breath, is torn apart by the twin demands of "testifying" for the race as a whole, and being an individual. It's a tough row to hoe. Recent years, however, have seen the return of the House Slave as never before (Ward Connerly, Armstrong Williams, J. C. Watts, et. al.) That combined with the obsessive power bids of Stanley Crouch and his ilk lead one to long to join Ellison's "Invisible Man" in his "hole."

20. norwoodr - July 28, 1998 - 9:09 AM PDT
I'm having difficulty breaking Invisible Man up into two chapter bites. In fact, I'm already on chapter nine. Sorry about that.

I found myself wondering if events like the "smoker" really happened, or if that particular scene was exagerated for effect. I grew up in the south in the years immediately following WWII, and heard a lot of stories about Blacks, and I never heard anything even close to this. But, of course, women and children would be "protected" from such knowledge.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

21. glendajean - July 28, 1998 - 10:21 AM PDT
Norwood -- in my hometown in Central Texas, I once heard Leon Jaworski (who also grew up there) talk about when he was in law school that several men from the Klu Klux Klan had been arrested for tar and feathering a black man. Lynchings happened in that era, too, so I may be confusing the facts.

Jaworski was very excited about going to observe the trial, thinking that the law would provide justice against these actions. He was shocked, he said, to see that the Klansmen on trial included several well-known community leaders and businessmen sitting as defendants.

When I read the scene in the novel, it seemed very plausible. I think the scene is set around the 1930s given the narrator's comments that his grandparents had been given their freedom 85 years before (1865) and the scene takes place when the narrator was in high school.

There was a huge wave of Klan like activity in the south culminating in the 1920s and involving upper class business types. If that was happening, then the idea that some businessmen would create such an event as Ellison described is not so far-fetched. (Although the naked lady with the pastors present may have been stretching it).

22. glendajean - July 28, 1998 - 10:26 AM PDT
tomfreeland -- btw, thank you for the introductory information, including the lyrics.

The light bulbs interested me because it reflected (no pun intended) a certain almost craziness in the narrator's life. In the Museum of American Art here in DC there's a whole room created by an African American government worker in his garage back in the 40s and 50s to represent some celestial throne room. There are thrones and altars and all kinds of pieces in this exhibit in which everything is covered in tin-foil. It's visionary folk art, and the description of the room with light bulbs struck me as being something similar and fabulous.

23. arkymalarky - July 28, 1998 - 12:36 PM PDT
Ellison's intro in my copy(not the same as what Tom quoted)mentions the character in "Notes from Underground" as having an influence on his character. I don't know whether I would have seen a similarity without reading it, but it's very evident having read Ellison's remark. Not that his character was modeled after Dostoevsky's, but there's an undercurrent running through both characters that gives me the same sensations reading them...not entirely comfortable ones...which is what I'm sure both authors intended. I've only read through chapt 1, and I appreciate the highlights on some of the details and motifs from Tom which have helped focus my reading.

24. tomfreeland - July 28, 1998 - 8:41 PM PDT
A lot of this book defies summary; the book proceeds as an internal monologue of an unnamed narrator, with set-piece descriptions of events (many of which would work as free-standing stories) punctuated by meditations in which the narrator attempts to figure out exactly what is happening to him. The first set-piece is the narrator's assault on a passerby who didn't see him. Ellison told Penn Warren that he "[w]as constantly fighting, until I reached the age when I realized that I was strong enough and violent enough to kill someone in a fit of anger." (In the same book, and on a similar note, Warren asked James Baldwin if he had read Irving Howe's essay about Richard Wright, Baldwin, and Ellison; James Baldwin said no. Asked about Howe's suggestion that he and Ellison had "betrayed" Wright by wanting "to be artists instead of keeping angry enough," Baldwin said: "Ralph is as angry as anybody can be and still live. And so am I."

Thereafter, the narrator explains that he lives in a hole, like "Jack-the-Bear"; this is the first reference to Black folklore. Jack-the-Bear was a figure of Black stories and rhymed tales, and crops up in a widespread work-chant used by gandy-dancers (railroad workers laying rails) about "Jack-the-Rabbit/Jack-the-Bear". Jack the Bear recurrs in the book, and represents to the narrator (at least in his thinking by the last chapter and the Epilogue) a symbol for his hiding in the hole, as a bear hybernating to come out in full form (and possibly visible?) later.

25. tomfreeland - July 28, 1998 - 8:46 PM PDT
I'm holding back some Ellison quotes on invisibility because I want the subject to develop a bit here among fraygrants.

BTW, Norwood-- the smoker seemed real to me, in the context of race relations of the early 1930s (glendajean accurately dated the time of the novel). It certainly was real to Ellison *although* throughout the book, Ellison is clearly playing with a 'heightened' sort of reality and even surrealism toward the later part of the books-- he tries to point the reader in that direction in the Prologue, and then slowly immerses you in it as the book moves north. BUT I've heard elsewhere of events staged like the boxing match. And what REALLY seemed real to me is the sort of crushed expectations the narrator has.

26. norwoodr - July 29, 1998 - 9:41 AM PDT
glendajean

The naked lady and the pastors was one thing that stretched my willingness to suspend disbelief. The other was that the white men would get that close, physically, to sweaty black men. I know much worse things happened. I just wondered if Ellison knew or experienced something like this, or if he was using his own powers of invention, which, after all, a fiction author is supposed to do.

www.io.com/~norwoodr
]

27. SharonSchroeder - July 29, 1998 - 11:07 AM PDT
I was thoroughly disgusted by the smoker but simply could not stop reading it. Kind of like being at the scene of a bad accident and not being able to look away.

BTW Norwood I'm on chapter seven myself. I don't think we have to read it in two chapter increments... just discuss it that way.

28. tomfreeland - July 29, 1998 - 7:47 PM PDT
I want to mention in passing a couple of passages in the Prologue for possible discussion. One quick/amazing bit of writing is the fight between the "scientist" and the "yokel" (bottom page 8) in which ""The yokel had simply stepped inside of his oppenent's sense of time" and knocks out "science." A couple of things about this passage. It is a perfect illumination of Armstrong's "sense of time" at the height of his power (when "Black and Blue" was first recorded-- the recording of which prompted this meditation). Armstrong's solos would alternate stretching and compressing of time, weaving in and out of what the rest of the band was doing. His playing in the late 20s still takes the breath away with its daring.

I could explain in an analytical way why this bit of tour-de-force writing is in the Prologue, but in a large sense *it doesnt matter* to me-- it is so fine in the way it evokes Armstrong's playing and boxing both.

29. tomfreeland - July 29, 1998 - 7:50 PM PDT
Also key is the dream sequence, with the conversation with the slave.

Moving into Ch.1, the central passage is the dying words of his grandfather; those words will haunt him through the rest of the book, to the point of providing him (at the end of the chapter) with a phantom addition to his briefcase. The passage (page 16 of the vintage ed) bears a close look.

30. CLLRDR - July 30, 1998 - 12:11 PM PDT
I hope everyone is checking out Clarence Thomas' recent self-aggrandizing lamentations, particularly in relation to Ellison's overarching theme.

31. norwoodr - July 31, 1998 - 8:59 AM PDT
Ellison's writing seems to improve chapter by chapter. In the earlier chapters, he seems to feel a need to exagerate in order to hold the reader's interest, as if only the most extreme situations are dramatic enough. Also, the sexual symbolism is a bit heavy handed--I don't have the book here or I would offer a quote. In the later chapters we have very memorable images--the birds in the rich man's office for example--without the sex and violence. Not that I have anything against sex and violence in a novel, especially a novel written just to amuse the reader, but in a serious novel I admire more subtle effects.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

32. ptboya - July 31, 1998 - 9:56 AM PDT
I was struck by the opposition of the invisibility theme, an invisibility conferred by observers of the narrator because of blindfolds covering their "inner eyes," and the imagery presented through the blindfolded eyes of the narrator in the smoker scene. I can think of few scenes in literature that match the horrifying humiliation described therein. The smoker scene is a skillful metaphor for the quotidian humiliations blacks have endured in the U.S. Thus, it doesn't strike me as heavy handed as others have suggested. Its effectiveness is undeniable regardless of its accurateness as a depiction of actual smokers.
As a musician, I too was struck by the reference to the great Satchmo whose conception of time changed the face of popular music. After Armstong each beat of music was no longer a point in time it was more like a slice of time around a precise center. He also subdivided time in a unique way, effortlessly switching between 12th and 16th notes within a phrase. This trick has become a standard of jazz and has been incorporated into rap. I know that Ellison began as a jazz musician so the concept of the boxer getting inside his opponent's sense of time is rendered with the precision of "jazz time."

33. SharonSchroeder - July 31, 1998 - 8:38 PM PDT
Pt, I didn't mean to suggest that it was heavy handed. I was very moved by it. It was like a scene in a horror movie that you're not sure you want to see but you watch because you must. Sort of like covering your eyes and looking through your fingers. Morbid curiousity? Perhaps?

34. tomfreeland - Aug. 1, 1998 - 10:22 AM PDT
Recently, the historian Leon Litwack has used the opening chapter of IM to open a major new book, TROUBLE IN MIND: BLACK SOUTHERNERS IN THE AGE OF JIM CROW. He starts the book by stating: "Nowwhere is the paradox of black life in the United States more graphically revealed than in Ralph Ellison's portrayal of the black odyssey in INVISIBLE MAN." Litwack goes on to quote the grandfather's advice and describe the scene of the smoker, stating "No historian could have improved upon the scene. This is more than a group of sadistic white men having fun at the expense of a group of black boys. It is a racial rite of passage, a necessary invitation into the racial ethics of the white South. 'It is a ritual in preservation of cast lines,' Ellison explained..."

35. boohab - Aug. 1, 1998 - 3:55 PM PDT
more than anything, upon distant recollection, the preface to 'invisible man' stood as testament to invisibility itself. after all, what is greatness - this rehashed re-criticism of the importance of a piece of work - if the man himself cannot stand great? and so the testimony of backbone in confrontation impressed me most. post-negro me, invisible behind the 'intelligent, successful neo-conservative' charicature of black manhood.

and too i recall stolen electricity and a basement full of blinding light: a garret/prison of pride and stubborn solitude, the mind of a man all to clear to himself refusing to be reflected in the twisted mirrors of a blind world.

somewhere in my garage lies the book. what the heck, after all these years online it is an uncomfortable privilege to finally engage and pick up the ball, having played boo for the sake of beating back colorblindness and all other sorts of nonsense making me fade.

36. CLLRDR - Aug. 1, 1998 - 5:07 PM PDT
Hah! Just caught Clarence on C-Span in that speech he gave to the black lawyers last Wednesday. And he had the unmitigated gall to invoke Ellison!

37. arkymalarky - Aug. 2, 1998 - 9:30 AM PDT
Several people have commented on the style and tone of the early chapters of the book. What strikes me is the blend of stark realism with an overtone of the surreal, which gives it a dreamlike quality that, like our own dreams, often transforms to nightmarish. The seemingly calm, pleasant drive with Mr. Norton becomes a dreamlike sequence, in which the protagonist is at the mercy of the people around him. He drives the car, but has no control over where he is going. The characters he encounters have an intensity which lends to the dreamlike/nightmarish feeling. This sense of being trapped by events and out of control of his own fate(even Mr. Horton emphasizes that the young man's fate is his), is conveyed very effectively with this style, imo, because, while many of us cannot relate to the effects of surviving in a racist society, we all can relate to the feeling of being in a nightmare from which we are unable to awaken and helplessly dreaming on to see what happens to us next and when or if it will stop.

38. CLLRDR - Aug. 2, 1998 - 9:54 AM PDT
Arky, your last post hit it right on the head. This is indeed the nightmare Ellison was trying to convey. It was on this level he was hoping to communicate the back experience to Whites.

39. arkymalarky - Aug. 2, 1998 - 10:07 AM PDT
Thanks, Cellar. I don't think there is a more effective way to achieve what Ellison does with this book. He really has a *masterful* talent in writing, in that he exercises consistent control over the technique. A tip too far into surrealism *or* emotionalism, even in one scene, would damage the effect, and to me, he never does that. I'm going to step out on a limb here, and say that it's one reason I wasn't too outraged that _To Kill a Mockingbird_ wasn't in the top 100 20th century books list, though it is one of my favorite books, and I have taught it in class. It crosses that line more than once, imo.

All right, y'all come attack me now.

40. verdeazul - Aug. 2, 1998 - 4:09 PM PDT

"...hey everybody have ya' heard,
I'm gonna' buy me a mockingbird... an'
if that mockingbird don'sing....I'm gonna'
buy me a diamond riiiiing...an' if that diamond ring don't shiiiine...Papa gonna' take it to the five an' diiiime...."

surrealazul~

41. verdeazul - Aug. 2, 1998 - 6:41 PM PDT

All:
     Please pardon my irrelevant flippancy above. I wanted very much to be able to participate in this thread (just as I had wanted to be a part of the Pinker discussions - I even bought and read part of his book...but I became very ill).
     Now, I am having to move and have been working at the 'roots' for several weeks. My daughter and ex- sister in law have been doing most of the physical work because, this time - after nearly 40 years - I'm having to move into a supervised environment. I'll have a long leash, but a leash, nonetheless. I will also be off the Net for awhile until I am settled. This will all happen within the next 1 - 2 weeks.
     Why am I writing this here? I have been a bit erratic lately. The above is an example. I'm trying to understand why.

v~

42. arkymalarky - Aug. 2, 1998 - 6:51 PM PDT
verdeazul, I always run look when I see a thread where you've posted. I hate to think that's going to be a lot less often for awhile. I hope maybe you can spare some time to read and comment here, and as always, your contribution to poetry has been wonderful lately, so I hope you find a little time for it, as well. I'm not really familiar with you or your circumstances, but I hope your move is a good one. And your post above made me smile and will provide a nice buffer to ones I may get from TKAMB fans tomorrow.;-)

43. SharonSchroeder - Aug. 2, 1998 - 6:54 PM PDT
BruthaZul, I hope everything works out for you. We will miss you so hurry back.

44. tomfreeland - Aug. 2, 1998 - 7:07 PM PDT
Several great posts here lately. Arky, as for your comment on the dreamlike state: That's apt. The book seems intensely claustraphobic to me, in the way that it is SO internally focused. The narrator is completely alone and turns everything inward in an attempt to try to sort it out. One comment from Ellison about what he was trying to do in the writing style: He said that the southern scenes were more naturalistic and the later ones more surrealistic; he tried to introduce the reader to the surrealistic methods at the start with the Prologue.

I share your feelins about TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD: it has always been a favorite book of mine, but I wasn't surprised it wasn't on the 100 list and wasn't even sure it should be. I encountered the movie first, at about 9 years of age, watching it with my family when it came out. As the child of a lawyer in the small-town south, the movie bowled me over and had a HUGE influence on the way I saw things; the book a few years later had similar impact. BUT YET I would have to think and count carefully about whether it should be on the list. I'm more appalled by the absense of Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor...

45. SharonSchroeder - Aug. 2, 1998 - 7:09 PM PDT
What lists?

46. CLLRDR - Aug. 3, 1998 - 7:46 AM PDT
The "Greatest Books of the 20th Century" list.

47. tomfreeland - Aug. 3, 1998 - 8:41 AM PDT
I'll point out that you should keep track of what the narrator puts in his briefcase and then move into chapters two and three.

The second chapter opens with a description of the unamed college. While there are references in the book that distinguish the "Founder" from Booker T. Washington, note the similarity between the statute of the founder on page 36 and quoted in Message #4 and the statute of Washington at Tuskegee, which you can see here.

The narrator is driving a visiting Northern philanthropist, Mr. Norton, who startles him by hoping his fate would be "pleasant"-- "How could anyone's fate be *pleasant*?"-- and brings back his grandfather, "the first person who mentioned anything like fate in my presence... There had been nothing pleasant about it..." During the conversation thereafter, Ellison has a joke at his own expense, with Norton asking the narrator if he's read Emerson-- Ellison's namesake-- and the narrator has not heard of Emerson.

The drive extends out into the area where slave cabins still stand, past that of Jim Trueblood.... more on that later (or someone else can pick up from here?)

48. norwoodr - Aug. 3, 1998 - 8:52 AM PDT
I'm into the Harlam section of the book, now, and am continually startled and delighted by Ellison's invention and wit. After the first couple of chapters, I expected this to be a Heavy book, one more to be admired than to be enjoyed, but I find myself looking forward to the time spent reading it.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

49. tomfreeland - Aug. 3, 1998 - 9:58 AM PDT
Norwood, I think humor a hugely underrated skill, at least in this century. Most of my favorite novelists make skilled use of it. We talked about this some in the discussion of Jason in THE SOUND & THE FURY.

One peer in postWWII novels for this level of humor and invention is Naipul's A HOUSE FOR MISTER BISWAS.

50. norwoodr - Aug. 3, 1998 - 10:06 AM PDT
The only Naipul I've read is Bend in the River, so I am surprised to hear him described as a writer who uses humor effectively.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

51. tomfreeland - Aug. 3, 1998 - 12:23 PM PDT
BISWAS was the last of Naipul's novels set in Trinidad. After he wrote it, he went a long period without writing fiction; he started back with BEND IN THE RIVER; his novels since the hiatus have been entirely humorless. I'm not sure why.

52. tomfreeland - Aug. 4, 1998 - 2:01 PM PDT
Going on with Ch.2, the narrator describes his schoolmate's reactions to Trueblood and other locals singing "primitive spirituals", that "we were embarrased by the earthy harmonies they sang, but since the vistors were awed we dared not lauge at the crude, high, plaintively animal sounds Jim Trublood made as he led the quartet." He notes that the hate "was charged with fear", that "We were trying to lift them [blackbelt people] and they, like Trueblood, did everything it seemed to pull us down." at 47.

Trueblood tells his story; Norton reacts-- "You have looked upon chaos and are not destroyed!"-- and the chapter ends with another exchange of paper-- Norton gives Trueblood a hundred dollar bill, shocking the narrator (and Trueblood) and leaving the narrator envious.

The passage with Trueblood was startling to me when I read it in college; I have a reaction now that I did not have then-- that it doesn't quite work for me. Perhaps knowing what is going to happen lessens the force of seeing the passage play out. I'm not sure. But its one passage that didn't work as well for me as almost everything else in the book.

53. tomfreeland - Aug. 4, 1998 - 2:03 PM PDT
Anyone have any suggestions on the thread? Am I moving to slowly, etc.?

Here's a reminder that I've set up an email address for comment-- write me at ellisonthread@hotmail.com for thread suggestions. I *won't* discuss the book there, but *will* discuss suggestions as to how to proceed.

Thanks

54. arkymalarky - Aug. 4, 1998 - 2:15 PM PDT
I've been waiting for someone to discuss Trueblood, who seems like he might be *too* allegorical, thus less believable. I accepted Trueblood as part of the dreamlike aura Ellison creates, but I was wanting to see what some others had to say on it. Again, it does contribute to the dream/nightmare quality of the early chapters, and the scene from a first reading definitely works toward the feeling of helplessness I was trying to describe earlier.

55. norwoodr - Aug. 5, 1998 - 8:52 AM PDT
I think we could pick up a little speed, and, since we are all reading the book, the chapter intros could be shorter.

I think Ellison, like many first novelists, felt a need to use extreme and shocking events in the early chapters. In the introduction he mentions fear that no one would be interested in anything except the events in chapter one. Later on, he settles down some, and I think the writing improves. Having said that, the most recent chapter I read, set in a hospital, moves from realism to farce. Ellison seems to be strongly aware of the need to entertain the reader. I wish more novelists were. But Ellison may go a wee bit too far.

My take on the Trueblood story is this. When I was a kid, you could by comic postcards that suggested that Blacks (and Hillbillies) committed incest without a care in the world. When Jerry Lee Lewis married his young cousin, people just grinned about those amoral southerners. Ellison's take on this is that incest always has moral consequences, that even people who do wrong know right from wrong. This in stark contrast to the "nakid pickinney" postcards. Then you have the additional irony that whites claim their prejudice against blacks is based on the low character of blacks, but reward bad behavior on the part of blacks and punish good behavior. Why Norton reacts in this same way is not clear to me, and I'm not sure it is in character. Norton's extreme reaction to the story suggests to me that something may have been going on between Norton and his own daughter, and that she may have died in childbirth. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

www.io.com/~norwoodr

56. tomfreeland - Aug. 5, 1998 - 2:40 PM PDT
It is clear that Trueblood's story is supposed to "go along" with Norton's in some way, although I am not sure how-- and am not even sure Ellison had something concrete in mind.

You are right about the lack of need for summaries, Norwood; I suppose I was trying to keep the discussion moving.

In the Golden Day passage, you have *apparently* a body of black professionals who "played some vast and complicated game with me and the rest of the school folk, a game whose goal was laughter and whose rules and subtleties I could never grasp." The narrator once again encounters a source for cryptic advice, a mental patient, who tells the narrator he can neither see nor be seen.

Once again, with the professionals at the Golden Day, I am pretty sure that Ellison is playing two different games-- that of the actual plot, and a game of symbols with regard to the role of Black professionals in the South.

After the vet tells the narrator what 'he is', the narrator goes back to the college and notes "Here within this quiet greeness I possessed the only identity I had ever known, and I was loosing it."

Note Bledsoe's "mask", the "veil [that] seemed to fall" as he went in to see Norton.

57. arkymalarky - Aug. 5, 1998 - 2:53 PM PDT
The freest people in the book so far are the ones who have so completely defied convention that they are in a sense ostracized by blacks and whites. Trueblood is even ostracized by his own family. Ostracism and alienation give him and the doctor more freedom of speech and action than even white people have. They are outside both societies--black and white--and are themselves essentially invisible. Trueblood was part of the school's activities until he committed incest. The doctor was an educated war veteran until he was judged insane. I imagine some things will become clearer to me as I get further in the book, but this is how I see it at this point. It seems that more and more, the narrator's attempts to please at the expense of his own dignity and identy are emphasized. He is determined to show his worth through his conformity and obedience, and every black person he meets outside that school is the antithesis of those two values. Within the school, Bledsoe becomes a terrible vulgarization of them.

All this is, of course, imo.

58. glendajean - Aug. 5, 1998 - 3:10 PM PDT
Arky -- Trueblood is a device to make the young man (narrator) terribly uncomfortable, a challenge to his own contrived and mannered personality. Ambitious young people often put on their best face, so to speak, for authority figures, but the narrator goes to incredible lengths to come off as dignified and worthy of respect by the white authority figures. (e.g., making the speech after the bloody battle royal).

His discomfort with Trueblood comes out of shame, really. Trueblood quickly represents the lowest class, the sum of all the negative perceptions held by whites for blacks. How incredulous that Norton would be so fascinated by Trueblood's animalistic story instead of responding to the young man's courtesy and helpfulness.

It's obvious you have some thoughts on this character and I'd like it if you could share what you are thinking.

59. arkymalarky - Aug. 5, 1998 - 4:15 PM PDT
You're right, glendajean, and I'm glad you posted, because I'm really wanting to know the pov of the others who are reading and see if we share the same perspective. Your post describes my feelings on Trueblood as far as I've formulated them. In msg.54, I tried to express why I thought TB might not have worked as well for Tom on this reading, and I think, as you say, he is a device which is meant to evoke something in the protagonist. I used the word allegorical.
From the beginning of the book, it's apparent that the narrator's feelings of shame come from other black people, never from how he himself is treated. The degradation he suffered at the Battle Royal at the hands of white people caused no rancor or resentment in him at all. Instead, he continued to think of his speech and the impact it would make, and was thrilled at the outcome, when it would seem that he should be mortified and humiliated. In his view, his adversaries are not the white men there, but the other blacks he is "competing" with. At this point it becomes obvious why he was chosen for the special "honors" he received. He had bought into the white man's promise--the same one Booker T. Washington himself bought into: Obedience and conformity and knowing your place will bring rewards.

To me, this concept leads to the statement, "Keep this Nigger-Boy Running." It seems that Trueblood has violated society's most basic rules and instead of suffering punishment, has acquired more freedom and is no longer "running"(Trueblood explains that they were struggling to get by before the incident, and now his family is taken care of), while the more the narrator attempts to please and work hard, the worse things get for him. cont.

60. arkymalarky - Aug. 5, 1998 - 4:19 PM PDT
As you point out, Trueblood, as the worst of all possible images of a black man in the mind of the narrator, makes him ashamed, but fascinates Mr. Horton. Why, I'm still not sure. Norwood's take is interesting. Horton is described by Ellison as looking "into the black face with something like envy and indignation." He asks, "You feel no inner turmoil, no need to cast out the offending eye?" Apparently he's fascinated with Trueblood's calm state of mind after having committed a horrendous act. But Horton's interest comes even before he knows the story, when he sees the old slave cabins. He seems fascinated with the history of the place.

Trueblood's name, residence, lifestyle, and even the dream he recounts, put him as close to the old days of slavery as any black man could be at the time, meaning he and the narrator are as far removed from eachother as two black men could be. So what specifically does Trueblood symbolize in the story? Does he simply represent the heritage which the narrator is ashamed of, or is there more?

61. tomfreeland - Aug. 5, 1998 - 4:28 PM PDT
Great posts all. I want to raise one bit of disagreement with one thing Ark says: "Trueblood's name, residence, lifestyle, and even the dream he recounts, put him as close to the old days of slavery as any black man could be at the time, meaning he and the narrator are as far removed from eachother as two black men could be." The narrator would *like* to be far removed from what he sees at Truebloods-- he would LIKE to distance himself from Trueblood's singing and the slave quarters etc., but that is one of the horrible problems he places himself in. It is a problem with all kinds of consequences through the book-- not only is he made uncomfortable by music, he is even made uncomfortable by food he wants to eat when he goes north.

62. arkymalarky - Aug. 5, 1998 - 4:37 PM PDT
You're right, Tom. I should have qualified that as the narrator's pov. They share a common heritage that the narrator believes he is rising above, but which he really cannot escape, and which is an integral part of who he is.

63. SharonSchroeder - Aug. 5, 1998 - 8:59 PM PDT
Tom, I like the chapter summaries. We are all at different places in the book and for me a summary refreshes my mind as to what part of the book certin things happened. I am reading ahead of where we are actually discussing and like the summaries so that I am less confused than usual :-)

64. tomfreeland - Aug. 6, 1998 - 8:38 AM PDT
I'm going to "split the baby" on the suggestions-I'll move faster but continue the ch. Summaries, but make them shorter. Either everyone will be happier or no one will.

At the Golden Day, the vet says to Norton: "He [the narrator] believes in you as he believes in the beat of his heart. He believes in that great false wisdom taught slaves and pragmatists alike, that white is right. I can tell you his destiny. He'll do your bidding, and for that his blindness is his chief asset." At page 95. Ellison said in his PARIS REVIEW essay: "[T]here are certain themes, symbols and images which are based on folk material. For instance, there is an old saying amongst Negroes: If you're black, stay back; if you're brown, stick around; if you're white, your right. And there is the joke Negroes tell on themselves about their being so black they can't be seen in the dark. In my book this sort of thing was merged with the meanings which blacknaess and light have long had in Western mythology: evil and goodness, ignorance and knowledge, and so on. In my novel the narrator's development is one through blackness to light; that is, from ignorance to enlightenment; invisibility to visibility. He leaves the South and goes North; this, as you will notice reading Negro folktales, is always the road to freedom, the movement upward."

65. tomfreeland - Aug. 6, 1998 - 8:38 AM PDT
In ch.4, the Narrator returns Norton to the college and gets assurance from Norton that he has explained what happened to Bledsoe, who "understands." In ch. 5, we get the college trustee's speech, for which Ellison said (also in the interview with the Paris Review) that he was attempting to echo a certain kind of southern rhetoric.

The speech/sermon brings the narrator to a key realization: "I could not look at Dr. Bledsoe now, because old Barbee had made me both feel my guilt and accept it. For although I had not intended it, any act that endangered the continuity of the dream was an act of treason." At page 134.

66. norwoodr - Aug. 6, 1998 - 8:39 AM PDT
Tom

I agree with Sharon. We need short chapter summaries just to keep us all together.

In reading the interesting comments above, I flashed on a line from Hair: "I am invisible! I can work miracles!"

www.io.com/~norwoodr

67. tomfreeland - Aug. 6, 1998 - 8:41 AM PDT
The quote at the end of the last post is key. Somewhere I've seen Ellison write about this issue but I can't put my hand on it now-- that one of the defense mechanisms of the black community was to surpress individuality and demand that everyone stay in line; moving out of line was treason because it could draw dangerous attention.

68. norwoodr - Aug. 6, 1998 - 8:55 AM PDT
To see the demand that Black's conform to the needs of the community, we need look no further than Slate's recent comments on the Clarence Thomas speech. The implication was that, since Thomas benefited from affirmative action, he must support it.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

69. mynagle - Aug. 6, 1998 - 9:43 AM PDT
WRT the Trublood's-tale section, I thought incest by Mr. Norton was made almost explicit and the attitude of the white townsmen seemed to be, "There but for the grace of God go I." It was one of the funniest things I've ever read and well within the tradition of the Southern raconteur telling stories which glorify blacks as clowns. No wonder some of Elliot's black readers were unhappy with him. Humor is a marvelous thing, and any group can be made great fun of, but it's still bad form to kick a man when he is down. That said, I appreciate and value this book as a window on the Black American experience.

70. norwoodr - Aug. 6, 1998 - 10:13 AM PDT
It should also be noted that white Southerners enjoyed stories of clever blacks, in the tradition of the clever fool. Uncle Remus, beloved of Southern white boys, was a clever Black, and Mammy, in Gone With the Wind, was a wise Black, wiser than Miz Sca'let. Blacks could have every virtue except pride.

www.io.com/norwoodr

71. tomfreeland - Aug. 6, 1998 - 10:34 AM PDT
Norwood, two characters from black folklore that are critical to this book are Jack the Bear, which is connected to a character called either Jack or John (and sometimes John the Conqueror) who was unknown/invisible to the white community and who would arrive, suddenly to fix things for blacks-in-distress. He was a hero with magical powers; the references to Jack the Bear tie into that. (Note here that my picture of Jack / John comes from a number of sources, but primarily Ellison's own writing and Zora Neal Hurston's folklore writing; she did an essay on John/Jack). John the Conqueror root is a specific plant used in hoodoo practice, btw. In more than one song referring to hoodoo, Muddy Waters specifically refers to John the Conqueror (or Conqueroo) in this context.

The other character, represented by the rabbit in Brer Rabbit tales, is the trickster. He comes up in this book as Rinehart, in the Harlem sections. He uses indirection and trickery to accomplish his goals, including disquises, and has a sort of sneakiness that is very distinct from John the Conqueror. (I would imagine that the work-chant reference to Jack the Rabbit / Jack the Bear is a reference to both of these figures). The trickster is like Loki in Norse mythology.

What is interesting to me is that the white community in the South new about and even treasured the trickster image but yet as near as I can tell either ignored or was unaware of the Conqueror image. Hurston's essay does suggest that the Conqueror was both treasured by the black community and kept secret from whites.

72. norwoodr - Aug. 7, 1998 - 7:16 AM PDT
I can confirm that, while I grew up with stories of Uncle Remus and B'rer Rabbit, I never heard even a mention of John the Conqueror, and the only Jack the Bear I know is the movie of that name.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

73. BunEBear - Aug. 7, 1998 - 8:04 AM PDT
Good morning all. I just started reading last weekend and am trying to catch up so I don't mind the pace at all. I also agree that the chapter summaries are a good thing, as they often bring up important points that I have missed or not recognized the importance of. For example, I had missed the reference to treason than Tom mentioned in Message #65, which is interesting in contrast to the treason that the Grand father expresses in Chapter 1. Clearly a different kind of treason.
I also found Bledsoe's advice to the narrator interesting (pg. 145):"You let white folks worry about pride and dignity-you learn where you are and get yourself power, influence, contacts with powerful and influential people - then stay in the dark and use it!"
So Bledsoe still feels that he has to "stay in the dark" to use his power. A man who recognizes his own invisibility would not say this, no?

74. mynagle - Aug. 7, 1998 - 9:19 AM PDT
and yet, Norwood, you know what I'm talking about--these expert racist story tellers will have you falling off your seat laughing--no matter what your principles are--sort of like a woman experiencing orgasm while being raped.

75. tomfreeland - Aug. 7, 1998 - 9:42 AM PDT
Am I the only one confused by mynangle's posts, Message #69 and Message #74?

One thing I do understand but think is an inversion of what Ellison intended is mynangle's suggestion in the earlier post that the white fascination with Trueblood was some version of "There but for the grace of God go I." What the white townspeople got from Trueblood was a clearly delineated other-- someone who was not possibly "them" so they could say point to themselves and say "white, good" and point to Trueblood and say "n----r, bad". Which raises on message about Norton's reaction-- he has the same sort of fascination that the white southerners have, and even responds in the same way-- with a gift. The narrator is deeply confused by the townspeople's reaction, and more deeply confused by Norton alligning himself with the townspeople.

I don't think there is textual evidence that Norton had a sexual relationship with his daughter. It crossed my mind, but I think Ellison wants you to see Norton alligning himself with the southerners in seeing Trueblood to be something Norton clearly is not, and to somehow take enough satisfaction in that to reward Trueblood with a $100 bill. As noted, the narrator is deeply shocked by this.

76. Jenerator - Aug. 7, 1998 - 1:06 PM PDT
Tom,

Thanks for your input in Books!:)

77. mynagle - Aug. 7, 1998 - 2:18 PM PDT
I think that Elliot's purpose in juxtapositioning Trueblood and Mrnorton was to present to the narrator his first disillusionment (or enlightenment) vis. this powerful white benefactor was no better, probably worse, than the stereotypic black primitive. I hold Mrnorton's sin to be the same as Trueblood's because the beautiful daughter was strongly brought into the narrative and her fading away unto death in a faraway country in his care. Why insert the information unless to inform his behavior with Trueblood?

78. arkymalarky - Aug. 7, 1998 - 8:13 PM PDT
All right you lurkers, c'mon and post something here.
Did the scene between Horton and Trueblood represent an act of charity which really rewards a black man for being lowdown and appeases the white conscience in the process? What about the dream? In the dream it was a white lady, in reality his own daughter. What are some thoughts on that?

79. norwoodr - Aug. 8, 1998 - 11:30 AM PDT
mynagle 77

Excellent point. Ellison is a craftsman, and if something is in the text, it is there for a reason.

Note that tomfreeland has trouble understanding your posts. You may want to do a second draft.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

80. arkymalarky - Aug. 8, 1998 - 5:29 PM PDT
Perhaps it works to show a contrast in effects of the same action on two polar opposites. Trueblood has no choice but to face up to what he did. They all slept in the same room and there was no real way to hide it. He suffers his punishment right then and there. If you care to speculate that Horton is guilty of the same offense(and I really don't like to do that unless it is implied, no matter how subtly, and I don't think there was any direct implication that Horton committed incest, unless I missed something in my reading), then it would be an offense that even the author does not reveal and one which probably no one knew about except Horton and his daughter--a dirty little secret whose consequences destroy the victim and leave the offender seemingly unpunished. Trueblood faces his sin with a calm resolution that he must pay for what he has done, but a realization that it cannot be undone and it was unintentional to begin with, which allows him to go on with his life, while Horton is amazed that Trueblood is able to do so and survive not just the judgement of the outside world, but his own conscience, which would destroy many men, even if the outside world never detected it.

81. mynagle - Aug. 8, 1998 - 7:05 PM PDT
Thank you for your suggestion, Norwood, I shall endeavor to be more clear when expressing an idea.

82. tomfreeland - Aug. 9, 1998 - 10:10 AM PDT
Why the information about the daughter & Norton: If Norton were not reacting to Trueblood's race, his natural reaction to Trueblood would be revulsion and to think that Trueblood should be jailed or worse. This natural reaction should be all-the-stronger because of the way Norton treasured his own daughter. But yet Norton rewards Truebloood, and in doing so is like the white southerners. That's why his daughter is talked about, to set up a parallel that (because of race) fails to go parallel. And mynangle is right that, seeing this is a shock & disullusionment to the narrator.

83. freetochoose - Aug. 9, 1998 - 12:07 PM PDT
     My apologies for joining late.

     Let me start by echoing Norwoodr's comment in Message #48. I was expecting something else; I'm not sure quite what, but I expected to appreciate having read Ellison, not enjoy it in progress.

     I was struck by the author's reference to color. In the Prologue, the narrator talks about listening to Louis Armstrong's "What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue" while eating ice cream and sloe gin.

     Black, blue, white, red.

      Then the italicized section where he discovers the new way of listening to music: "girl the color of ivory", " Blackness of Blackness", "The sun Lawd.... was bloody red", "red", "black", "black", "red", "black".

     Black, white, red. No blue in this passage, unless we call the musical passage the blues. (Am I straining here?)

Chapter One also has several references to color: "lily-white men", "Black cigars","the hair was yellow","the eyes.. a cool blue","pink...nipples","bluish lips", "red fighting trunks","ginger-colored","layers of white","streaks of blue light filled the black world","howling red faces crouching tense beneath the cloud of blue-gray smoke","the room went red","yellow coin,"his face was gray", and so on.

     References to color seemed less common in later chapters (although I'm only on chapter four at the moment).

     Am I reading too much into this?

BTW, thumbs up for chapter summaries.

84. arkymalarky - Aug. 9, 1998 - 2:17 PM PDT
Hey, FTC. Good to see you over here. The colors in the early part of the book add to the vivid, nightmarish quality, imo. Rather than adding beauty and vitality, the description of the colors makes the repulsion of the setting and scene more intense. It also works in contrast with the idea of invisibility.
Hubby read the prologue and Battle Royal in an anthology last nite and now he wants to borrow the book as soon as I'm done with it.

85. FreeToChoose - Aug. 9, 1998 - 2:38 PM PDT
While poking around, I found an interesting site, Urban Dialogue. The main address is here

I found the site because the gallery section had a photograph that the artist accompanied with an Ellison excerpt here

But an article here
in the site about the bodies of over 400 Africans being unearthed in lower Manhattan in 1981 was fascinating, and tangentially relevant to the discussion at hand.

86. FreeToChoose - Aug. 9, 1998 - 2:54 PM PDT
     Speaking of the battle royal, there is (at least) one aspect that puzzles me. I understand that the narrator is so intent on thinking about his speech that he sees the battle royal as little more than a time-consuming event; a mere marking of time until he gets to make his SPEECH. He is so focused on his speech that he fails to even see, much less react to the inhumanity of the event. Even during the fight, he is worrying about how his speech will be received.
     I'm having trouble understanding why he offered to give the prize, and then the prize plus five dollars, to Tatlock, if Tatlock would pretend to lose. My first reaction was that he was so intensely interested in giving the speech, that he was willing to give up any chance of the monetary income, even give away some of his own, to end the fight sooner, and get to the speech. But if this was the sole intent, why couldn't he just take a dive? At one point he states how important the speech is, and worries that if he loses the fight, he won't be able to give it, but there's been nothing established to give him that concern, and, in fact, he loses and gives the speech.
     Can someone help me?

87. tomfreeland - Aug. 9, 1998 - 6:15 PM PDT
FreeToChoose, I assumed (maybe wrong?) that if he wasn't standing at the end, he didn't get to deliver the speech.

Glad to see you joining the discussion! And your point about color was excellent. You are *not* reading too much into it.

88. norwoodr - Aug. 10, 1998 - 9:08 AM PDT
FreeToChoose

My impression was that "taking a dive" was not an option, that the fight would go on until he was clearly too battered to go on, in which case he would be unable to stand, much less give a speech.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

89. FreeToChoose - Aug. 10, 1998 - 11:18 AM PDT
A couple other quick comments on chapter one, and then I'll catch up to the rest of you.

The thought occurred to me that perhaps he felt he wouldn't be able to give his speech if he were knocked out, but I dismissed this for two reasons. One, he WAS knocked out and he did give the speech, so it certainly wasn't the case that he could only give it if he prevailed. Two, he was invited to give his speech. There was no indication that he was invited subject to winning the battle royal, so presumably they expected him to deliver his speech whether he won or not. However, this may be the error of over-applying logic. Perhaps the narrator was worried that he wouldn't be allowed to give his speech if he lost. Even if this fear wasn't grounded in factual evidence, a group that considered the battle royal good entertainment wasn't exactly slavish to rationality. Perhaps a better alternative is that he worried that if he were not out he would be physically unable to deliver his speech. So perhaps he wanted Tatlock to "dive" to preserve his mental faculties as much as possible.

90. FreeToChoose - Aug. 10, 1998 - 11:18 AM PDT
One line I missed the first time through, as the attendants are placing a small white rug in the vacant space: "Perhaps, I thought, I will stand on the rug to deliver my speech." I remarked before at his single-minded focus on the speech. This passage just adds to that. He has just regained consciousness from a brutal beating, and is he concentrating on his own pain, or on the amazing in humanity of the event? No, he is wondering about his speech.
In contrast to the super-importance the narrator places on the speech, the group almost forgets about it. The MC says, "we almost forgot an important part of the program." It just occurred to me that the speech may be a continuation of the *entertainment* as opposed to a serious event following entertainment.

91. tomfreeland - Aug. 10, 1998 - 3:57 PM PDT
I'm going to post a couple of chapter summaries, not to shut down any of the discussion but to finish out the southern section and to give us that whole stretch as a subject.

At the end of Ch. 5, the narrator, listening to the speech, realizes that his act (though not intended to be so) was treasonous). In that frame of mind, he went to see Bledsoe, who immediately laces into him, then nails him for not lying to Bledsoe ("'You're black and living in the South-- did you foget how to lie?") then

"'Who really told you to take him out there?' he said.

"'He did, sir. No one else."

...

"'Nigger, this isn't the time to lie. I'm no white man. Tell me the truth!'

"It was as though he'd struck me. I stared across the desk thinking, He called me *that* ...

"'Answer me, boy!'

"That, I thought, notincing the throbbing of a vein ..." [the second elipses is original. this is on p. 139]. When the narrator tells Bledsoe that the vet accused the narrator of believing "white is right," Bledsoe said "And you do don't you? Well, don't you."

Bledsoe then confirms the narrator's feeling he had been a traitor-- "You poor judgment has casued this school incalculable damage. Instead of uplifting the race, you've torn it down."

92. tomfreeland - Aug. 10, 1998 - 4:09 PM PDT
I should note that the prior summary, tho' referencing ch. 5, is all ch.6.

In any event, Bledsoe then explains power-- in his hands-- and that he will keep his place "and I'll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am." He then tells the narrator that the narrator is to leave school to earn the next years fees, and that he is to get "letters to some of the schools friends to see that you get work"-- the next piece of paper for his briefcase.

The narrator decides to immediately leave for NYC.

Ch. 7: En route, he encounters the vet again; the vet makes prophecy-- "you might even dance with a white girl!" ("much of his freedom will have to be symbolic. And what will be his or any man's most easily accesible symbol of freedom? Why, a woman, of course. In 20 minutes he can inflate that symbol with all the freedom which he'll be too busy working to enjoy..."). He is also told to "Play the game, but don't believe in it."

He arrives in NYC, and has a moment of horror when he accidently pushed up against a white woman; he is amazed she does not react. Ellison wrote in his essays of the key moment of realizing this difference between the south and north in encounters in the NYC subways.

93. arkymalarky - Aug. 13, 1998 - 9:08 PM PDT
Where is everybody? I saw FV's post in suggestions and thought I'd pop in. I'm almost finished with the book. Several interesting points for discussion have been brought up, but not really debated. What about the motif of blindness which carries throughout the book? The blind speaker, one closest to The Founder, was fascinating. What was he symbolically blind to? The school in general and the principles it was based on is interesting to me. I would like to know some others' impressions of it.

94. DanDillon - Aug. 14, 1998 - 5:10 AM PDT
Recently vituperated by FrayVader, I feel compelled to pop in and express my unhappiness about not being able to participate in this thread in a meaningful and substantial manner. Certainly not for a lack of preparation or consequent leadership, this thread, with Tom at the helm doing a sterling job, would normally be one I'd grab on to and ride long into the night. However, caveat lector, I simply haven't the time to read a novel of such complexity. My reading time is engulfed mostly by preps for school and whatever my professors wish to assign--usually some dry textbookish crap. So my absence here certainly isn't for not *wanting* to participate. I just wish I were able.

Lay on, fraygrants.

95. FreeToChoose - Aug. 14, 1998 - 8:35 AM PDT
Arkymalarky

Good question on symbolic blindness, and one of the reasons I'm enjoying this thread. I'm still in chapter 6, so I'll use that as my excuse for not knowing the answer (even though I probably won't know when I get to the end).

Tom (or others)

I'm confused about a point. The narrator feels he is going to be expelled, and it appears that Dr. Bledsoe is about to do so. Then Bledsoe seems to have a change of attitude, and tells him to go to New York to earn his fees for the next year. On the next page, the narrator says, "I...knew that I would be expelled." I'm confused. If he has been expelled, what does it mean to earn his fees for the next year?

96. TheDiva - Aug. 14, 1998 - 8:37 AM PDT
FTC

Without giving away anything, I will tell you that I think Bledsoe makes the protagonist's return to the college contingent upon the earning of his fees, no?

97. TheDiva - Aug. 14, 1998 - 8:38 AM PDT
And don't forget what Tom mentioned about the transfer-of-paper motif.......there's a clue for you.

98. glendajean - Aug. 14, 1998 - 8:39 AM PDT
Tom -- my copy of "IM" is a paperback I bought in the 70's. All the pages are falling out everytime I open it, so I'm getting a new copy. Am enjoying the comments and will jump back in soon.

Really, the dog didn't eat my homework. (g)

99. FreeToChoose - Aug. 14, 1998 - 8:51 AM PDT
I also think we ought to talk about the line,

"Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie!"

This phrase seems important, perhaps even central. It seems to chapter Bledsoe's belief's but I'm not sure yet whether the author wants us to agree or disagree with this sentiment.

100. arkymalarky - Aug. 14, 1998 - 9:07 AM PDT
To me it all boils down to delusions. Bledsoe moved up the ladder by playing the game. It was a selfish move. The major revelation of his conversation with the hero, imo, is that Bledsoe cares nothing about the students, or anyone else, for that matter. He cares only about his own "position" and doesn't even realize that he's compromised his own integrity and total identity by doing so. He thinks he's bullshitted the students and the whites who really control the school to his advantage, when actually he himself has bought into the white lie and has bullshitted himself into thinking he is in control. Thus he sees the hero as a threat to his position. It never once occurs to him how to treat the hero most fairly, his dilemma is how to develop the right story to delude the protagonist and get him out of the way.

101. TheDiva - Aug. 14, 1998 - 9:08 AM PDT
I think it was certainly true within its context.

It reminds me of a story. Several years ago, there was a fifty-something white Southern (from Mississippi) woman serving an internship at an agency down the hall from the one where I worked.

One day we got on the subject of race, I believe because she found out that I was one half of an interracial couple.

She said something so incredible, along the lines of "Well, there was never a race problem where I grew up. Everyone seemed to know their place, and the Negroes were quite happy. They called us Miss and Mister and were very pleasant. It was never an issue."

Can you believe it? This was an upper-middle-class woman who employed these people as domestics, and she didn't have the first clue as to what it felt like to be a black person in the Deep South in the 1950s. Talk about clueless.

My co-worker, who is black and whose own mother had worked as a domestic in a similar household during those years, replied "That's what they wanted you to believe, because you were holding their livelihood in your hands. Do you really think they liked 'their place'?"

I think it was a matter of survival, and that's what Ellison is trying to say there.

102. TheDiva - Aug. 14, 1998 - 9:12 AM PDT
Does that make any sense?

I just reread my own post. I should probably preview when I write anything longer than five sentences.

I suppose she couldn't have known, of course, what it was like. But I wonder that she didn't have some inkling that their lot in life was less than pleasant.

103. FreeToChoose - Aug. 14, 1998 - 9:32 AM PDT
TheDiva

Well, I appreciate the help, but I'm still confused. I think that Bledsoe has some other motives for sending the narrator to New York. It doesn't make sense that he merely must come up with the money in order to be reinstated, as he was on scholarship. An alternative is that Bledsoe thinks it is important that the narrator WORK for his fees, as distinct from having them handed to him, but I didn't see any discussion to support that notion.

I think he believes that the narrator is naive about how things work, and a job in New York may open his eyes.

I assume it is important that the narrator is told not to read the letters. I assume we will learn more later, but I'm guessing that the letters contain some information (along the lines of "smack this kid up side the head") that Bledsoe doesn't want the narrator to see. But even this puzzles me. If it is important that the narrator get a job with Bledsoe's contacts, who may know how to "mold" him in the way that Bledsoe wants, why did Bledsoe forget about the letters until reminded? Wouldn't they have been critical to the plan?

104. FreeToChoose - Aug. 14, 1998 - 9:35 AM PDT
Arkymalarky

I agree with your Message #100

I'm guessing that we will see the narrator reach the same conclusion later.

105. TheDiva - Aug. 14, 1998 - 9:37 AM PDT
FTC

The letters are, indeed, critical. More than that I shouldn't say, simply because their contents, once revealed, pack quite a punch.

Basically, Bledsoe wants this kid out of town. Hell, he could have put him to work on campus if earning the money were the issue, no?

106. norwoodr - Aug. 14, 1998 - 9:59 AM PDT
One point which comes up later in the book is that the narrator is an effective public speaker because he feels genuine emotion as he speaks. The blind speaker at the college also seems to feel the genuine emotion that Bledsoe the opportunist so obviously lacks. Maybe you have to be blind to really believe in anything.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

107. norwoodr - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:11 AM PDT
In the introduction, the author makes it clear that he has white friends. Also, Bledsoe is clearly not an admirable character. So, no, I do not think the author intends us to take seriously the idea that the only way for a black to relate to a white is through lies. That is the voice of a pragmatic cynic, a professional politician.

The woman who thought it nice that southern blacks knew their "place" was echoing sentiments I heard throughout my life. The most prejudiced white could enjoy extremely warm, friendly, and personal relationships with blacks who "knew their place". My own father, a bigot all his life, had a black man as his closest friend for the last years of his life. In The Sound and the Fury, Quentin feels great pleasure on returning to the South in exchanging a few friendly words with a black man in a waggon. No, I don't think white southerners had a clue about how black southerners felt. What is more, I suspect that many black southerners were not pretending, but honestly bought into a system where they could have a comfortable if humble life, just as the narrator of Invisible Man has bought into many of the ideas he grew up with, and is uncomfortable when he finds out his mentors are hypocrites.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

108. norwoodr - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:13 AM PDT
FreeToChoose

There are plot developments ahead which answer your questions.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

109. FreeToChoose - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:20 AM PDT
TheDiva

I agree that you shouldn't share the contents of the letters at this time. I think the insistence that he not open them is evidence that they are more than simply letters of introduction.

I also agree that he wants him out of town, but I'm not entirely clear why. Bledsoe seems to be concerned that the narrator hasn't figured out how the game is played. I would have thought the narrator would be more of a threat is he understood what Bledsoe was doing, and potentially could disrupt it. Unless Bledsoe is still concerned that there will be more fallout from the trustee, who could stir up trouble if the narrator is around, but not otherwise, I'm not clear why Bledsoe wants him out of town.

110. FreeToChoose - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:21 AM PDT
TheDiva

Although I should add, if it becomes clear later why Bledsoe wants him out of town, but it isn't supposed to be obvious now, I don't want to know yet, I'll learn in due course.

111. FreeToChoose - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:22 AM PDT
Norwoodr

Thanks. Then I'll wait.

112. TheDiva - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:24 AM PDT
I think Bledsoe is concerned that the character's naivete WRT race and proprieties (i.e., the fact that he saw no diplomatic way around taking Norton on that magical mystery tour) could upset the delicate balance he (Bledsoe) has achieved.

113. FreeToChoose - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:24 AM PDT
norwoodr

"Maybe you have to be blind to really believe in anything."

Very interesting hypothesis.

114. arkymalarky - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:25 AM PDT
Just remember, FTC, the most important line in the book(imo) you already know, and it was the first thing he "found" in his briefcase after being prompted by his grandfather in a dream to open it. I quoted it already, but again it's "Keep that Nigger Boy Running."

115. arkymalarky - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:28 AM PDT
Bledsoe believes he is as obligated to keep white people ignorant in his own self interest as whites felt obligated to keep blacks ignorant in their own self interest. For Bledsoe's life goals, it works. For a seeker of truth, it's unacceptable.

116. arkymalarky - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:33 AM PDT
norwood, as usual you show a lot of insight and express it very directly. I think your background is probably similar to mine, and I agree with you about racial attitudes of the previous generation as far as I personally observed them. We lived with blinders on, and our personal observations are unfortunately all we have to work with. I think Maya Angelou really gives a clear perception of the black pov of that generation in _Caged Bird_.

117. FreeToChoose - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:49 AM PDT
Reviews of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

118. arkymalarky - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:53 AM PDT
Thanks, FTC.

119. tomfreeland - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:55 AM PDT
I want to make one very fast post; there's been a lot of conversation I want to deal with later on, but for now there's this:

The racial attitude the Diva counted from a Mississippian (says this Mississippian...) is not just common, it was pervasive among upper class whites. The cliche in the civil rights era was this: An upper class white would ask his/her house servant "do you want your children in our schools? Do you want to vote" and get back "Oh no mam/sir!" and then say to one and all "See, I know negros (or worse, nigras, or worse...), and they are happy! They don't want these things outside agitators say they want."

BUT the situation was even more complex than has been presented in this thread. One of the most hilarious and accurate pieces of writing I've seen about black/white relations in the south in this era is by Zora Neale Hurston; titled "The Pet Negro System," and published in the AMERICAN MERCURY about 1943, it is available in the nonfiction volume of Hurston's work in the Library of America. Basically she notes that on both sides of the race-line, southerners would have one (or a few) of the other race who would except from their otherwise-harshe racial views. For instance, a white leader would say "I'm not for college education for the negroes, except for " and then he would name and justify the special status of his "pet" exception. Hurtson notes that this was a two-way street, and then names prominent *northern* blacks and white who have this relationship across racial lines-- e.g. W.E.B. DuBois and his close friendship with Joel Sprinarn (sp?). Because Hurston did not care who she might offend to make her point, her writing can be uncomfortable reading for those of *any* viewpoint unwilling to be tweaked about their assumptions.

120. tomfreeland - Aug. 14, 1998 - 10:58 AM PDT
The narrator acted independently of Bledsoe and was "a traitor" to the community by doing what he did; he was thus punished by banishment. Bledsoe wanted him out of town because he acted independently and because he was a danger -- any level of danger was unacceptable. So he had to be banished.

Reading: The Invisible Man

host: Tom Freeland

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