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a Negro, just as white women want to sleep with him precisely and
only because he is black and not white. And thus, from beginning
to end, he is spat upon and kicked in the face because he is colored
by
both
white and colored people.
But, and this is perhaps the most important thing about Ellison's
book,
Invisible Man
is not merely a story about being a Negro, and
not a protest novel, unless we are willing to call it everybody's protest
novel, to use James Baldwin's phrase. It is truly about being a human
being, any human being and all human beings; the hero has almost
as much to fear from his own people as from white men, and he
has to fear most of all the way in which the minds of most human
beings frequently and habitually work. This persistent and generaliz–
ing insight into the hero's plight as a universal plight redeems the
book throughout, when the tendency to melodrama, to declamation,
to screaming, and to apocalyptic hallucination is on the verge of
going too far, so far that toward the end of each episode the reader
feels that he ought to be coming to the end of the book. For example,
the first chapter mounts to such a pitch of emotion that it might well
be the last chapter, and this is true of several other passages. Indeed,
the book might be said to be almost all climax, and this would make
for an unbearable and self-defeating intensity, were it not that Ellison's
dominant mode is passionate speech and oration which is overwhelm–
ing because it is so genuine and which mounts to a kind of controlled
hysteria, a hysteria which transcends itself because it is justified by
actuality and controlled by Ellison's critical
intellectual
intelligence,
and his natural, spontaneous eloquence.
As I said, the language of literary criticism seems shallow and
patronizing when one has to speak of a book like this. When one has
finished it, one is tempted to say: Reality (hear! hear!) is not mocked,
inside a book or anywhere else, as long as such a book can be written.
But I should also say that this may be too personal an impression,
and for personal reasons an overestimation. It is a book which ought
to be reviewed by William Faulkner, the author of
Light In August.
Delmore Schwartz
the hans hofmann school of fine arts
52 west 8th street
new york city
phone gramercy 7-3491
provincetown, mass.
june 8 - aug. 29 approved G.!. Bill of Rights
summer session
personally conducted
by mr. hofmann
