II. CHANGE THE JOKE AND SLIP THE YOKE
Ralph Ellison
Stanley Edgar Hyman's essay on the relationship
Negro American literature and Negro American folklore
matters in which my own interest is such that the very news of
piece aroused my enthusiasm. Yet after reading it I find that
conceptions of the way in which folk tradition gets into
and especially into the novel; our conceptions of just what is
and what is
American
in Negro American folklore; and our
tions of a Negro American writer's environment- are at such
that I must disagree with him all along the way. And since much
his essay is given over so generously to aspects of my own
writings, I am put in the ungrateful- and embarrassing- position
not only evaluating some of his statements from that highly
(but privileged ) sanctuary provided by one's intimate
of one's personal history, but of questioning some of his readings
my own novel by consulting the text.
Archetypes, like taxes, seem doomed to be with us always,
so with literature, one hopes; but between the two there must
be the living human being in a specific texture of time, place,
circumstance; who must respond, make choices, achieve ....
iu4u' .
.u....
and create specific works of art. Thus I feel that Hyman'S
tion with folk tradition and the pleasure of archetype-hunting
to a critical game that ignores the specificity of literary works.
it also causes him to blur the distinction between various
and different currents of American folklore, and, generally, to
simplify the American tradition.
Hyman's favorite archetypical figure is the trickster, but I see
a danger here. From a proper distance
all
archetypes would appear
to be tricksters and confidence men; part-God, part-man, no
ODe
