The first-person Invisible Man is an unnamed young black man in the 1950s who recounts his journey from the fog of unknowing to self-awareness. The story is framed in opening and closing scenes by the mature narrator, who lives in an abandoned coal cellar in New York. “I am an invisible man,” he says in the opening line, and the rest of the novel explains how that came to be.
His journey took him from a black college in Georgia to a paint factory in New York, and then to a socialist political organization, and finally to his cellar. Along the way he becomes aware of the different aspects of his invisibility, which are many.
The most obvious sense of his invisibility arises from his blackness. White people do not see black people, or don’t want to, or if they do see them, avert their eyes, or if they must interact with them, do so as master to servant. That is apparent to the young narrator even in his early college days and emphasized to the reader by having him be anonymous throughout the novel.
Yet is it so obvious? In early scenes, the narrator is a driver for a rich white man, a perfect role for invisibility. But the white man is a college benefactor who wants to “do good for your people.” He sees black people. But after the narrator drives the benefactor into the country and accidentally exposes him to impoverished and ignorant blacks, the president of the college expels him for having “exposed” the benefactor to the seamy side of black life, tearing open the cloak of respectable black invisibility.
The narrator leaves school and migrates to New York to seek his fortune but he is ignored by potential employers. As an educated black man he is uniquely invisible, neither an ignorant laborer nor an accomplished businessman, yet still black. He is misperceived on both ends of the spectrum and is located nowhere. Again though, it’s not a simple invisibility, and his letters of recommendation are not what he thought, either.
In the throngs of New York, there are so many people that the narrator feels anonymous and invisible as he roams the streets. Things are more complicated than they seem though. He rents a room from an older black woman who treats him kindly even though he’s behind on the rent. Why would she do that when she doesn’t even know him? Is he invisible to her?
When he gets a job working with a socialist political organization, he is thrilled to be doing something positive to uplift his people. Yet he soon discovers secret political machinations that have nothing to do with his grand speechifying and suddenly he realizes that anyone who works behind the scenes is invisible. Yet the highly visible activist who calls for violence on the streets is later revealed to be just a pawn in a political chess game, actually not as visible as he seems.
At the same time, the narrator discovers a flamboyant preacher, reverend Rinehart, who is highly visible and well-loved by his people, but who is also secretly a pimp and a gambler. He’s visible in each context he operates in but nobody (except the narrator) knows his public personas. The real Rinehart is invisible.
There are many other examples of how the theme of “the invisible man” play out, including the framing pieces describing an anonymous black man living in an abandoned coal cellar. Near the end, the narrator makes the case that invisibility is what everyone desires, even white people, who strive to become invisible through conformity.
Yet paradoxically, and brilliantly, the narrator of the novel is extremely detailed in describing every movement of his soul, every fluttering of his heart, every spasm of his thoughts. From the reader’s perspective, this man is anything but invisible. We occupy the inside of his head for 600 pages, the full landscape of his interiority exposed to us as he describes his “invisibility.”
Many other layers of meaning can be, and have been, mined from this book, from the themes of social history, black identity, economics, politics, symbolism, humor. It’s a complex and moving tale that wears well even after the better part of a century.
Ellison, Ralph (1952/1995). Invisible Man. New York: Vintage/Random (581 pp).
This novel about America after the Vietnam War must have seemed more profound and insightful in the late 70’s. Now it seems worn and clichéd. Converse, a hard-bitten foreign reporter in Saigon buys three keys of heroin and attempts to smuggle it back to the U.S. and that’s his retirement plan.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s short (222 page) book on astrophysics is attractive in a 4.5 x 7.5- inch format (hardbound). Just looking at it you get the impression it would be easy and fun to read. If you have some science education and are familiar with modern cosmology and general relativity (and you should be if you count yourself as an educated person), the book is a breeze, written with style and wit.
This little time-burner involves a young college grad in San Francisco who gets a job at an all-night bookstore that seems to have more books and shelves than New York’s Strand. Certain preferred and important customers use the store like lending library, bringing and taking “special” books. All transactions must be logged in a secret and sacred journal that goes back years.
Charles Bukowski is a name that often comes up in conversations among and about writers, so I decided to sample him. Ham on Rye is his quasi-autobiographical tale of a young man in Los Angeles, from abusive childhood to alienated adult in the years before WWII. The 58 chapters are small, 3-7 page vignettes, scenes from his life, most involving getting whipped by his father, fistfights, drinking, trying to get laid, or some combination of those. The only thing that unites the scenes is the first-person voice of the narrator.
I read this book because I thought it might help me create better characters in my novels. As an author, I struggle to create characters who don’t sound and act just like me. I’ve often chosen females as my first-person narrator just to force me out of my own head. I’ve tried black people, immigrants, aliens (I mean space-aliens) for the same reason. It’s a struggle because I’m me and not anybody else. How do actors do it? They can be anybody.
The old-time aluminum trays with a lever that had to be yanked vigorously and multiple times to release broken ice cubes while the tray itself stuck to your hands – those were no fun, but since the 1970’s, small, colorful plastic trays have been around that release the ice cleanly with a twist. I never had any trouble keeping a plastic bin of ice in the freezer and I scoffed at my first refrigerator with in-door ice cube dispenser. Well, I admit I like the convenience, when it works, but that’s only 75% of the time. Often the dispenser either grinds and grinds with no output, or jams and beeps, or spews ice all over the floor. It’s just not a reliable technology. How hard can it be?
The destiny of reading and writing is extinction, like the skills of operating a spinning wheel, cutting a quill pen, and knapping flint tools. Reading and writing will fall into increasing disuse until they are known and practiced only by specialists and hobbyists, the way some people still use Morse code or know how to read Old English.
I estimate reading and writing will last longer than I will. They probably have another hundred years to run but extinction is their destiny. Hard-won skills though they are, they just won’t be needed in the future except in niche applications.
actors’ faces – extreme close ups, often from forehead to chin, and those pictures were held for up to fifteen seconds. That’s unusual and it was very frequent in the film. Why did Herzog do it?