Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison REVIEW
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Not the most brilliant review I've ever filmed, which is a pity, since the book is wonderful. Also, all great literature grows on you on re-reading but this one was ridiculously more wonderful the second time round.
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Pure, unadulterated brilliance! What Ellison was able to do with a straight-forward tale, showing the complexities of racism, is astonishing in this huge, sprawling work of pure art. In the argument as Great American Novel.
Great story, memorable characters and some of the greatest dialogue I've ever seen in my boring life, The Invisible Man is such a good novel, that the creator never made another one ever again.
This just went from being one of the classics on my bookshelf that I regularly put off reading to something I'm actually really excited to read.
About halfway through this myself. I'm really enjoying it and I'm excited to finish it.
I just finished this book two days before you posted this review. Excellent timing! I think your statements about the book are spot on. You can't avoid having an opinion after reading this book, it demands a response from you. From what I've seen of your videos, you have a valuable perspective and solid understanding of literature. Thanks for sharing it.
Personally, I didn't want to put the book down and didn't find it difficult. Knowing what happened to the narrator felt really important to me. I loved Ellison's use of imagery motifs, like blindness (blindfolds, blind preacher, false eye, etc.) because it helped tie the otherwise chaotic story together quite well. Also, the main character has such visceral responses (intense anger and bitter laughter are his usual reactions to people) that I was able to have appropriately intense feelings about the disgusting things he witnessed. However, I think the saddest thing for me was when the main character didn't react. He was numb to truly horrendous events in the early part of the novel. He would grow angry to defend the conscience of white men, but when he or others of color were being abused and mistreated he didn't seem to care. That awful conditioning on a young mind was the most disturbing thing I witnessed in the book and was expertly handled by Ellison.
It's true that those parts are absurdly disturbing, also when he's being - basically - tortured but all he thinks about is impressing rich white folks, so that he can have a good life. Truly what a messed up world.
From beginning to when he leaves the university is just the most incredibly powerful writing. From there I'd say it gets a little more diffuse but still a stone classic. Pale Fire coming soon?
This is a great review. Just finished the the book today, and you articulated the spirit of the novel so well. The way I put it to my students and friends is that the Plot feels writen by Kafka, the style and dialects of characters is virtuosic and oddly humorous with similarities to Twain and Pynchon, and the sincerity and alarm, especially w/r/t race, is direct and powerful similar that Baldwin’s and Wright’s (and of course other black writers of his ilk) writing. Thanks for the review!
Thank you Matthew, what a nice comment! You must have some really awesome students if they can follow all those references :D!
This book is not about racism, it is about racial identity. This book is about the repossession and the reclaiming of the past, tradition, the artifacts that black people lost as part of their identity from the South, and through Booker T, to finally fuse the DuBoisean double-consciousness into a single one without having to play the puppet, but to be able to stand on one’s own two feet and appreciate one’s own race, and past of slavery, with God, with the yam, with the music - the blues, jazz, with sexuality, oppression. It is to allow for black people to be black within a white society - to sing if they want. To see the past as a sense of strength.
This book is about racism because one cannot talk about racial identity apart from racism.
I know it’s a book focused on race, but I feel that it picks up on universal truths about identity and how you’re perceived by the world. I’m a white European and it actually felt very relatable broadly, I’m certain these feelings are intensified for African Americans however.
As far as existential stories go I think it’s my favourite, above Sartre’s and Camus’.
I read the book in 3 days and found it amazing.
Bookchemist, have you read any Toni Morrison? I feel like you'd really enjoy her work - she was a big Faulkner fan and her writing contains a very lyrical stream of consciousness mixed with a lot of really poignant insight on being a black woman in the US in the early/mid 20th century. I recommend The Bluest Eye
Thanks for the recommendation man! So far her only novel I've read is Beloved, and it's one of the best ghost stories I've ever read (besides being, of course, so much else).
I just started reading this! So far it's great! Awesome video!
I'll come back to this video in 2 weeks, I have to read this book for my 20th Century African American Literature course and I'm really curious about your opinion
Finished this last week for a class I was taking and can’t stop thinking about it. I found it to be incredibly powerful and relatable in many ways. Ellison definitely captures a lot of the nuances in race relations that may on the surface, seem to be one way, but underneath the surface are in fact not what they appear. Although the book’s subject matter is heavy, I thoroughly enjoyed Invisible Man and found the narrative itself to be fairly simple to follow. It’s the emotional aspect that takes a bit of a toll.
Well, this is a fun coincidence! I read Invisible Man just this week, and submitted an essay on the politicisation of life and death to my supervisor earlier tonight. My copy (same edition as yours) is about 8 cm away from the screen on which I'm watching this, so this is very appropriate. Any reason you decided to read it at this moment? I found this book really affecting, because - you're right - it avoids simplicity. And Tod Clifton's death, the funeral crowd, the sloganising... talk about 'as current as ever'! I don't think it's a difficult novel per se, but it's certainly dense - though not overcrowded. There are some great characters (Bledsoe, Emerson jr. - little nod to Ralph Waldo -, Ras the Exhorter). The plot is, as you say, thrilling, so I didn't find the reading tedious at all. In fact, I read it more quickly than I do most novels of that size. Part of this had to do with the fact that this, to me, was one of those works of fiction that ring so true that their problems, personal and political, don't feel confined to the fictional sphere. I ended up thinking about 'the real world', e.g. Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, the Black Panther Party, Rubin Carter, etc. Finally, there's this great underlying question which is a bit unsettling, but definitely important: is life always political? For everybody? For the oppressed? For the famous? For me?
Some excellent points! One of the most heartbreaking points in the book is that indeed not all of us can affod NOT to be political :) as for why I'm talking about it now, can you keep a secret? I led a seminar class on this novel a few weeks ago!
Your secret is safe!
Great review of a brilliant book. I don't get why people call it boring.
Great review! Definitely a great American classic. I do agree that it is extremely dense, but worth the read if one takes the time to read it. Have you read Native Son? Now that one will get a good discussion on race going.
I have! It was years ago and I liked it a lot, although perhaps it's a bit less subtle in the way it handles politics and the relationship between the left and African Americans than Invisible Man is. Overall they're very different books, but equally visceral and upsetting (in the best of ways).
Exactly!
Great job my friend
I am currently reading Invisible Man. I like your review. It is a rather dense book, but it is not boring and not hard to read. I am rather ashamed that I waited so long to read it. And, I would disagree with you on the comment about it not being a classic. I believe it is an African American classic for sure.
I agree! What I meant in the video about it reading "like a classic" was related to the fact that it's heavy and dense, like lots of classic literature (as in, say, pre-20th Century) tends to feel.
The_Bookchemist Oh, okay. No problem. I understand. Thanks for the reply.
What edition of the book is that? I like the look of it (I'm a bit of a book cover junkee).
This one: www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/Invisible-Man-Penguin-Essentials-Ralph-Ellison/0241970563/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1487602689&sr=8-2&keywords=Invisible+Man+by+Ralph+Ellison
really nice cover
It's the Penguin Essentials edition, they gave a few classics some fancy covers. I love good covers too! Italian editions tend to be the driest things, and there's a place in Milano called The American Bookstore that feels like walking into fucking Oz.
It is interesting how the meeting place of The Brotherhood is the Chthonian, perhaps a reference to H.P. Lovecraft, a horror/sci-fi/fantasy writer from the early 20th century, a contemporary of Ellison. Could this be an allusion to a secret dark cult, impending doom, or unnameable horror? Such as Brother Jack's glass eye in the bottom of his glass looking at the narrator? Also interesting how in Saul Bellow's review of the novel he mentions how The Brotherhood are communists but it isn't explicitly stated as such in the novel, only implied. If they merely stood for racial equality, what exactly made them outright Communists? It seems that their ultimate goal was not to unite the races, rather to objectify African Americans to attain an uncertain goal.
Read "The Visible Man" by Chuck Klosterman
Generally I had no problem staying intersted while reading the book. It starts out well with im getting in trouble driving Norton and the Bedsoe sending him to NYC. I thought it was apalling what Bledsoe did to him with the reference letters he gave out. Hence, it kept me intersted all the way through enough. The only portion where I had trouble trying to keep
reading was after he falls into the man haole and he starts talking various philosophical things but I bore it through to the end.
I think I understood the gist of this book but I have to admit some of his points could be intrepreted other ways. The book is clearly about race relation and how blacks and white perceive each other. But there some points which are kind of vague to me, such as invisible man. I guess I am one of those who is slow on the uptake but he kept throwing it in different directions in my opinion.
I would not recommend this book for he lay person. I would only suggest this to people who want a challenge in a philosohpical, psycholigical, and sociological aspect. It is not boring but its points are not clear but not all literature is.
Fantastic review, we share the same thoughts and you put it so eloquently. This is a very important book in today's political climate.
How many hours in a day do you spend reading?
0 to 3 (4 or 5 if it's summer, sometimes 6 if I have stuff to read for my research or a deadline). On average though, rarely more than 1, and on several days that's a perfect 0.
I wanna watch by English subtitle
I like ur vids
hey bookchemist, what watch is that?
It says on the dial it's a Daniel Wellington! It was a graduation present.
Finally. A book that I can relate to lol
Racism or prejudice?
I am a BLACK woman and this book is REALLY hard for me to read...
Please tell me what about it makes it hard for you to read?