In 1952, Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) published his novel Invisible Man,
which transformed the dynamics of American literature. The novel won the
National Book Award, extended the themes of his early short stories, and
dramatized in fictional form the cultural theories expressed in his
later essay collections Shadow & Act and Going to the Territory.
In Shadowing Ralph Ellison, John Wright traces Ellison's intellectual
and aesthetic development and the evolution of his cultural philosophy
throughout his long career. The book explores Ellison's published
fiction, his criticism and correspondence, and his passionate exchanges
with--and impact on--other literary intellectuals during the Cold War
1950s and during the culture wars of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Wright examines Ellison's body of work through the lens of Ellison's
cosmopolitan philosophy of art and culture, which the writer began to
construct during the late 1930s. Ellison, Wright argues, eschewed
orthodoxy in both political and cultural discourse, maintaining that to
achieve the highest cultural awareness and the greatest personal
integrity, the individual must cultivate forms of thinking and acting
that are fluid, improvisational, and vitalistic--like the blues and
jazz. Accordingly, Ellison elaborated throughout his body of work the
innumerable ways that rigid cultural labels, categories, and
concepts--from racial stereotypes and fashionable academic theories to
conventional political doctrines--fail to capture the full potential of
human consciousness. Instead, Ellison advocated forms of consciousness
and culture akin to what the blues and jazz reveal, and he portrayed
those musical traditions as the best embodiment of the evolving American
spirit.
