Narrator: When Ralph Ellison was writing Invisible Man in the 1940s, few would have predicted that a complex modernist novel that blends autobiography, epic, picaresque, and bildungsroman could secure his reputation as a literary icon. No doubt, this tome drips with allegory, surrealism, and allusions. But what makes it so resonant that it could surmount initial condemnation by Black literary lights, appear on countless syllabi, and feature prominently in the life and media coverage of President Obama and in the Netflix series Luke Cage? 

 Today, we’ll tell the story of how Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man has become a defining midcentury Black novel.

You’re listening to Remarkable Receptions—a podcast about popular and critical responses to African American novels.

This sprawling novel traces the geographical and psychological journey of an unnamed, bright, ambitious Black man in the 1940s. At first, he is supported by philanthropic, bigoted whites at a Southern Negro college. After accidentally violating unspoken racial mores, he is banished, forced to scrabble in the dizzyingly different Harlem to make a living. The experience forces him to question those values he had embraced as key to fulfilling his leadership aspirations. He becomes a spokesperson for the white-dominated Brotherhood, a fictional organization inspired by the Communist Party. But their tokenizing treatment of the Black community makes him increasingly uncertain about politics, race, and collective vs. individual identity. 

Near the novel’s end, he gets trapped amid a chaotic race riot and finally retreats to an underground hideout to plan his next steps. Readers remain unsure if this is triumph or tragedy, whether he has become a lunatic or a prophet as he lampoons virtually all political leaders.

 Though it appears in the first few pages, before he begins college, the infamous battle royal is the best-known scene. The protagonist explains:

I had some misgivings over the battle royal, by the way. Not from a distaste for fighting, but because I didn’t care too much for the other fellows… I suspected that fighting a battle royal might detract from the dignity of my speech. In those pre-invisible days I visualized myself as a potential Booker T. Washington. But the other fellows didn’t care too much for me either… I felt superior  --From Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

 This scene foregrounds the novel’s major themes: how physical and metaphorical visibility dictate race and cause conflicting senses of Black American identity and possibility constantly to clash at the intersections of religion and race, culture and class, politics and private life. Ellison provides no simple answers, refusing to endorse any political philosophy as the solution to wide-ranging problems facing African Americans in a segregated nation.

 Ellison aimed at a different objective. He wanted to write an experimental version of the Great American novel inspired by the likes of Moby-Dick. In 1953, he explained that he hoped his book would “return to the mood of personal moral responsibility for democracy which typified the best of our [American] nineteenth-century fiction” (102). Because of these ambitions, the manuscript constantly expanded for years. But his patient toil proved worth it. Unprecedented praise awaited Invisible Man when it was published in 1952.

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 Richard Wright’s bestselling Native Son had previously been that African American novel most praised by the white establishment. But by the 1950s, authors and scholars were disagreeing about the utility of so-called protest fiction, or fiction formulated to dramatize a current social or political problem. Ellison’s different approach appeared at the right moment.

 At first, the novel sold only modestly well. And many Black authors condemned its anti-Communist bent. Chester Himes emphasized that Ellison’s view of Black artistry was initially more appealing to the white community than to Black readers and fellow artists. But the white-dominated international literary establishment lauded it. The New York Times Book Review proclaimed it an instant classic, deserving a place alongside canonical epics. 

 Then came the most important honor that turned the tide of sales: the 1953 National Book Award. Ellison declared in his acceptance speech his delight in imaginative writing. He offered his hope that fiction could “arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of a fairy tale” (105).   

 This prize and universalist vision admitted him into elite white circles, precipitating a flurry of speaking invitations and opportunities that lasted the rest of his life. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters; received an honorary doctorate from Harvard; and became a frequent guest and arts consultant in the Kennedy White House. When the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in 1954, the novel’s growing reputation earned the college dropout visiting and permanent positions at prestigious white educational institutions in the U.S. and abroad.

 Unlike many peers, Ellison refused active involvement in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. He believed that a well-written novel itself could help navigate and improve American democracy. 

 Laura Vrana: Many therefore saw him as more apolitical than other Black authors. 

 Narrator: That’s Laura Vrana, a literature professor at University of South Alabama.

 Laura Vrana: As African American literature attained a foothold in academia throughout the 1970s, the view of Ellison’s novel as apolitical actually helped secure Invisible Man’s position on syllabi. 

 Narrator: The novel began as a result Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Ellison’s novel began to attract ever-increasing public attention. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked it 19th on its list of 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included it in its 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005 list. In 2007, The New York Times dubbed Ellison one of “the gods of America’s literary Parnassus.” 

 Ellison assessed Invisible Man self-effacingly as a failed experiment with limited lasting power. He was wrong. Afterward, he recurrently became a touchstone reference point for Black authors who have accrued prestigious accolades, despite never publishing another novel.  

 Still, Invisible Man once seemed unlikely to have a twenty-first-century afterlife directly linked to American politics.

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 Scholars now re-assess the novel alongside twenty-first-century developments. Ellison’s literary executor John Callahan suggests Invisible Man opened doors for the Black-authored novels of all styles now winning awards. And Jean-Christophe Cloutier examines comic books in the novel, arguing that its narrative arc draws on superhero comic origin stories and that of course Marvel’s Luke Cage carries a copy throughout that namesake show’s first season. 

 But another personal copy of Invisible Man indirectly guides the majority of recent scholarship, prompting scholars to recognize that Ellison was political in his way. Invisible Man recurs among numerous round-ups of books Obama has recommended. He cites it as an influence on his own Dreams From My Father and inspiration for his evolution. 

 As a result, the book inspires scholarly imaginations, too. Callahan metaphorically imagines a fictional near-encounter in 1980s New York between the aging author and a young Obama, jogging with the novel in his pocket. He compares Obama to the narrator. Both share oratorical talent and leadership aspirations, and both must grapple with how others perceive their race to fulfill those dreams (314). He thus highlights that Obama is one of many who have found inspiration in Invisible Man for exploring racial identity (315). Scholar Bryan Crable also draws on Invisible Man’s meditations on visibility and perceptual blindness to analyze how media coverage of Obama maintained racial binaries, emphasizing his appearance. 

 Commentators even compare Obama outright to this novel’s protagonist. David Samuels wrote in The New Republic in 2008 that Obama could be an “unusually effective president” in part because he, like the novel’s protagonist, seemed to embrace romantic notions of racial authenticity that Ellison eventually rejects at the novel’s conclusion. 

 Yet that enigmatic ending hardly embraces or rejects anything clearly. Ellison’s protagonist does reject party affiliation. He ultimately declares vaguely: “[T]here’s a possibility that even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play” (581). But he does not dictate what that role might be. 

 Laura Vrana: Invisible Man thus proves eminently open to varying interpretations.

 Narrator: Again, that’s Professor Laura Vrana,

 Laura Vrana: Obama himself has acknowledged he is a blank slate for those of different beliefs to project views onto. The novel appeals to our first Black President because of this congruence, as well as because of Ellison’s unwavering idealism about the nation’s moral core. 

 Narrator: This visibility in the age of Obama for a novel that is, ironically, about invisibility could be part of why it was reported in 2017 that Hulu planned to produce an adaptation. This adaptation has not come to fruition. The entrancing nature of Ellison’s invisible figure might fade if embodied in one actor. But with or without this adaptation, his final question, “Who knows but that…I speak for you?” (581), is persistently haunting for all inhabiting an America still grappling with the enigmas of race that Invisible Man treats so richly. 

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This episode was written by Laura Vrana. The episode was edited by Elizabeth Cali and me, Howard Rambsy. 

 Remarkable Receptions is part of the Black Literature Network, a joint project from African American literary studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and the History of Black Writing at the University of Kansas. The project was made possible by the generous support of the Mellon Foundation. For more information, visit black lit network dot org.

Works Cited

 Callahan, John F. “That Pause for Contemplation: A Centennial Meditation on Ralph Ellison.” The New Territory: Ralph Ellison and the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Marc C. Conner and Lucas E. Morel. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 2016. 313–28. Print.

Cloutier, Jean-Christophe. Shadow Archives: The Lifecycles of African American Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 2019. Print.

Crable, Bryan. “Invisible Man in the Age of Obama: Ellison on (Color) Blindness, Visibility, and the Hopes for a Postracial America.” The New Territory: Ralph Ellison and the Twenty-First Century. Ed. Marc C. Conner and Lucas E. Morel. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 2016. 99–114. Print.

Ellison, Ralph. “Brave Words for a Startling Occasion.” 1953. Shadow and Act. New York: Random House, 1964. 102–7. Print.

---. “Introduction.” Invisible Man. 1952. New York: Random House, 1982. vii–xxiii. Print.

---. Invisible Man. 1952. New York: Random House, 1982. Print.

Morel, Lucas E. “Prologue: Recovering the Political Artistry of Invisible Man.” Ralph Ellison and the Raft of Hope: A Political Companion to Invisible Man. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 2004. 1–21. Print.

Rampersad, Arnold. Ralph Ellison. New York: Knopf, 2007. Print.

Samuels, David. “Invisible Man.” The New Republic. 21 Oct. 2008. Web. https://newrepublic.com/article/62148/invisible-man. Electronic.