Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison is justly celebrated for his epochal novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953 and has become a classic of American literature. But Ellison's strange inability to finish a second novel, despite his dogged efforts and soaring prestige, made him a supremely enigmatic figure. Arnold Rampersad skillfully tells the story of a writer whose thunderous novel and astute, courageous essays on race, literature, and culture assure him of a permanent place in our literary heritage. Starting with Ellison's hardscrabble childhood in Oklahoma and his ordeal as a student in Alabama, Rampersad documents his improbable, painstaking rise in New York to a commanding place on the literary scene. With scorching honesty but also fair and compassionate, Rampersad lays bare his subject's troubled psychology and its impact on his art and on the people about him.This book is both the definitive biography of Ellison and a stellar model of literary biography. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Review :
Praise for "Ralph Ellison ""Illuminating and richly reported . . ." -"The New York Times Book Review ""Absorbing . . . stunning." -"South Florida Sun-Sentinel ""Riveting . . . exhaustive . . . an intensely researched, elegantly written book" -"Los Angeles Times Book Review ""In this tremendous biography, Rampersad brings Ellison back down to human scale, relating the writer's remarkable, deeply sad life with reportorial flare and unflinching honesty . . . Rampersad's is a deeply sympathetic biography, but by no means excessively forgiving. Here is Ellison full of rage and talent, vain and ambitious, but fired by a deep moral clarity." -"Sunday Star Ledger ""With the publication of Arnold Rampersad's "Ralph Ellison," we have the first comprehensive treatment . . . elegant and lively prose . . . we now have a 'mighty' biography of this quintessential American life." -"Charlotte Observor ""Immensely engaging . . . in Rampersad's hands, Ellison's life emerges as one of the essential literary lives of the 20th century . . . Rampersad's exemplary biography, written with a blend of deep sympathy and cool detachment, splendidly achieves the one true task of literary biography: it illuminates the life so that we may better understand what it produced." -"Houston Chronicle ""Thorough and insightful." -"American Heritage ""Marvelous . . . In style and structure, "Ralph Ellison: A Biography "is, like its subject, unfailingly elegant." -"The Tennessean ""Compelling and insightful." -"The Washington Times ""A jewel-like level of social detail . . . illuminate[s] not just the development of the author's vision, but the complex contextsthat shape literary creation." -"Austin American Statesman ""A dependable reference, a compelling story, a cautionary tale . . . Rampersad has triumphed." -"The Plain Dealer ""Important . . . the definitive life . . . skillfully written, deeply researched" -"The New York Sun ""Rampersad addresses the nature of Ellison's psyche and makes reasonable connections between Ellison's personal experiences and his writing, and he avoids psychoanalystic overdetermination and cheap mirror work between lived events and the written word. Along similar lines, he deftly deals with the salacious material that a weaker hand would overplay" -"Harper's ""Compassionate yet devastating . . . subtle insight, painstaking scholarship and elegant presentation" -"The Nation ""Absorbing . . . fascinating." -"Black Florida Life and Style ""An invaluable contribution . . . Arnold Rampersad's biography of Ellison is a reserved, dignified, thoroughly researched and well-paced study of the life of one of America's greatest authors. Unlike many literary biographers, who perform hackneyed psychoanalysis or amateur literary criticism on their subjects' lives and works, Rampersad sticks to the events of Ellison's life, rendering them with a refreshing objectivity seldom found in our sensationalist times." -"San Francisco Chronicle ""Sumptuously researched . . . his subtlety shines." -"The Star Tribune "(St. Paul) "What a wonderful biography this is, filled with intelligence and understanding of its subject and all the varied milieus in which he lived his long and wonderful life . . . Mr. Rampersad writes so beautifully, so evocatively, that every page of "RalphEllison "is a pleasure to read . . . it is hard to imagine anyone more attuned to him, more insightful, more truly sympathetic than Mr. Rampersad, who has written the definitive biography of this great American." -"Washington Times " ""Ralph Ellison" is a classic work of erudition, grace, and elegance. Rampersad offers us an Ellison whose gifts and warts orbit the same universe of creative genius. Like Ellison's work, Rampersad's text wrestles eloquently with difficult truths about race, politics, and American life." -Michael Eric Dyson "Arnold Rampersad's stunningly revealing biography has, at long last, unveiled-in magisterial prose-the very complex and vulnerable man behind Ralph Ellison's own masks and myths. One of the nation's most brilliant writers emerges as all the more fascinating precisely because he was so very human. Painstakingly researched and compellingly written, "Ralph Ellison "is a masterwork of the genre of literary biography." --Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" is probably the Great American Novel. Arnold Rampersad's long-awaited and beautifully spun "Ralph Ellison" is a great American biography." --David Levering Lewis, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography "Ralph Ellison's place in American literature demands a biography that is as eloquent, thorough and wise as its subject. This is it. The book represents a flawless match of biographer and subject--in Arnold Rampersad's hands we fathom both the burden and measure of Ellison's brilliance." - Toni Morrison, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature "Arnold Rampersad's biography of Ralph Ellison is the fullest and most authoritative study ofEllison's life and work to date. A celebration and defense of a triumphant and heroic life, it is bluntly unhagiographic and painstakingly attentive to Ellison's foibles. "Ralph Ellison "is at once an astute portrait of a complicated man and a social and literary history of his times-a major book on a major American writer." -Daniel Aaron, author, "Writers on the Left" ""Ralph Ellison: A Biography "portrays with unusual insight one of the most elusive figures in the history of American literature. Whether treating Ellison's controversial aloofness from civil rights militancy, his passionate lifelong effort to understand America, or the long gestation and writing of "Invisible Man," every page of Rampersad's richly detailed portrait dramatizes one of Ellison's favorite words: complexity." -Kenneth Silverman, author, "Edgar A. Poe," and winner of the Pulitzer Prize "Like Richard Ellmann on James Joyce, Arnold Rampersad on Ralph Ellison is in a class of its own. His masterful and magisterial book is the most powerful and profound treatment of Ellison's undeniable artistic genius, deep personal flaws, and controversial political evolution. And he reveals an Ellison unbeknownst to all of us. From now on, all serious scholarship on Ellison must begin with Rampersad's instant and inimitable classic in literary biography." -- Cornel West "From the Hardcover edition."