Introduction to Invisible Man

I often skip the intros to these things for fear of plot spoilers and various irrelevancies that I would just as soon eschew; however, this one is different.  Not only is it written by Ellison himself (thirty years after publication), it's also an insightful look into his writing process, and more broadly, the tasks of African-American writers.  I read a lot of black literature in high school, to an extent that I considered overly politicized and not really effective or sympathetic (especially given the racial homogeneity of my high school).  Like most English classes then, the material was presented in an overly straightforward, inside-the-box manner, and when it came to books like Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston or Black Boy by Richard Wright, the teachers would go over the basic tenets of the African-American experience (ones that we had heard so many times that they became banal) and show how these books demonstrated them.  Needless to say, that didn't do the works or the ideas very much justice.  

This introduction shatters that veneer of simplicity in a few ways.  The most interesting of which was how Ellison puts Invisible Man in the context of its themes (namely, identity in black culture and the universality of this struggle), as well as the context of literature as a whole.  African-American novels of this level of literary credibility are unique in that they speak from a variety of voices.  Not only is Invisible Man influenced by previous works that capture the struggle of blacks in American history, but its themes and style are taken as well from Ellison's American predecessors regardless of race (like Henry James and Ernest Hemingway) and world literature as a whole (my *very incisive* comparison to Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground was indeed confirmed in this introduction, making me feel really learned).  My point is, in the sense that all literature is written as a response to other literature, Ellison's emphasis on the literary foundations of the novel allow us not only to better understand the novel itself, but to be aided in our understanding by the echoing of earlier works in a new artistic context.  To go back to my example of Notes from Underground, by relating his main character's struggle as an African-American and thus, 'invisible' man, to the famous Underground Man whom many readers have found fascinating and completely unprecedented, Ellison is allowing us to view the plight of blacks through a lens that is familiar to people who aren't black - "to reveal the human complexity which stereotypes are intended to conceal."  As you can tell, this idea - even though it's not even that surprising or unique to this text alone - has really intrigued me.

Additionally, Ellison relates the responsibilities of the novelist with the ideals of democracy and civil, educated society.  It gave me a new and more holistic appreciation for the role of literature within a society, as well as for American literature itself.  I've gotten away from it over the past year, but this introduction has sort of shown me that perhaps by studying non-American literature, one is preparing himself for a better appreciation of American literature.  Indeed, it has only recently dawned on me that just as the American 'identity' is quite pluralistic, so too is the literature.  This new paradigm of mine is only in its seminal state, so I look forward to seeing what develops of it.

That's about it.  I thought I would drop you guys a line, just in case you didn't catch the introduction before starting.  Also, there are no spoilers or anything that would take away from the plot, if that is your concern.

Talk to you guys later.