121. gstaples - Aug. 14, 1998 - 12:01 PM PDT
in re: sight and blindness, after being expelled by Bledsoe: "My eyes were out of focus, I started toward my room,covering one eye with my hand..."

btw, I, and a less innocent narrator, would have opened one letter. Out of the many, it would not have been missed.

122. tomfreeland - Aug. 14, 1998 - 12:46 PM PDT
The preacher's blindness has been mentioned in several posts: I think it is critical to note that the narrator was initially unaware of and then surprised by the preacher's blindness; the narrator learns of it in the context of the preacher being able to present an image that hides his blindness.

The preacher was "of striking ugliness" and invisible-"so concerned had I been with the president that I hadn't really seen him." When the preacher moved forward, "I had the notion that part of Dr. Bledsoe had arisen and moved forward, leaving his other part smiling in the chair."

Note the physical descriptions in the sermon and references to light and dark-"this barren land" "this land of darkness and sorrow" "this barren, war-scarred land, [in which the Founder] somehow [was] shedding light upoin in where'er he passed through". The preacher asks the audience to "Picture it"-the story of the founder. He talks of "light" classrooms," "bright beginnings" until ultimately "For a few minutes old Barbee had made me see the vision and I knew that leaving the campus would be like the parting of flesh." And immediately after the narrator "see[s] the vision" he realizes (to his surprise) that the preacher is blind. [page 133]

The vision Barbee (the preacher) makes the narrator see can't be a real one because Barbee can't see; all Barbee can convey is a myth. And this is the major point about rhetoric for Ellison-the emotional impact of the rhetoric is not necessarily connected to reality but yet still has its emotional impact. I supose Barbee's blindness serves to highlight the fact that he is purveying a myth and not reality. And it is in being carried away by this myth that the narrator realizes and accepts his guilt.

(cont)

123. tomfreeland - Aug. 14, 1998 - 1:11 PM PDT
(cont from 122)

Ellison has a tendency to get carried away by his own powers of setting a scene. This works very well when he carries the reader along with him. He is obviously very interested in the rhetoric of the black community; this was not only the subject of a major theme of IM, it was *the* theme of his (unfinished) 2nd novel, which was about three black preachers.

124. tomfreeland - Aug. 14, 1998 - 1:21 PM PDT
thank ya'll for some good posts. I was feeling LONELY in here.

Norwood, reviewing the posts I concluded that you in particularly would like the Hurston essay I mentioned in Message #119

125. norwoodr - Aug. 15, 1998 - 2:24 PM PDT
Bledsoe is a power junkie, and part of the alure of power is the ability to hurt people just because you want to. The narrator caused Bledsoe trouble, and so Bledsoe savages him. There is no moral dimension to Bledsoe. He does what he feels like doing because he has the power to do so.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

126. norwoodr - Aug. 15, 1998 - 2:29 PM PDT
gstaples

You bring up something that seems to me a false note in the novel, something that bothered me at the time which I then forgot.

Why does Bledsoe give the narrator more than one letter? It makes for a more interesting chapter later on, but internal to the story it seems Bledsoe would have reasoned that one letter, not to be opened, was safe, but many letters would risk the narrator doing exactly what you would have done. I would expect Bledsoe to think of this, and take precautions, but Bledsoe doesn't.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

127. arkymalarky - Aug. 15, 1998 - 7:12 PM PDT
He could give him one or a hundred. Bledsoe knows the type so well he has no doubt the hero will not touch the letters, especially after he finds out his attitude about lying. To me it speaks to the egocentric confidence of Bledsoe and his desire to exert control over the school and students. He tells a student to do something, and if that student wants to succeed he obeys without question and to the most minute detail. He not only has total control over the student's fate, he can get the student to willingly help carry it out. What a power rush.

128. SharonSchroeder - Aug. 15, 1998 - 7:25 PM PDT
Arky, I agree with you in regards to the quantity of letters. He knew this young man would not open the letters because he Bledsoe said not to. He told the boy that he could return to school knowing that this would give him continued control over the young man. If he opened a letter he would never get a job from one the reciepients of the letters or get back to school. Bledsoe liked the power and multiple letters meant more power because he was fully aware that his orders would never be disobeyed by the young man.

129. SharonSchroeder - Aug. 15, 1998 - 7:26 PM PDT
Someday I'll learn to type... or at least spell recipient correctly ;-)

130. tomfreeland - Aug. 16, 1998 - 10:17 AM PDT
Norwood, it's interesting that the number of letters bothered you because it did not bother me...

131. gstaples - Aug. 18, 1998 - 8:20 AM PDT
Your collective quiet is making it hard on us lurkers...

Back on the letters, I'm becoming less concerned about whether the book's actions "make sense" realistically. As the episodes follow one after another, they all seem populated with characters exaggerated, slightly distorted; the narrator moves through with limited visibility, like a Gulliver, or Dante, witnessing the grotesquery. It seems the rules of logic don't apply.

Question: If you are writing the screenplay for IM: THE MOVIE, when the boiler explodes at the paint factory, is it over the top to show the narrator covered in white paint?

132. norwoodr - Aug. 18, 1998 - 10:01 AM PDT
Which of course, opens the bag of worms: Why hasn't IM been made into a movie?

The book moves from realism to drama to farce and back again, written in many styles and in many voices. I'm enjoying that aspect of it, but at the same time am a little uncomfortable with it.

Time for the next chapter summary?

www.io.com/~norwoodr

133. tomfreeland - Aug. 18, 1998 - 12:42 PM PDT
In ch. 8, the narrator begins to settle into New York. He is still trying to dream himself into being someone else-- one of "the junior executive types in ESQUIRE"--

"[H]ere in the North, I would slough off my southern ways of speech. Indeed, I would have one way of spekaing in the North and another in the South. Give them what they wanted down South, that was the way. If Dr. Bledsoe could do it, so could I. Before going to bed that night, I wiped off my brief case with a clean towel and placed the letters carefully inside."

The next morning he began delivering Bledsoe's letters.

Ch. 9 is a complex chapter both in plot terms and in its use of references from Black culture. I'll try ot post a summary of it, with some discussion of the references, tonight.

134. tomfreeland - Aug. 18, 1998 - 12:47 PM PDT
I want to encourage folks to participate, and to write me at ellisonthread@hotmail.com if you have any suggestions. I am trying to leave folks plenty of opportunty to comment as we move on, and at the same time concerned (on the one hand) about letting the thread languish while (on the other hand) am concerned about turning it into a monologue.

I would particularly like to see some discussion of a point that Norwood makes in <MSG NUM 132> about the way the book shifts in styles or modes of storytelling. I find that, regardless of whether Ellison (in his own view) was attempting naturalistic treatment or surrealistic treatment, the claustraphobic structure of the piece-- which is so intensely internal, with as much happening via the narrators speculations as happens in actual events-- that the whole thing seems dreamlike and surreal to me. In other words, it is the way in which the book is an intense interior monologue that holds it together.

135. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 7:14 AM PDT
Chapter 9 starts in the street. The narrator sees a man with a cart singing blues (the song has a series of traditional lines that I don't immediately tie to a specific song). The singer asks the narrator "is you got the dog?" and the narrator responds "what dog" to which the singer responds "got...the...dog."

This evoked for me something from later on-the running joke in songs recorded at Stax Records about "the dog"-the titles include "Walking The Dog," "Somebody Stole My Dog" "Philly Dog" "Can Your Monkey Do The Dog." This was also started (and primarily done) by Rufus Thomas, who started out performing in minstrel shows in the 30s (he's still going, with a weekly radio show in Memphis that dates back to the late 40s). It was even picked up later-the funk band Parliament's "Atomic Dog" lists various dogs; I've seen the band dedicate performances of the song to Rufus Thomas. I suspect that this represents a thread of black humor not unlike the dozens and quite old, but have not done the research to confirm it. And the joke-an assumption that a cool listener immediately knows about the dog-is on the narrator here. The man with the cart says "who got the damn dog? Now I know you from down home, how come you trying to act like you heard that before! Hell, ain't nobody out here this morning but us colored-Why you trying to deny me?"
Not "A dog?" -- "Yeah, the dog."

136. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 7:17 AM PDT
The man with the cart then says "I believe its a bear that got holt to me." -- "the bear"

"I tried to think of some saying about bears to reply, but remembered only Jack the Rabbit, Jack the Bear...who were both long forgotten and now brought a wave of homesickness."

137. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 7:21 AM PDT
I've talked about Jack-the-Bear in black folklore in Message #24, where I talk about the reference to Jack the Bear in the Prologue, and in Message #71, where I talk about the connection of the rabbit and bear figures to John the Conqueror and Brer Rabbit.

138. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 7:25 AM PDT
The man has a cart load of abandoned plans "Folks is always making plans and changing 'em." The narrator says "Yes, that's right, but that's a mistake. You have to stick to the plan."

"He looked at me, suddenly grave. 'You kinda young, daddy-o,' he said."

139. gstaples - Aug. 19, 1998 - 7:30 AM PDT
When I read the section about the street-blues-man, I heard in my mind the same tracks from STAX (gem of my music collection)that tomfreeland did. Beyond that, the got-the dog allusion was lost on me. Thanks for the color.

140. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 9:11 AM PDT
The man with the cart begins to move away, and says:
"I'maseventhsonofaseventhsonbawnwithacauloverbotheyesraisedonblackcatboneshighjohntheconquerorandgreasygreans."
This is invocation of a whole series of hoodoo-related beliefs-all of which were constants of blues music. Willie Dixon adopted a number of them in songs that were performed by Chess artists like Muddy Waters in the years after IM was published, songs like "Seventh Son" ("Everybody talking 'bout the seventh son / In the whole darn world, I'm the only one" "Got a black bone, got a mojo to" and references to "john the conqueroo"-john the conqueror root, a root used in hoodoo the name of which also refers to the folklore hero John the Conqueror-- mentioned above).

He says "You dig me daddy?"

"'You're going too fast,' I said, beginning to laugh.

"'Okay, I'm slowing down. I'll verse you but I won't curse you-My name is Peter Wheatstraw, I'm the Devil's only son-in-law, so roll 'em!"

141. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 9:15 AM PDT
Petie Wheatstraw is going to require a longish post-- in the meantime, there is a nice site about the blues musician who called himself Peetie Wheatstraw that includes a short sound clip that will give you an idea of his sound.

142. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 10:09 AM PDT
Peetie Wheatstraw is, once again, a figure from black folklore-and continues to be so, to this day. The comic Rudy Rae Moore, who makes a speciality of "toasting" and other forms of black storytelling with long traditions, uses among his stage names (in addition to "the Dolemite") the name "Petie Wheatstraw the devil's son-in-law.

One of the best-selling bluesmen of the 1930s was William Bunch, who recorded as Peetie Wheatstraw. His biographer, Paul Garon, believes that the figure in IM is based directly upon Bunch; Garon says that, in an interview, Ellison described playing trumpet with Bunch in the 30s after Bunch had already gained fame recording as Wheatstraw. (Garon goes out on some limbs in the Bunch biography-he argues that the stories about Wheatstraw all date from Bunch's fame in the 30s, after which Bunch's stage-name connected up pre-existing stories about "the devils-son-in-law" to the stage name. I don't think that's true).

In any event, Wheatstraw is another figure of black folklore, this time the powerful black bad man, who was the subject of marveling and admiration in the stories about him.

143. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 10:19 AM PDT
Bunch, recording as Wheatstraw, accompanied himself on both guitar and piano (the man with the cart in IM says "I'm a piano player and a rounder, a whiskey drinker and a pavement pounder. I'll teach you some good bad habits. You'll need 'em. Good luck," he said.")

And as the cart-man left, the narrator hears the cart-man's song resolve "into a tremulous, blue-toned chord. And in its flutter and swoop I heard the sound of a railroad train highballing it, lonely across the lonely night. He was the Devil's son-in-law, all right, and he was a man who could whistle a three-toned chord... God damn, I thought, they're a hello of a people. And I didn't know whether it was pride or disgust that suddenly flashed over me."

This is another richly allusive passage-- rural bluesmen who were considered virtuosoes were particularly proud of their ability to immitate sounds from nature in playing. A commonly immitated sound was train sounds; here the cart-man makes a train sound with three tones, whistling. This accomplishment is great enough to make the narrator think he *is* the devil's son-in-law, evoking the legends (now the most over-used cliche for anyone who decides to mention Miss. Delta Blues) of musicians who sell their soul for skill playing an instrument. BTW, we could get in a VERY long side discussion of (1) Whether this legend originates in European or African folktales, and (2) Whether (later, largely white) blues researchers have imposed this legend on figures like bluesman Robert Johnson.

And most importantly, the whole exchange makes the narrator unsettled-- is he proud or ashamed? He's now going to get another chance to deny his culture and his background...

144. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 10:21 AM PDT
Yes, I know I've used 8 long posts to "summarize" six pages of text. What can I say? There's a lot there.

145. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 12:31 PM PDT
The narrator goes into a diner. The counterman pegs him for a southerner and offers 'the special'-- pork chops, eggs, grits, etc.-- and the narrator orders orange juice, toast, and coffee. "A sseed floated in the thick layer of pulp that formed on the top of the glass. I fished it out with a spoon and then downed th acid drink, proud to have resisted the pork chops and grits. It was an act of discipline, a sign of the change that was coming over me..."

Yet another denial-- and he goes on to invoke Bledsoe as the inspiration for this denial. He takes something he doesn't want, to appear to be something he's not, and then goes on to deliver the last letter.

146. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 2:51 PM PDT
When he goes to deliver the letter, the person who took the letter goes away, returns, and begins to quiz the narrator. He suggest the narrator consider changing schools, then asks if the narrator read it first, and more questions-- whether the narrator attended a Harlem nightclub. After the conversation skids around, the narrator, confused, offers to "prove my identity" and is told "Identity! My God! Who has any identity any more anyway?"

The narrator is then told "Look, I was trying to tell you that I know many things about you--not you personally but fellows like you. No much, either, but still more about the average. With us its still Jim and Huck Finn." The narrator is totally confused by reference to Twain's novel ("Why did he keep talking about a kid's story?")

147. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 2:57 PM PDT
Two important points here: Ellison deeply resented being told "what a Black person should be". Later, he explained the heat of one of Ras' speeches as the product of an incident where he and his wife encountered several liberal white northerners, who told him they "knew about" Blacks and then proceeded to give him sweeping, grossly-over-generalized advice. Obviously, the statements of young Emerson are intended to set a similar annoying tone. (Another instance of Ellison's anger about this sort of thing was the elloquent blasts he fired at Irving Howe over Howe's essays about Black fiction and what a Black novel "should" be; this produced "The World and the Jug," one of his finest essays).

The other point here is about Huck Finn. Ellison viewed Twain as the great 19th Century American novelists, and did not think that the "modernists" of the Am. novel other than Faulkner did not aspire to those heights. Having the narrator call HUCKLEBERRY FINN a childrens novel is more cluelessness from the narrator.

148. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 3:07 PM PDT
The narrator then learns-- after young Emerson says "I am trying to advise you what is best for you"-- the actual contents of Bledsoe's letter: That the letters, in Bledsoe's verbose way --"(I beg you, sir, to help him continue in the direction of that promise which, like the horizon, recedes ever brightly and distantly beyond the hopeful traveler."--contained the same advice he had been given by his grandfather in the dream (on page 33, at the end of ch. 1)-- "Keep This Nigger-Boy Running." The letter was not a recommendation, but a warning that the narrator was dangerous.

He learns he can't go back to college. Emerson offers to invite him to a party, then to be his valet. He then says there is a possible job at Liberty Paints; at this point, the narrator left. He went out to the street, shocked.

149. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 3:15 PM PDT
One final note on the last three pages: When he sees what has happened, the narrator thinks of a song-- "O well they picked poor Robin clean." In one of his essays, Ellison said that this song was commonly sung by Jimmy Rushing and others of the territory bands playing in the Oklahoma area (where Ellison grew up); when the band saw someone in the crowd steal someone else's girlfriend, the band would often respond by singing "Pick Poor Robin Clean" to the loser.

The earliest recording of the song I know is by Luke Jordan, a blues singer from Lynchburg, Virginia, of the Piedmont school of rural blues, who recorded it for Victor Records in 1927. Another version was recorded by Mississippian Geeshie Wiley in 1931, so the song must have been widely distributed.

Lyrics include:

"You better pick poor robin clean,
Pick poor robin clean
I picked his head, I picked his feet
Woulda picked his body but it wasn't fit to eat."

Jordan's version of this song can be found on the third volume of the superb Yazoo Records collection of rural folk music, BEFORE THE BLUES (Yazoo 2017)

150. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 3:16 PM PDT
that's it for that chapter. Ya'll say something, I'm tired for now.

151. tomfreeland - Aug. 19, 1998 - 3:22 PM PDT
possible thing to talk about-- do ya'll think the use of references to black folklore work here? Ellison saw himself as a concious follower of what Eliot did in "The Wasteland," and surely this chapter exemplifies what Ellison meant by that.

152. tomfreeland - Aug. 20, 1998 - 8:52 AM PDT
I'm going to summarize ch. 10 very briefly; it and the next chapter are not the strongest parts of the novel for me. Ellison presents some themes that are important to him in illuminating the experience of the great migration, *but* first and foremost he should worry about keeping forward momentum, and he loses me some here.

Following up on the lead from Emerson, the narrator goes to the paint factory (KEEP AMERICA PURE WITH LIBERTY PAINTS). He first gets a job mixing "Optic White" paint and makes a mess of it. Then, he is sent into the basement, where he discovers that a Black man, Brockway, who seems to him ought to be a menial laborer is actually running the engineering functions of the plant, and because he understands the complexities of the plant, has made himself indispensable.

"He certainly didn't sound like an engineer; yet he alone was on duty. And you could never be sure, for at home an old man employed as a janitor at the Water Works was the only one who knew the location of all the water mains. He had been employed at the beginning, before any records were kept, and actually functioned as an engineer though he drew a janitor's pay."

(1) I knew a rural water association that had almost this exact arrangement. (2) Ellison in his essays talks of a Black man who was a janitor in the state law library in Oklahoma who knew the law books there better than any librarian, lawyer, or legislator; they would all consult him on difficult problems of research.

Brockway states that he got a $300 bonus for thinking up the slogan for Optic White-- "If it's Optic White, It's the Right White"-- which evokes for the narrator the line "If you're white, you're right"-- the line that the Vet at the Golden Day accused the narrator of believing-- see Message #64

153. tomfreeland - Aug. 20, 1998 - 8:56 AM PDT
Going to get his lunch, the narrator stumbles into a union meeting and is grilled about "finkism" and Ellison whole question of the use of black labor, newly arrived in the Great Migration, as union busting labor.

Returning to Brockway, the narrator says that he stumbled onto a union meeting and Brockway attacks him; in the fight, the machinery is not attended to, and the narrator gets caught in an explosion of paint.

154. tomfreeland - Aug. 20, 1998 - 9:14 AM PDT
Ch. 11 he awakens in the factory hospital, not remembering his name; when he is coming to, he is shown cards that ask him questions to try to provoke his memory. One series-- "Who was your mother?"-- invokes instead the rhyming insult game, the dozens, part of which involves insulting a competitor's mother. "I looked at him, feeling a quick dislike and thinking, half in amusement, I don't play the dozens." But then, when the narrator is asked WHO WAS BUCKEYE THE RABBIT and then WHO WAS BRER RABBIT, he *does* do the dozens-- thinking "He was your mother's bck-door man." (One of Howlin' Wolf's great songs was "Back Door Man"; there's a Christmas / adultery song called "Back Door Santa"...)

The narrator is sent away from the factory hospital, told "You aren't ready for the rigors of industry." He leaves, headed back to Harlem.

155. norwoodr - Aug. 20, 1998 - 11:21 AM PDT
The factory scene escelates from realism, as the narrator is blaimed for not knowing how to do a job nobody has told him how to do, to slapstick, the fight in the boiler room, and, in the next chapter, to outright farce, as one doctor apparently performs a chemical lobotomy on him and another (sarcastically) suggests castration. There are obvious echos of the monsterous siphilus experiments carried out in the south, but the tone is comic, which seemed strange.

One thought. Ellison obviously knew he was writing a novel that a lot of people, hearing only the title, were going to confuse with H. G. Wells The Invisible Man. In the Wells novel, the title character is a comic mad scientist, in some ways himself a parody of Mary Shelly's serious mad scientist, Dr. V. Frankenstein (that's Fronkensteen!, I hear Gene Wilder insist). Anyway, it occured to me that Ellison's comic mad scientist in Chapter 11 is a deliberate allusion to the Wells character.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

156. TheDiva - Aug. 20, 1998 - 11:38 AM PDT
Interesting that you read this passage as comic. I found it almost too painful to read, and got through it as quickly as possible. I felt enormously relieved when he was let go.

157. norwoodr - Aug. 20, 1998 - 11:42 AM PDT
The Diva

I'll have to go back and reread it.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

158. jeancox - Aug. 20, 1998 - 2:38 PM PDT
This book is full of intriguing little statements, that seem like trueisms, I guess, that seem like clues. The narrator (poor nameless soul!) never seems to make note of these although he's always deep in conversation with (or faithfully recounting the conversation of) those who say these things. For example, the vet says that there's always an element of crime in freedom. Who commits the crime -- those who are free, or those who free others -- is not clear. The vet was talking about people who go north, but may have meant the freedom gained in WWII.

Other characters in the book are aware of evil aspects of humanity they can't change or they embody these aspects. The narrator is always outside, looking in. Always a victim of the evil.

In Ch. 8/9, some of these truisms are that the truth is blinding, that it's treason to tell the truth, at least in the case of Emerson's son revealing the contents of the letter to the narrator.

Interesting, but I hope this goes somewhere.

159. arkymalarky - Aug. 20, 1998 - 3:02 PM PDT
I'm currently too busy to do the required thinking, so I haven't been able to participate much. I've enjoyed the posts, though. I finished the book last week.
I know y'all have moved on, but the letters are something I can relate to in a big way. It's hard to put into words, but as someone who doesn't have a lot of money or influence, I've found myself on the wrong side of a desk more than once, gullibly absorbing what I'm being told is "true; trust me." It doesn't matter whether I trust what I'm told or not; I have no choice but to accept it, so my attitude becomes an almost frantic blind faith in "the system," knowing that the system doesn't give a rat's ass about me and will do whatever it chooses. I could understand the narrator's feelings very well.

160. tomfreeland - Aug. 20, 1998 - 5:57 PM PDT
Ch.12: Returning from the factory hospital into Harlem, the narrator emerges from the subway unsteady on his feet. He gets rescued on the street by Mary Rambo, sleeps and eats in her home, and then returns to the Men's Home. There, he sees the folks hanging out in the lobby, dressing like the ESQUIRE ads he had dreamed of, realizes how fake it is, and then sees a bald Baptist minister, thinks of Bledsoe and "baptizes" the man with a full spitoon.

(I THINK it's a spitoon, but did get kind of lost in the pronoun references there. If anyone else sees something different in the text-on page 257-I'd love to hear about it).

He flees, and is told by the amused porter who retrieves his luggage that he's banned for 99 years. He returned to Mary Rambo's as a refuge and found himself wandering the streets, muttering to himself.

I've got a lot going on tomorrow and may not get to another ch. summary until the weekend. I'm going to try to moves things a little faster-a ch. or so a day, but want everyone to feel they can range back and forth through the book if they have anything to say or add. I will continue pointing out the things I see in the text (not just straight plot summaries) unless I gather the interest flags.

161. tomfreeland - Aug. 21, 1998 - 9:01 AM PDT
One thing I didn't speculate about in discussing the exchange between Emerson and teh Narrator was the possible basis for the "Cafe Calamus", the nightclub in Harlem mentioned by Emerson on pages 185 and 192.

Obvious legendary Harlem clubs that came to mind were the Cotton Club and the Cafe Society, but not knowing enough about Harlem clubs of the era, I didn't mention it. Further, I knew that Ellison was intimately familiar with the jazz clubs of NYC (there is a great essay in which he describes Charley Parker circa 1940, on the eve of be bop).

Browsing THE NEW GROVE DICTIONARY OF JAZZ (an amazingly good reference book), I note that the Cafe Society opened too late--1940-- to be a possible source. The entry about the Cotton Club is really interesting. Duke Ellington was the house band 1927-1931, followed by Cab Calloway, and then, in the late 30s Jimmie Lunceford. (to all of which I say "Wow!"). It was originally at 644 Lenox Avenue at West 142 Street.

The part of the entry that caught my eye, though, is this: "After race riots in Halrem in 1935, the area was considered unsafe for Whites (who formed the Cotton Club's clientele) and the club was forced to close..." (it later reopened elsewhere).

Of course, *this* invoked the riots that are the plot climax of the book. The Cotton Club's history was the most famous NYC jazz club of the day-- and it had the connection to a territory band, Lunceford's, a part of jazz of great interest to Ellison. Ellison knew he was invoking the club in Emerson's statements.

I don't know a lot of detailed NYC history. Anyone familiar with those race riots? I would be very interested in hearing the perspective of someone more versed in the history of Harlem...

162. norwoodr - Aug. 21, 1998 - 10:35 AM PDT
tomfreeland

I really didn't need to know the plot climax of the book at this point in my reading.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

163. tomfreeland - Aug. 21, 1998 - 11:42 AM PDT
Sorry Norwood; somehow I thought you were done. Saying what I said doesn't really tell you much about how we get there, tho' (in fact tells virtually nothing about it...)

164. norwoodr - Aug. 21, 1998 - 3:22 PM PDT
I guess it is very pre-Postmodernist to care whether or not you know how a book ends while you are still reading it.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

165. tomfreeland - Aug. 22, 1998 - 9:43 AM PDT
ch 13: The narrator wanders into the street, lost in thought about what to do, and encounters a street vendor selling sweet potatoes. The taste and smell of the sweet potato brings back home (although the anger sets him apart from this, something about the way the smell evoked home and the lost/sadness of this passage reminded me of Quentin wandering Cambridge in THE SOUND AND THE FURY).

His mind wanders back to Bledsoe and he fantasizes confronting Bledsoe as a secret chitterling lover, after which "He'd lose caste. THe weekly newspapers would attack him." Then the narrator thingks: "To hell with being ashamed of what you liked. No more of that for me. I am what I am!" He eats the potato and then asks for two more, telling the vendor "They're my birthdmark, I am what I am!" and is told ""Come back tomorrow if you want so more, My old ladly'll be out here with some hot sweet potato fried pies." The narrator thinks, sadly, that he might not be able to digest fired pies any longer, and wonders "What and how much had I lost be trying to do only was was expected of me instead of what I had wished to do?"

ld not have made the speech; that a part of him is dead: "History has been born in your brain." The narrator is asked if he is "interested in working with us", an "organization". Asked if the old couple are his kin, he says "we were burned in the same oven."
"The effect was electric. 'Why do you fellows always talk in terms of race!' he snapped, his eyes blazing. 'What other terms do you know?' I said, puzzled." He is given a name and a phone number to contact the organization.

And, shocking as it may be, I still have never read Emmerson, and couldn't tell you anything about him.

The world is large, and time is fleeting.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

166. tomfreeland - Aug. 22, 1998 - 9:46 AM PDT
Sweet potato fried pies, btw, are something I've not encountered. I love dried-fruit fried pies-- the best place for them I've ever encountered is on the White River in the Ark. Delta in a town (village?) called DeValls Bluff at a place called the Family Pie Store... Any southerners reading familiar with sweet potato fried pies?

The rich and varied ways in which Ellison invokes Southern culture and how culture is rememberd is one of the strengths of the book.

167. tomfreeland - Aug. 22, 1998 - 10:02 AM PDT
He then comes upon an eviction of an elderly couple, watched by a large crowd on the street. The decription of household objects lying at the curb is a powerful evocation of Black history through to the twenties-- knocking bones as used by minstrels, a small pot-garden of tomato and house plans, "a straightening comb, switches of false hair, a curling iron... nuggest of High John the Conqueror" (the name for the root used in making charms like mojo hands), "a whiskey bottle filled with rock candy and camphor, a small Ethiopian flag, a faded tintype of Abraham Lincoln, and the smiling image of a Hollywood star... a commemorative plate celbrating the St. Louis World's fair. I stood in a kind of daze, looking at an old lace fan studded with jet and mother-of-pearl."

He finds "FREE PAPERS" dated 1859 and thinks "It has been longer than that, further removed in time." He suddenly has a feeling of having been "dispossesd of some painful yet precious thing I could not bear to lose" and has "a vision of my mother hanging wash on a cold windy day, so cold theat the warm clothes froze.. why were they causing me discomfort so far beyond their intrinsic meaning as objects? And why did I see them now, as bheind a veil that threatened to lift, stirred by the cold wind in the narrow street."

this passage is 271-273.

168. tomfreeland - Aug. 22, 1998 - 12:43 PM PDT
The circumstances of the eviction and his reaction to it cause the narrator to speak to the crowd; his speech draws the attention of a number of mysteriously-connected individuals who help him escape; one, who follows him, tells him he has made a great speech.

The narrator says that seeing the "them like that made me feel pretty bad." He's told "you mustn't waste your emotion on individuals, they don't count."-- the "old ones" don't count" because "History has passed them by." The narrator is told he is "not like" the old couple, or he would not have made the speech; that a part of him is dead: "History has been born in your brain." The narrator is asked if he is "interested in working with us", an "organization". Asked if the old couple are his kin, he says "we were burned in the same oven."
"The effect was electric. 'Why do you fellows always talk in terms of race!' he snapped, his eyes blazing. 'What other terms do you know?' I said, puzzled." He is given a name and a phone number to contact the organization.

169. tomfreeland - Aug. 22, 1998 - 12:46 PM PDT
I mentioned Ellison's regard for Huck Finn when I noted the narrator's reaction to Emerson in Message #146, Message #147, and Message #161. Here's a quote showing Ellison's attitude, from his Wrters at Work interview in the PARIS REVIEW in the late 50s:
"One function of serious literature is to deal with the moral core of a given society. Well, in the United States the Negro and his status have always stood for that moral concern. He symbolizes among other things the human and social possibility of equality. This is the moral question raised in our two great nineteenth-century novels, MOBY DICK and HUCKLEBERRY FINN. The very center of Twain's book revolves finally around the boy's relations with Nigger Jim and the question of what Huck should do about getting Jim free after the two scoundrels have sold him. There is a magic here worth conjuring, and that reaches to the very nerve of the American consciousness, so why should I abandon it?"

One other point about Emerson, this time about his certainty he understands the narrator-who he hasn't met before-and his certainty that he can tell the narrator about being black. In the introduction to the essay collection SHADOW AND ACT, Ellison said: "I learned that nothing could go unchallenged, especially the feverish industry dedicated to telling Negroes who and what they are, and which can usually be counted upon to deprive both humanity and culture of their complexity."

Here's a quote from his response to Irving Howe: "Prefabricated Negroes are sketched on sheets of paper and superimposed upon the Negro community; then when someone thrusts his head through the page and yells, 'Watch out there, Jack, there's people living under here,' they are shocked and indignant." "The World and the Jug."

170. tomfreeland - Aug. 22, 1998 - 12:49 PM PDT
that's it for now for me. Tomorrow I'll post another ch. summary. I badly need some feedback-- am I talking to myself? If so, it's too much trouble. Other than Norwood's suggestion to stay clear of revealing the plot, I have no idea if anyone's even reading.

171. arkymalarky - Aug. 22, 1998 - 1:42 PM PDT
I'm reading, Tom, though not as carefully right now. I'll be able to go back over the posts tomorrow, I think. I know several people are reading the book, and I don't know why we haven't had more discussion. PE posted something in Fraygrant's Corner concerning the value of IM as a literary work that I hoped he might pursue here, but I doubt he will.

172. norwoodr - Aug. 22, 1998 - 2:17 PM PDT
Akry

why don't you post or paraphrase PE's comment here.

With the the current chapter, IM moves back to a more naturalistic style. One way I've found of understanding the sudden style shifts, is that whenever you move to a new city, things seem to happen very fast, and details stand out vividly. Then, when you've lived there a while, days begin to blur. In the coming chapters, we will see this happen.

Ways in which Ellison excels as a writer, some of which surpirsed me, are his ability to keep reader interest high, the many black voices and cadences he echoes, and the sense that he is saying something about race that not only was new then, but that is still new now, as if the dialog or dialectic on race has regressed since the time IM was published.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

173. arkymalarky - Aug. 22, 1998 - 2:22 PM PDT
I'm about to log off, and searching for a post in FC is like searching for a needle in a haystack, but it was something to the effect that IM was valued for political reasons rather than for its quality as a literary work. Maybe he will come in and restate it if I misquoted him.

Food for thought. Something in the style reminds me of _The Scarlet Letter_. I don't have time to expand on why right now, but I wonder if anyone sees that.

174. tomfreeland - Aug. 23, 1998 - 11:05 AM PDT
Arky, I tried to find the post but could not-- I think it's been archived. Obviously, I would disagree that IM gets attention for political reasons. There is some unpleasant irony to such a view, because Ellison caught a lot of flack for not being polititcally "right"; IMHO he caught this flack because of the complexity of the moral issues he raised, and because he directly raised & confronted some issues that folks would just as soon not have directly raised.

I'm at a total loss to understand your comparison to THE SCARLETT LETTER, both because I see this book as having a richness of incident and description, and because of the humor I see, both things I found lacking in SCARLETT LETTER.

175. tomfreeland - Aug. 23, 1998 - 11:11 AM PDT
ch. 14
He went back to Mary's expecting to be cheered up, but the smell of her cabbage cooking changes his mind.

(What's the deal with cabbage here and in 1984-- where the stink of cabbage torments the hero? Always seemed slightly odd to me, but then I know people who don't much like cabbage... In any event, the way Ellison keeps coming back to food as an emotional/pscyological touchstone is interesting to me).

He is upset, realizing he's turned down a job when Mary is obviously being squeezed and he's not paying rent and still eating at her table.

He hears her singing "a troubled song. It was 'Back Water Blues.' I lawy listening as the sound flowed to and frow around me, bringing me a calm sense of my indebtedness."

He goes out to call about the job.

176. tomfreeland - Aug. 23, 1998 - 11:21 AM PDT
The song "Back Water Blues" was 1st recorded by Bessie Smith in early 1927, and became a best-seller that year because it was the year of the greatest flood in the history of the Mississppi River valley, during which the river ran roughly 100 miles across below Memphis. You can hear the song on the Columbia Legacy collection NEWS AND THE BLUES (CK 46217), on which the liner notes incorrectly state that the song, recorded in February, was about the flood that occured later that year.

here's the lyrics:

When it rained 5 days and the sky turned dark as night (x2)
Then trouble's taking place in the lowlands late at night.

I woke up this morning can't even get out of my door. (x2)
There's enough trouble to make a poor girl wonder where she want to go.

Then they rowed a little boat about 5 miles cross teh farm (x2)
I packed all my clothes, throwed them in & they rowed me along.

When it thunders & lightnin' & the wind begins to blow (x2)
There's bad luck people ain't got not place to go.

And I went & stood on some high old lonesome hill,
And looked down on my house, where I used to live.

Backwater blues done caused me to pack my things & go (x2)
Cause my house fell down & I can't live there no more.

Mmmm I can't move no more (x2)
There ain't no place for as poor old girl to go.

177. tomfreeland - Aug. 23, 1998 - 11:31 AM PDT
He calls and is swept immediatley to an expensive looking building with "the word Chthonian on the storm awning"

Does that mean anything to anyone? Sounds more like a name from H.P. Lovecraft than this book to me!

He is shown into a very expensive apartment, pressing past a hostess "smartly dressed... [with] exotic perfomue" and is taken by Brother Jack for a drink. Asked about what "they" do, he is told by brother Jack "What is our mission? It's simple; we are working for a better world for all people. It's that simple. Too many have been dispossessed of their heritage, and we have banded together in brotherhood so as to do something about it." The narrator is asked if he wants to be a "new Booker T. Washington" who "shall work for the poor".

178. tomfreeland - Aug. 23, 1998 - 11:36 AM PDT
Jack tells the narrator what he is to be-- the new Booker T. Washington, but greater. The narrator notices a man with a pipe who seems to disagree. The narator does not know what he thinks, and is "fighting a sense of unreality. They stared at me as the fellows had done when I was being intiated into my college fraternity."

He is told he is to move into a new place downtown, away from Mary and to "put aside your past." He is to stop writing his family and is given a new name, written on a slip of paper. He is to answer to no other. He is given $300 to settle rent and told his salary is to be $60 a week, the size of which surprises him.

As they go out, he is asked "by a plain woman" his "opinion f the state of women's rights". They go into a room with a piano....

179. tomfreeland - Aug. 23, 1998 - 11:41 AM PDT
A short broad man asks him to sing "one of those roal good ole Negro work songs? Like this: Ah went ot Atlanta, nveah been there before... White man sleep in a feathrer bed, Nigguh sleep on the flo'" Jack roars: "The brother does not sing" and the broad man responds "Nonsense all colored people sing." Jack says this is "unconscious racial chauvinism." The short man asks for "Go Down Moses."

The narrator thinks "Why was everyone starting at me as though I were responsible?" and then says to the crowd "He hit me in the face with a yard of chitterlings!"

180. CLLRDR - Aug. 23, 1998 - 11:42 AM PDT
I think the "Scarlet Letter" parallel is worth pursuing if only for the fact that these otherwise very different books highlight aspects of the American character that the very act of highlighting renders "controversial." They're both about hypocrsy and mendacity -- but of different eras and within different communities. Still, they somehow manage to speak to us of the right-this-minute.

Sorry I haven't been as attentive to this thread as I'd planned, but I've got a hot Tom Cruise cookin' in the oven, sorely in need of basting. I have to do more reading (and re-reading) of past posts before I say anymore about Ellison.

181. tomfreeland - Aug. 23, 1998 - 11:46 AM PDT
The song "Feather Bed" is a minstrel era song; spirituals and work songs (the other songs requested) were all very old, out-dated songs overladen with stereotype by the time of the events of this novel. There's a recording of the song "Feather Bed" by the jug band Cannon's Jug Stompers recorded for Victor records in 1927 and available on the Yazoo complete Cannon's Jug Stompers CD.

182. tomfreeland - Aug. 23, 1998 - 11:51 AM PDT
One woman apoligizes again for the singing request, which throws the narrator into confusion. Then the hostess asks him to dance and he remembers the vet's prediction that dancing with a white woman would symbolize freedom in the north for him.

He returns to Mary's at 5, thinking he should best leave the money and disappear.

183. tomfreeland - Aug. 23, 1998 - 11:53 AM PDT
Asked about the connections between the Brotherhood and the Communist party, Ellison said:

Here again is a fabrication, just as the machines in the paint factory are fabrications. They never existed. They're images there for certain literary reasons. I did not want to describe an existing Socialist or Communist or Marxist political group, primarily because it would have allowed the reader to escape confronting certain political patterns, patterns which still exist and of which our two major political parties are guilty in their relationships to Negro Americans. But what I wanted to do at the same time was to touch upon certain techniques of struggle, of political struggle, certain concepts of equality and political possibility which were very much present in our society. I think we have absorbed them into the larger parties in many ways.

This is from an interview reprinted in Collected Essays.

184. tomfreeland - Aug. 23, 1998 - 11:58 AM PDT
That's it for ch14. I've pushed us through 7 chapters and 150 pages since Thurs. I'm going to give ya'll a bit to digest my posts. I would also like to hear discussion of Ark's comment and in Message #173 and CLLDLR in Message #180 about THE SCARLETT LETTER.

185. arkymalarky - Aug. 23, 1998 - 12:02 PM PDT
I haven't had time to read backposts because my server's been down, and now I'm about to have to leave for awhile. The reason IM reminds me of SL is that there seems to be one sane protagonist fighting for dignity against distant characters who have no empathy. Both IM's hero and Hester are fighting injustice with no one to aid them. The vivid, almost surrealistic images and descriptions and the almost allegorical use of symbolism are two other characteristics the novels share, imo, which make their tone and the feeling they give me as the reader very similar.

I'll be back and try to catch up later.

186. norwoodr - Aug. 23, 1998 - 2:26 PM PDT
If PE really said that IM is popular because of PC rather than merit, then he proabably hasn't read the book. I confess that before I started it, I was afraid that what PE asserts might be true, but now that I've read most of it, the briliance of the writing is unmistakable.

People who call themselves conservatives, and thus give a bad name to conservatism, often complain that minorities get special breaks and also seem to have a personal grievence against unqualified Blacks who get good jobs--and that does happen. But a whole lot of unqualified Whites get good jobs, and you never hear "conservatives" complain about that. And you never hear them complain about the injustice that qualified Blacks face when it is assumed that they got their job, for which they are emenently qualified, because of Affirmative Action.

Cabbage does not smell good while being cooked, even tho, properly seasoned, it can taste good. But, of course, the main point is that Mary can't afford any meat. A little ham in the cabbage would have added a lot to the flavor, and improved the smell.

www.io.com/~norwood

187. norwoodr - Aug. 23, 1998 - 2:32 PM PDT
I went back and reread the hospital chapter, and I still found the images comic. The mad scientist with glasses as thick as the bottom of a coke bottle, the other scientist who sarcastically suggests castration. These are images from a mind in shock, and probably doped to the gills. That the narrator was never actually given a chemical lobotomy is made clear by his quick recovery, and the fact that he remembers his name perfectly well, if it were not already clear that you don't treat an explosion victim the way he is apparently treated in that chapter.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

188. norwoodr - Aug. 23, 1998 - 2:39 PM PDT
tomfreeland

I first encountered the word Chthon in a Piers Anthony sf novel of that name, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Lovecraft used the word. It is one of those Greek words that used to be part of any educated person's vocabulary, before the unilateral intellectual disarmament of the United States. It means, roughly, "Hellish".

Your Ellison quote about the relationship between The Brotherhood and the Communist Party cleared up a point that had been bothering me. Thanks.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

189. tomfreeland - Aug. 27, 1998 - 3:33 PM PDT
ch.15, quickly:

He wakes up, to leave Mary's; other tenants are banging radiator pipes. He reaches, grabs an old cast-iron bank with a horrible stereotyped Black on it and hits the pipes; the bank breaks, and, in a panic, he puts it in his brief case.

He tells Mary he is going to pay the rent, and gives her $100; he leaves her and then makes two attempts to throw away the bank. In the first, he is ordered to remove it from a woman's garbage can-- the woman says "We keep our place clean and respectable and we don't want you field niggers coming up from the South and ruining things." The second time it is returned by someone who asks if he lost it.

He discovers that the incident at the eviction is in the papers; he is called "an uknown 'rabble-rouser.'"

He buys a suit, and discovers that his new apartment is in a Spanish-Irish neighborhood in the upper East side.

190. tomfreeland - Aug. 28, 1998 - 8:49 AM PDT
ch. 16
This is his big speech, to a political rally in a large arena. Afraid, waiting for the crowd to get large enough, he thinks back, first to an old sports-arena where he grew up, at which there was a shanty in which a syphiilitic lived alone, coming out to beg for food and disinfectant to soak his rags. He thinks of his fear of the crowd and is reminded of standing as a child looking at a hug black-and-white bulldog, called Master, "log-chained to an apple tree." Master is the crowd in his mind, grinning at him, barking, growling. He liked but didn't trust Master, wanted to please but did not trust the crowd.

His speech begins-- just before the crods sings "John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave"-- "Imagine that, I thgouth, they make that old song sound new." He begins, fumbles with the mic and gets back encouragement from the crowd -- "That was all I'd needed, I'd made contact..."

His speech begins generally-- invoking the *un*common, the dispossesed, the evicted in a way that includes the entire crowd. Then he says:

"Look at me. I haven't lived here long. Times are hard. I've known despair. I'm from teh South, and since coming here I've known eviction. I've come to distrust the world. But look at me know, something strange is happening. I'm here before you. I must confess....."

At this point brother Jack walks up, "pretending to adjust the microphone" and says "Careful now, don't end your usefullness before you've begun." (page 345)

191. tomfreeland - Aug. 28, 1998 - 8:53 AM PDT
I have a major question at this point, so I'm going to stop there and do the rest of the chapter later today.

Here's my question: Why does the narrator get the warning at this point? What did he do? Was it the invocation of the *personal*-- the narrator's experience of the south and moving north-- which was an actual reference to racial experience and therefore not "generalized" away in the way the Brotherhood demanded? Was it cutting off his "I must confess" with a warning before he did so? If that's it, then what did Jack think the narrator was about to confess?

I'm inclined to think it was the invocation of the black migration experience-- but I'm not sure.

Anyone else with ideas?

192. norwoodr - Aug. 28, 1998 - 10:13 AM PDT
When I read that passage, I assumed that Jack was afraid the narrator would tell the crowd what the narrator had been telling Jack all along, that he wasn't really a public speaker and didn't really have anything to say. As he does again, later, Jack underestimates the narrator, because Jack, like most people, doesn't really see him. The chapter I read yesterday, over a fine dish of Chicken Florentine at The Olive Garden, was the one right after the funeral. Jack is going to regret not seeing the Invisible Man for what he really is, in particular, for underestimating his anger and his eloquence.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

193. tomfreeland - Aug. 28, 1998 - 11:57 AM PDT
cont. ch. 16

He then confesses-- that he feels transformed, more human, and home, and that "we are the true patriots! The citizens of tomorrow's world. We'll be dispossed no longer!" He is struck by applause "like a clap of thunder."

He leaves, Jack enthusiastically asks the brotherhood leadership what they think. A man with a pipe says "It was a most unsatisfactory beginning." Asked by the narrator "Did I do something wrong," the man with the pipe says "The worst you could have done." The speech is called "wild, hysterical, politically iresponsible and dangerous...and worse...incorrect." It is called unscientific, and
wrong because of the effect it produced on the crowd. The leaders
decide that the narrator needs training.

Here's something at the end of the chapter I passed over on a first
reading: Remember how, when visiting with Norton, the narrator says
he hasn't heard of Ralph Waldo Emerson? Maybe so, but here he
remebers a college professor "full of contempt and exaltation, pacing
before the blackboard chalked with quotations from Joyce and Yeats
and Sean O'Casey." and then refers to PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST.

Somehow I think anyone whose college courses would allow them to invoke that would also have encountered Emerson.

194. arkymalarky - Aug. 28, 1998 - 3:08 PM PDT
Do you feel there's a reason for that? Perhaps the fact that those are Irish authors and none are American has some significance.

195. BunEBear - Aug. 28, 1998 - 3:25 PM PDT
Well, one can't help but think that the Emerson comment was just an inside joke, given that he was evidently Ellison's namesake.

196. chloel - Aug. 28, 1998 - 3:26 PM PDT
Before the wars, chthonic was known to mean 'underground' - which wasn't always hellish to Hellas. Think of grottoes, Mysteries, Earth Mothers, trolls.

197. BunEBear - Aug. 28, 1998 - 3:33 PM PDT
Anyway, sorry not to be in here a little more, but I've been more busy than normal (due to a promotion, not a bad thing.) I just finished the book and enjoyed it quite a lot. I was left with the impression that the themes were much more universal than I was expecting. I guess I was expecting a dead serious tome about "being black in America", and was happy to find that, as others have noted, it has quite a sense of humor and, while having plenty to say on that particular theme is really more generally about being and individual in a corrupt world of manipulative powers.

I will try to find time to comment more if I can.

As to Tom's question above, I think I understood Tom's first interpretation when I was reading it.

198. tomfreeland - Aug. 28, 1998 - 4:05 PM PDT
arky, I'm not sure about a reason-- it just was a mild clunker a 2nd time through for me, because of the miss on Emerson in the Norton section.

BunE-- you're right about Emerson being an in-joke for Ellison. It comes up a 2nd time in the name of the reciepient of the last of the "reference" letters.

199. tomfreeland - Aug. 28, 1998 - 4:13 PM PDT
Chloel, thanks for the link. It of course provides a great clue about Cthonic (which is coming up, albiet briefly, in the next chapter):

"Pertaining to the earth; earthy; as, chthonic religions."

Earthly religions = whatever the 'scientific' system that the "brotherhood" professes might be.

BTW, Ellison was briefly associated with the Communist Party briefly in the late 30s. Ellison made some speeches; somewhere I've read a reference to him making a speech about the Spanish Civil War. This brings to mind (for me) the business in the sections we are coming to (Norwood, I re-read your post to make sure of my impression that you have advanced into or beyond this point....) in which the party calls upon the narrator to speak on issues outside what he knows/understands. And, of course, there is an obvious connection between the mysterious changes of position of the Brotherhood and demands of the Communist Party that Blacks suddenly forget about the race issue during WWII and subordinate it to the support of the Soviet side after Hitler violated the nonagression pact.

200. norwoodr - Aug. 30, 1998 - 12:52 PM PDT
tomfreeland

College students have spotty knowledge. I knew about John dos Passos as a college student, but never heard of Lawrence Durell, just to give an example off the top of my head.

And, shocking as it may be, I still have never read Emmerson, and couldn't tell you anything about him.

The world is large, and time is fleeting.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

201. norwoodr - Aug. 30, 1998 - 12:59 PM PDT
I'm not sure whether to comment on the chapter I'm reading now or try to keep in step, but if I don't post this, I'll forget it, so I'll try to do it in a non-revelatory way.

At the paint factory, the Man is told to do a job without being given the instructions he needs to do the job correctly. I just realized that this is a recurrent theme in the book. In the very first chapter, he thinks his job is to give a speech, when really it is to fight. At the university, he thinks his job is to drive wherever the white man tells him to, and he is punished for doing what he was told to do. In his first big speech, he is criticized for not being "scientific" before anyone has told him the Party Line.

In the chapter I just read, the same thing happens again.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

202. norwoodr - Aug. 30, 1998 - 1:00 PM PDT
Only this time, things turn out a little differently than they have before.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

203. tomfreeland - Aug. 30, 1998 - 1:01 PM PDT
ch 17
After 4 months of studing with Brother Hambro, Jack comes to get the narrator. Hoping to learn what his next step would be, the narrator is disappointed to be taken for a drink.

During the 4 months of study, he worked harder than he had in college, with "every occasion...a study situation". He was "under orders to make no speeches."

Jack tells him he is "to become chief spokesman of the Harlem District", something the committee "decided yesterday." The narrator "had no idea." He is told he is to "Keep them stirred up. Get them active. Get as many to join as possible." He doesn't know where the Harlem office is, though, so he is shown it by Jack.

The next day, at meeting of the committee governing the brotherhood, the narrator is introduced. One of the Harlem brotherhood members, Tod Clifton comes in late. Clifton says he has had "a little encounter with the nationalists. With Ras the Exhorter's boys...." The narrator remembers that when he arrived in Harlem he was impressed with a man speaking from a latter-- this is Ras.. Someone comments that Ras' "hoodlums would attack and denounce the white meat of a roasted chicken."

Later, discussing a street meeting they are about to conduct, Clifton says "It'll go big man, It'll be bigger than anything since Garvey."

204. tomfreeland - Aug. 30, 1998 - 1:05 PM PDT
Norwood, Message #201 is a really key observation.

205. tomfreeland - Aug. 30, 1998 - 1:15 PM PDT
Marcus Garvey's first fame was a movement based in Harlem in which he essentially declared himself ruler of a new African nation and was raising money to lead American Blacks back to Africa. He raised money and purchased a couple of ships that were not seaworthy and was going to be a part of a Black-owned merchant shipping line. This was all linked in amorphous ways with his advocacy of Black Nationalism and Black capitalism and a financial scheme that was probably something of a Ponzi scheme. Garvey produced a mania of joining/contributing and ultimately was prosecuted and deported to Jamaica (where he was born) when it all collapsed. Back in Jamaica, he became involved in the founding of Rastafarianism.

Ellison invokes Garvey here for a number of reasons-- Garvey's success was huge at its peak, and obviously duplicating it for the Brotherhood would be a major coup. This is also the chapter in which Ellison seriously introduces Ras, who in a lot of ways-- nationalism, Carribean origins, etc.-- obviously brings Garvey to mind.

Two things I think Ellison wanted to avoid, though--- the (at least to me, odd) religious overlay of Garveyism, and the financial flim-flams of Garveyism. He didn't want the reader to think "Garvey" and impute those to Ras; this, of course, is the sort of thing that is a problem of invoking history. So, by having the characters talk of Garvey in the middle of the passage in which Ras is introduced, Ellison acknowledges the connection but slightly fences it off.

206. norwoodr - Aug. 31, 1998 - 1:24 PM PDT
Any thoughts on the name Hambro. There is no indication that Hambro is Black. I assume he is not. But I've never heard the name Hambro before, and it me the associations are Sambo, Hambone, and "bro", all words about Blacks, tho I don't know if "bro" was used in Ellison's day. The first two derogotory, but I gather we are supposed to respect the Hambro character, which makes the name choice confusing for me.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

207. norwoodr - Sep. 8, 1998 - 11:24 AM PDT
I finished reading Invisible Man last night. It seems early for "concluding thoughts" but, on the other hand, there have been no postings here for eight days, so maybe I'd better say what I have to say before the thread is riffed.

What is the sound of one invisible hand clapping?

www.io.com/~norwoodr

208. norwoodr - Sep. 10, 1998 - 11:03 AM PDT
Final thoughts on Invisible Man, which I have a dismal feeling no one but FrayVader will read.

At the beginning of the last chapter is a paragraph that I think every director in Hollywood memorized, or, today, absorbed second hand. "I leaped aside, into the street, and there was a sudden and brilliant suspension of time, like the interval between the last ax stroke and the felling of a tall tree, in which there had been a loud noise followed by a loud silence." The rest of the passage is equally cinematic, but not fifties cinematic. Eighties. Richard Donner.

I didn't like the epilog. It is too clearly Ellison, not the narrator, talking directly to the reader. In general, it is a mistake to break the fourth wall, except for comic effect. Given the epilog, I can see why Ellison didn't write another novel. He didn't know he was writing a great book, and he wasn't sure he could write another one as great. Maybe it is for the best. Joesph Heller, for one, would have a better reputation if he had stopped with Catch 22.

My overall assessment. Invisible Man is one of the great novels of the Twentieth Century, and I thank tomfreeland and the Fray, without whom I might have let more years go by before I read it.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

209. arkymalarky - Sep. 10, 1998 - 3:03 PM PDT
I've read every post here, but for some reason discussion never seemed to pick up from anyone's posts. I enjoyed the book immensely, as well.

210. norwoodr - Sep. 11, 1998 - 9:00 AM PDT
arkymalarky

Thanks for proving me wrong in my fear that no one was reading this thread. I've often wondered the percentage of lurkers in The Fray. I asked FrayVader once, and he said he'd get back to me, but he never did, so I guess only FV and BillG know the answer to that one.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

211. JustSayYo - Sep. 12, 1998 - 5:22 AM PDT
This use of "Ras", is it short for Rastafari(sp?) ? Sorry if it's just a reference to a person in the book. I of course have been to busy of late to lurk. Now that I'm here for a short time I find I'm making time to lurk.

I was told many years ago that Rasta is a religion of the Carribean. I would find it curious that this thread made reference to it via this book. I've gleaned from norwoodr that the book has race issues to deal with, or does it? An answer to both of my questions will allow me to save a lot of time.

Thank you.
Yo.

212. norwoodr - Sep. 13, 1998 - 12:54 PM PDT
Ras is "Ras the Warrior" or "Ras the Destroyer", a militant Black who sees the protagonist and his Brotherhood as traitors to the Black race because of their inclusiveness. Clearly the author does not like either Ras, because he is going to get a lot of innocent people killed, or the Brotherhood, because they are equally willing to see Black's die to further their cause. The Brotherhood is loosely based on American communism in the 1940's. Ras is from the Caribbian, and his name suggests to be both Islam and Rastafarianism.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

213. mynagle - Sep. 13, 1998 - 8:38 PM PDT
you can count on me for lurking--my specialty.

214. DEMURRER - Sep. 14, 1998 - 6:46 PM PDT
norwoodr re:206 You forgot "Ham" as in "the mark of" in Genesis. That was sometimes used as a Biblical justification by Christian slavers. I have not read Ellison since high school (1970). I'm inspired to review.

215. norwoodr - Sep. 15, 1998 - 9:39 AM PDT
DEMURRER

I've heard references to the idea that Ham was Black before, but am unable to find anything in the Bible that even hints at that. Where did this story get started?

www.io.com/~norwoodr

216. DEMURRER - Sep. 15, 1998 - 9:17 PM PDT
I'm no Biblical scholar, but Genesis 9&10 describes how, after the flood, Noah got drunk and passed out in the nude. Apparently, seeing your father without clothes is a great sin. When Noah woke up and found that his son Ham had seen him naked, he put a curse on Ham and his lineage - declaring them to be forever the slaves of Noah's other sons, Shem and Japeth, and their descendants. The sons of Ham - Canaan, Mizraim, Cush and Phut went on to populate Palestine, Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya respectively. Many 16th through 20th century Britons and SubBritons could not resist equating Noah's curse with dark skin. The spin had some loose ends, but a Biblical rationalization for racism, imperialism and slavery was just too useful, its implications for the ultimate brotherhood of man notwithstanding.

217. tomfreeland - Sep. 21, 1998 - 8:18 PM PDT
I'm back, briefly. I've had a U.S. Supreme Court brief "eat me alive" lately and apologize for disappearing after leading this thread for a while. Answering the question: There are reasons to think Ras was *loosely* based on Marcus Garvey, who founded Rastafarianism after being deported from the U.S. Garvey was involved in black nationalist activism in Harlem,a nd had a strange back-to-Africa/black investiment scheme that involved buying freighters. It was pyramid-like, and after its collapse, he got convicted and deported. I suspect Ellison avoided the link-up of Garvey and Ras because he didn't want to "import" this history onto his character.

218. tomfreeland - Sep. 21, 1998 - 8:24 PM PDT
Norwood:

one minor quibble: I think Ellison knew he was writing a great novel. I think the 2nd one got stuck because he couldn't see clear to create one he thought stood with INVISIBLE MAN. Which is no great failing-- for a long time I thought Garcia Marquez was not going to be able to write something that stood with 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE

219. norwoodr - Sep. 22, 1998 - 6:36 AM PDT
TomFreeLand

Welcome back to the thread. I can certainly understand not allowing The Fray to get in the way of real work. (I'm posting more these days to avoid the big stack of papers that has piled up on my desk.)

Is it time to retire this thread, or have we some unfinished business?

www.io.com/~norwoodr

220. tomfreeland - Sep. 22, 1998 - 9:17 AM PDT
IMHO there is unfinished business and stuff I'd like to get to. For right now, here's a question: What did you think of Ras & the riot scene, charging the cops?

And here's a *plot* question: What happens to Ras?

221. norwoodr - Sep. 22, 1998 - 2:21 PM PDT
tomfreeland

I thought the riot scene was great, though I had some reservations about the deliberation of the rioters, for example in making sure no children were left in the building they were about to torch.

As for what really happens to Ras, I assume the authors version of events is the true one, and the other versions are just his way of showing how quickly truth turns into legend.

www.io.com/~norwoodr

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