Ralph Ellison : a biography / Arnold Rampersad.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rampersad, Arnold.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ellison, Ralph.

Novelists, American--20th century--Biography.

Novelists, American.

African American novelists--Biography.

African American novelists.

Genre:

Biographies.

Biographie.

Physical Description:

657 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

Summary:

The definitive biography of an important American cultural intellectual of the twentieth century--Ralph Ellison, author of the masterpiece Invisible Man. In 1953, Ellison's explosive story of a young black man's search for truth and identity catapulted him to national prominence. Ellison earned many honors, but his failure to publish a second novel, despite years of striving, haunted him for the rest of his life. Rampersad, the first scholar given complete access to Ellison's papers, provides a complex portrait of an unusual artist and human being. This biography describes a man of magnetic personality who counted Saul Bellow, Langston Hughes, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, Richard Wilbur, Albert Murray, and John Cheever among his closest friends; a man whose life and art were shaped mainly by his unyielding desire to produce magnificent art and by his resilient faith in the moral and cultural strength of America.--From publisher description.

Contents:

1. In the territory

2. Leaving the territory

3. In a land most strange

4. A shock of transition

5. The recognition of necessity

6. The numbed and the seething

7. A mighty book, a mighty theme

8. The agon of writing

9. In the home stretch

10. Finish line

11. Annus mirabilis

12. Second act

13. Adventure in Rome

14. The pleasures of home

15. Hanging fire

16. Tell it like it is, baby

17. A "lone-star" Negro

18. Professor in the humanities

19. The monkey on his back

20. The uncanny penetration of the past

21. Flying home

Books by Ralph Ellison

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 569-624) and index.

Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Awards - Nonfiction , Winner, 2008

Other Format:

Online version: Rampersad, Arnold. Ralph Ellison.

ISBN:

0375408274

9780375408274

OCLC:

70921481

Publisher Number:

9780375408274

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description