Ralph Ellison: A Biography

William Grimes

In Ralph Ellison Arnold Rampersad, a Stanford University professor and the author of biographies of Jackie Robinson and Langston Hughes, describes the long, sad descent of a gifted novelist and analyst of black American culture, who, intoxicated by fame and the honors heaped on him after the publication of his masterpiece, “Invisible Man,” in 1952, grew increasingly aloof from other black artists and detached from black reality.
— The New York Times

Jabari Asim

As Arnold Rampersad astutely observes in this fascinating, revelatory biography, Ellison's writings took careful note of his fellow blacks' creation of "certain bulwarks against chaos, including religion, folklore, stable families, and a canny knowledge of Jim Crow."
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Rampersad's new biography sweeps every cobweb out of every nook and cranny of the life of Ralph Ellison (1913–1994), author of one of the seminal works of 20th-century fiction, Invisible Man. Rampersad, a professor of humanities at Stanford and biographer of Langston Hughes, was given unprecedented access to Ellison's extensive correspondence, and it shows: he seems to leave nothing out, including every cold Ellison ever came down with, though the details often add nothing to the developing portrait. The details will make this the definitive biography for now, but work remains to be done, because Rampersad fails to address the lasting question of Ellison's legacy: why he could never produce a second novel in his lifetime. (The biographer doesn't cover the posthumous publication of Ellison's unfinished Juneteenth.) Ellison never truly embraced the Civil Rights movement, quietly supporting the fight from afar while maintaining that his writing would represent his contribution to the cause. Still, Rampersad does plot how Ellison drew on his experiences in Jim Crow America to produce his groundbreaking novel. He reveals Ellison to have been prickly, short-tempered, self-absorbed and chronically bad to women, but also charming enough to win over influential people. Rampersad provides a wealth of material about Ellison, but synthesizing it all will be up to readers to do for themselves. 24 pages of photos. 40,000 first printing. (Apr.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Library Journal

The celebrated biographer of Langston Hughes takes on another great African American writer. With a seven-city tour. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A superb biography of the noted African-American writer and the tormented times in which he lived. It is literature's misfortune that Ralph Ellison (1913-94) never produced a novel after Invisible Man, which took him seven traumatic years to write. As Rampersad (English/Stanford Univ.; Jackie Robinson, 1997, etc.) chronicles, Ellison received accolade after accolade following its publication: the National Book Award, presidential medals, honorary doctorates, "a cascading flow of honors such as no other African-American writer had ever enjoyed." Success may have ruined Ellison; he developed a taste for the good life, first-class travel, nice surroundings-a far remove from his Oklahoma childhood. Rising from poverty, Ellison trained as a musician and engaged in an activist politics that launched him as a writer. Long afterward, his failure to produce cost him the use of a university secretary, but he had tenure, and plenty of other universities were always trying to woo him away. That failure and the gossip it yielded within the academy made Ellison bitter and hostile, of a piece with his transformation from prewar Communist to postwar conservative, at least of a cultural kind. It is in this second guise that Ellison fought his fiercest battles, waged against the likes of Ishmael Reed and Amiri Baraka, as he "deplored the popularity of black ‘demagogues' and the habit of idolizing ex-pimps and ex-prisoners . . . which ‘gave many kids the notion that there was no point in developing their minds.' " Ellison's battles with other African-American writers, such as Langston Hughes, led to his alienation from their company, but not from the canon. Rampersad writes of such matters with a mix ofamusement and sorrow, noting how they drained Ellison of his energies and clearly wishing that Ellison had found "a way to that second triumph of fiction of which he had been dreaming . . . for almost thirty-five years."A revealing exploration of Ellison's life and work. First printing of 40,000