Invisible Man: A Novel

The book arrived and I have no issues - lovely quality and great value too.

Invisible Man is Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel about a young black man, who gets thrown out of university for accidentally offending a wealthy patron. He then tries to make a life for himself in New York.This is a literary novel, and I sometimes found it irritating that symbolism seemed more important than a sense of reality. However, a few lines early on in the book sum up how I’ve come to feel about Invisible Man:“People talk of metaphorical significance of this or that scene. Seems like a puzzle or a children’s game. But a dream sometimes tells us things in the shape of metaphor, and this is no children’s game. This is real and serious.”When I wake up from a dream, I do not review it for realism, and give it a low star rating if the content of the dream has been one of personal symbolism rather than a realistic story. People who have studied dreams - Carl Jung for example - emphasise their strange, metaphorical nature. Dreams deal in the pictorial and the figurative. They reach into areas of taboo, with which the waking mind does not feel comfortable. Invisible Man often inhabits this sort of realm. A number of scenes have the dreamy power of exploring taboo – the famous one at the beginning of the book involving a sharecropper’s family, for example. There’s another telling passage towards the end, where a woman shares with the unnamed narrator a fantasy that she could not think of sharing with anyone in the normal run of life. Then almost as the book closes, the narrator actually has a dream that reproduces images from his waking life. The images are wild and chaotic, but strangely are not clearly the result of a dream until the narrator wakes up.So that’s how I see the book, as a kind of literary dream reaching into all the dark areas of life that waking minds would rather leave alone. I don’t think it always works. Sometimes the novel seems disjointed because it is disjointed, and not because it is reproducing the fragmented nature of a dream. Nevertheless, the book is remarkable, perhaps more in the thinking about it afterwards rather than in the reading of it. Dreams themselves are rather like that.I would give Invisible Man a three for the experience of reading the book, five for the thinking about it afterwards.

Hard read, but well worth it. The ending was the best, I like the paragraph he talks about honesty and that in this life people prefer to listen to half-truths or lies, but when you are truly yourself then you’re not good enough, no one likes you nearly as much. Ellison basically reminds you that you are enough.

A really powerful book about race in America in the 1950s. Strong themes of the trickster make this a compelling read, though it does drag on at times. Worth reading as a snapshot of history and historical literature - don't expect it to be easy though.

This belongs up there with Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes and yes Chaucer. It is an absolute romp through black America, as if someone had asked the author to tell them about what it meant to be black and he'd said to them and to himself "I'LL show you...' And in the showing there is a great reserve of humour though as with The Sellout one could never be sure of the intention of humour, as though it were an unconscious product of the skin colour interface.Yet in the end it is common humanity in an existential quandary that comes to the fore, or rather takes a back seat. On the way we are treated to various religious, political and downright tragic scenarios and strategies for each of which the orator in Ellison has a rip roaring speech. Great stuff!

Excellent and still relevant writing about the issues faced by the African Americans in the US. Though the period in the book refers to the early 20th century, it still seems relevant today. This book (and the writer) was referenced by James Baldwin a few times.

Definitely worth a read. Liked the reflection. Waffles a bit in places.

One of those books you have to read - it is outstanding. I have a very broad taste in litterature and I have enjoyed reading books such as "Twilight" as well as "Madame Bovary". This book has everything, an amazing story, philosophy, history and, such to top it all of, it is well written.

While it is about the African American experience in mid-20th century America, it is relatable to anyone anywhere who's ever felt invisible. And the jazz-like rhythm of the prose is a treat!

En este formato, la letra es muy pequeña.

Livraison rapide et parfait état du livre.

Ein stück amerikanische Geschichte! Absolut lesenswert und zeitlos. Mmn ein must read!

Our local bookclub here in Buenos Aires selected this classic. Having failed to read it when I should have years ago, I finally got around to it. Some of the style of writing -- long interior monologues -- is now dated but the story itself is enlightening. The life of the American negro under Jim Crow is shown in all its trials and tragedies. But so is the heroic struggle of the narrator to make a meaningful life in the midst of it. Reading the book today serves as a reminder that systematic racism has not gone away even if its institutionalized form is no longer legal.