A new blog entry is long overdue and since I'm reading The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison with my morning coffee these days, I can use this book cover entry to recommend it. Highly! The book was on my wish list for years because I wanted to wait for the paperback edition, published recently by The Modern Library (the hardcover came out about four years ago). The wait was worth it. Ellison knows the art of letter writing and learning his story through his many letters is fascinating. I have yet to read Invisible Man (1952) and Juneteenth (1999, published posthumously) but both are on my list.
The letters are organised by decade with an introduction by editor John F. Callahan for each. I recommend reading the letters first, to allow Ellison to tell his story and his voice to shine. Sometimes there are too many quotes from the letters and interpretations that spoil the 'plot'. Yes, you can talk about a plot in this context because Ellison often writes long letters with plenty of content. The first ones are written in the 1930s, mainly to his mother when he was an impoverished student in Alabama.
He then moves to New York, settling in Harlem later, and it feels as if the book takes off with a letter to the poet Langston Hughes at the beginning of 1939 when Ellison has turned to writing ('There is really little that I can tell you Lang. I spend all of my time trying to make a writer of myself ...'). There are many letters to the writer Richard Wright (his book Native Son was published in 1940) in the 1940s that show Ellison mastering the craft ('You told me I would begin to write when I matured emotionally, when I began to feel what I understood. I am beginning to understand what you meant'). This collection of letters can best be described as a good novel that is hard to put down.
The letters are organised by decade with an introduction by editor John F. Callahan for each. I recommend reading the letters first, to allow Ellison to tell his story and his voice to shine. Sometimes there are too many quotes from the letters and interpretations that spoil the 'plot'. Yes, you can talk about a plot in this context because Ellison often writes long letters with plenty of content. The first ones are written in the 1930s, mainly to his mother when he was an impoverished student in Alabama.
He then moves to New York, settling in Harlem later, and it feels as if the book takes off with a letter to the poet Langston Hughes at the beginning of 1939 when Ellison has turned to writing ('There is really little that I can tell you Lang. I spend all of my time trying to make a writer of myself ...'). There are many letters to the writer Richard Wright (his book Native Son was published in 1940) in the 1940s that show Ellison mastering the craft ('You told me I would begin to write when I matured emotionally, when I began to feel what I understood. I am beginning to understand what you meant'). This collection of letters can best be described as a good novel that is hard to put down.
Cover design: Rachel Ake
Cover photo: James Whitmore/The LIFE
Cover photo: James Whitmore/The LIFE
The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison
Edited by John F. Callahan and Marc C. Conner
Paperback, 1072 pages
ISBN: 9780593730072
The Modern Library
Edited by John F. Callahan and Marc C. Conner
Paperback, 1072 pages
ISBN: 9780593730072
The Modern Library
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