The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison..., Ralph Ellison
The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison..., Ralph Ellison
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The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison

Author: Ralph Ellison, John F. Callahan

Narrator: Dominic Hoffman, Arthur Morey

Unabridged: 33 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/30/2018

Synopsis

Compiled, edited, and newly revised by Ralph Ellison’s literary executor, John F. Callahan, this Modern Library Paperback Classic includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964), hailed by Robert Penn Warren as “a body of cogent and subtle commentary on the questions that focus on race,” and Going to the Territory (1986), an exploration of literature and folklore, jazz and culture, and the nature and quality of lives that black Americans lead. “Ralph Ellison,” wrote Stanley Crouch, “reached across race, religion, class and sex to make us all Americans.”

About The Author

John F. Callahan is Morgan S. Odell Professor of Humanities at Lewis and Clark College. He edited Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth and co-edited, with Albert Murray, the Modern Library edition of Trading Twelves. Saul Bellow, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, has written thirteen novels and numerous novellas, stories, and essays.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Eric

I recommend the essay "Twentieth Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity". Ellison's analysis of "hard boiled" fiction explained to me what it was that always annoyed me about Hemingway, and the (to me) puzzling prevalence and celebration of writers like Cheever, Updike, Salinger, and Roth --......more

Goodreads review by Anthony

This collection has everything that is in "Shadow & Act" as well as "Living With Music" -- plus more. There are a couple of interviews with Ellison, as well as his "notes" during the writing of "Invisible Man." It was a great find.......more

Goodreads review by Steve

I have a paper copy of this collection and chose to re-read it on my new Kindle as a ceremonial way of breaking it in. This essay collection is perhaps my very favorite. Ellison communicates better than anyone the struggles of American blacks to control their own narrative and fate within a systemic......more

Goodreads review by Joseph

Very uneven collection. An area of concentrated goodness-to-excellence are the essays relating to music, so the slimmer volume "Living with Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings" would be a better bet (especially for a reader who, like me, shares Ellison's love of jazz music). Essays on other topics......more

Goodreads review by Robert

Ellison's essays offer great insight into what it means to be an American, not just what it means to be black and American, but also the ideal of what America sets out to be, how it falls short, what African Americans have contributed to America, how they are viewed or should view themselves and the......more

Quotes

“[Ellison’s] essays never fail to be elegantly written, beautifully composed, and intelletually sophisticated.”—Los Angeles Times

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