Ralph Ellison: A Profile of an American Writer
Invisible Man?
In the 1980s I flew to the island of Madeira for a short break. I knew little about the island other than George Bernard Shaw used to holiday there in the 1930s, at the Reid’s Palace Hotel. The only place I could afford was a room in a small private house, the home of a couple who took in paying guests, perched half way up a small mountain, with a verandah that over-looked Funchal harbour a thousand feet below.
The only way down to Funchal was to either walk (a good hour) or catch an infrequent bus: as a result I spent the first couple of days sitting on that verandah reading.
I’d only taken a couple of books: Ernest Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream, and Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man.
I started Ellison’s novel first and was fully, wholly, taken in by his prose and philosophy, which has the same tone and pace as William Saroyan’s work, mixed with the ever insistent wordage of Norman Mailer, and the beat of the Count Basie Orchestra of the 1930s, and Basie’s superb singer back then, Jimmy Rushing, who was a good friend of Ellison’s.
