I'm deeply saddened that once again this is a book I wasn't introduced to until adulthood. I missed out on so many wonderful works of literature simply because of my proximity to whiteness. And though I'm rectifying it now, I wonder what younger me would have gained from the thoughts and themes around race and identity in this work. Would she have been less ashamed of her blackness? Would she have embraced being biracial sooner? We'll never know. ( )

I'm really struggling with how to review this book exactly. Let's start with the easy part. Even if you don't try to understand the political commentary that underlies the story, the book stands alone as an interesting and compelling read. The focus is on one black man as he comes of age in New York City. He tries so hard to do things the right way, and yet over and over again, he finds that situations (job, school, etc.) are not working out as he anticipates, in part because he is naive.

In terms of the deeper meaning, there's a lot of meat. I actually used Spark Notes as I read just to see what others thought. It spoke to the black experience, but also to how political groups use people for their own ends to assert power and control. Ellison does an amazing job of helping the reader really empathize with the protagonist, and I thought that was one of the great strengths of the book. Here, I, a white female, really could feel the pain of these situations that the protagonist found himself in. Ellison never loses sight of the fact that he's telling a story. It would be easy to be derailed from that mission given all that he wants to communicate, but he never does. Impressive, educational, and honestly, a book I can see picking up a second time. ( )

A los treinta años de su aparición, que conmemoramos con esta edición homenaje acompañada de un prólogo de su autor, "El hombre invisible", acogida ya en sus inicios como una novela excepcional, ha rebasado el marco específico de la narrativa destinada a subrayar la trágica situación de los negros en la sociedad norteamericana, para pasar a figurar entre los clásicos de la literatura en lengua inglesa y las obras maestras de nuestro tiempo.

As a classic I’m not going to give this book a star rating. I can see why it’s on so many “best novels of the twentieth century” lists. A helluva story, much of it very hard to take. I like Ellison’s writing although sometimes it’s almost like musical improvisation: jamming in a way. And maybe it’s a little like Grateful Dead jamming - it goes on a for a bit longer than I can attend to sometimes. But that’s my problem, not a fault of the book.

I listened to the audiobook version, read by actor Joe Morton (who starred in the wonderful Brother From Another Planet among many other movies and tv shows), and I’m sure his great voice is what made me think about this novel in musical terms.

started out interesting, but greatly disappointing after all the good reviews