Cliquer sur une vignette pour aller sur Google Books.
Chargement... Invisible Man (original 1952; édition 1995)par Ralph Ellison
Information sur l'oeuvreHomme invisible, pour qui chantes-tu? par Ralph Ellison (1952)
» 90 plus Favourite Books (180) Books Read in 2017 (94) 1940s (29) Favorite Long Books (80) Black Authors (25) 1950s (40) 1,001 BYMRBYD Concensus (118) Top Five Books of 2013 (746) Books Read in 2021 (554) A Novel Cure (144) Books Read in 2024 (320) Best First Lines (48) Urban Fiction (17) Read These Too (9) Southern Fiction (89) Existentialism (20) Overdue Podcast (254) Modernism (62) Books Read in 2023 (3,170) 100 World Classics (79) The Greatest Books (65) A's favorite novels (51) Fiction For Men (41) AP Lit (237) Fake Top 100 Fiction (55) Well-Educated Mind (130) SHOULD Read Books! (100) Nifty Fifties (52) My Favourite Books (65) Five star books (1,439) Florida (207) BitLife (130) My TBR (107) I Can't Finish This Book (137) Unread books (581) Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre
I'm glad to have finally read this brilliant American classic, which I somehow have avoided or overlooked since I first heard of it back in high school. Chapter 1 is nothing less than an encapsulation of the entire history of the United States told as a brutal, ugly, incredibly racist "battle royale". Overall, this is the coming of age story of a young African American man, told in first person, who starts out as a naive but conflicted product of the Jim Crow south, and who has been indoctrinated with the ideas of Booker T. Washington while attending a historic Black college. From that point we follow him to Harlem where he sheds all his illusions and delusions and becomes "invisible", living underground off the grid so to speak, and surviving in some way that is hidden from us. We learn how he gets there and what might happen next. Along the way he becomes prominent in the Brotherhood (the American Communist Party, I guess) and these chapters are tense and frustrating. Run by white people, the organization blatantly and hyprocritically exploits Black people for its own ends, which are, confusing, contradictory, and incoherent. One day they adore Mr. Invisible, the next they are denouncing him internally and threatening him with...something. They are very big on being "scientific" and whitesplaining the hell out of their activities in Harlem. At any rate, when we reach the end, Mr. Invisible appears ready to emerge from underground, just in time for the civil rights movement and all that has happened since. Seventy years after its publication, this novel is still incredibly relevant. This was an excellent book. The prose was evocative in a way that reminds me of what creative writing teachers try to encourage but fail to describe. The narrative flows despite the brutal topics. I'll admit that the resolution of the story itself is not entirely clear to me; I didn't have the revelation that the main character had. Still, it is easily the best-written work of fiction that I've read in a long time. Appartient à la série éditorialeEst contenu dansPossède un guide de référence avecCultural Contexts for Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: A Bedford Documentary Companion par Eric Sundquist Contient une étude deContient un commentaire de texte deContient un guide de lecture pour étudiantContient un guide pour l'enseignantPrix et récompensesDistinctionsListes notables
In the course of his wanderings from a Southern Negro college to New York's Harlem, an American black man becomes involved in a series of adventures. Introduction explains circumstances under which the book was written. Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing record of a black man's journey through contemporary America. Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity--powerfully imagined and written with a savage, wryly humorous gusto. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
|
The novel is made up of his story and how he came to recognize his own non-entity status. And it hits you in the gut right away: the first incident he relates from his life is when he's awarded a scholarship from a prestigious philanthropic organization in the small Southern town in which he grows up. He's invited to a country club dinner to make a speech about his scholarship, but once he gets there, he and several other young black men are forced to fight each other and be humiliated chasing for electrified coins. Only after he's been degraded is he allowed to give his speech and receive the scholarship and the briefcase. It's a horrifying sequence, incredibly difficult to read, and the book is just getting started.
This experience, and the ones that the narrator has at a black college and then in New York are rooted in a fundamental denial of his humanity. He's entertainment, or a tool, or an experiment, or just disposable. He struggles and fights and gets up after being knocked down over and over again, but he can't escape the fact of his race and the broad social structures designed to keep him and other black men firmly in the underclass. And while things have gotten better today, it's maybe not as much better as we'd like to think.
This is a hard book to read. Not because of the quality...Ellison's writing is incredible. But it's heavy and dark and the unending awfulness of what the narrator is subjected to is a lot to get your head around. I usually try not to get heavily into politics on this blog, but I read this book right after the 2016 election, and it really made me think about the racism that persists in our society. ( )