Ralph Ellison: A Biography (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780375707988)

Ralph Ellison is justly celebrated for his epochal novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953 and has become a classic of American literature. But Ellison's strange inability to finish a second novel, despite his dogged efforts and soaring prestige, made him a supremely enigmatic figure. Arnold Rampersad skillfully tells the story of a writer whose thunderous novel and astute, courageous essays on race, literature, and culture assure him of a permanent place in our literary heritage. Starting with Ellison's hardscrabble childhood in Oklahoma and his ordeal as a student in Alabama, Rampersad documents his improbable, painstaking rise in New York to a commanding place on the literary scene. With scorching honesty but also fair and compassionate, Rampersad lays bare his subject's troubled psychology and its impact on his art and on the people about him.This book is both the definitive biography of Ellison and a stellar model of literary biography.

Author: Arnold Rampersad
ISBN-10: 0375707980
ISBN-13: 9780375707988
Publisher: Vintage
Language: English
Published: 01/08/2008
Pages: 704
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.41lbs
Size: 8.02h x 5.26w x 1.39d

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 01/13/2008 pg. 32