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The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison
An autobiography through the previously unpublished letters of the renowned author of
Invisible Man
, with insights into the riddle of American identity, the writer's craft, and his own life and work.
Over six decades (1933 to 1993), Ralph Ellison's extensive and revealing correspondence remarkably details his aspirations and anxieties, confidence and uncertainties throughout his personal and professional life. From early notes to his mother, as an impoverished college student; to debates with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, including Romare Bearden, Saul Bellow, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, and Alfred Kazin, among others; to exchanges with friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount, these letters communicate the immense importance of Ellison's life and work. They show his metamorphosis from an impressionable youth into a cultured man of the world, from an aspiring composer into a distinguished novelist, and ultimately into a man who confronted America's many complexities through his words.
Over six decades (1933 to 1993), Ralph Ellison's extensive and revealing correspondence remarkably details his aspirations and anxieties, confidence and uncertainties throughout his personal and professional life. From early notes to his mother, as an impoverished college student; to debates with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, including Romare Bearden, Saul Bellow, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, and Alfred Kazin, among others; to exchanges with friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount, these letters communicate the immense importance of Ellison's life and work. They show his metamorphosis from an impressionable youth into a cultured man of the world, from an aspiring composer into a distinguished novelist, and ultimately into a man who confronted America's many complexities through his words.
1072 pages, Hardcover
First published December 3, 2019
59 people are currently reading
2345 people want to read
About the author
Ralph Ellison
91 books2,068 followersRalph Ellison was a scholar and writer. He was born Ralph Waldo Ellison in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, named by his father after Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison was best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). For The New York Times , the best of these essays in addition to the novel put him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus." A posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left after his death.
Ellison died of Pancreatic Cancer on April 16, 1994. He was eighty-one years old.
Ellison died of Pancreatic Cancer on April 16, 1994. He was eighty-one years old.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 2, 2020
4.75 Stars — Even though this deeply personal collection from one of the most influential authors of modern literature was always going to be insightful, it has absolutely no right to be this wonderful. But that’s just exactly what this large, rich & striking text was for me, just bloody wonderful!
Ellison’s letters are also extremely topical to today’s current affairs & in terms of cultural themes it is so highly relevant that I my opinion it provides far more a poignant & resonant a truth than many other of the more ‘obvious’ texts that are flying off of book shelves today. This is because it’s raw, unedited perspective of a man through decades of racial discrimination repression & exploitation — in spades — the impact of which can quote literally be felt and observed in the authors psyche.
Even if you haven’t read the Invisible man — I highly suggest you do — this absorbing collection of writing and letters will grab you and shake you to the core whilst also making you laugh, cry & ponder many times over.
Ellison’s letters are also extremely topical to today’s current affairs & in terms of cultural themes it is so highly relevant that I my opinion it provides far more a poignant & resonant a truth than many other of the more ‘obvious’ texts that are flying off of book shelves today. This is because it’s raw, unedited perspective of a man through decades of racial discrimination repression & exploitation — in spades — the impact of which can quote literally be felt and observed in the authors psyche.
Even if you haven’t read the Invisible man — I highly suggest you do — this absorbing collection of writing and letters will grab you and shake you to the core whilst also making you laugh, cry & ponder many times over.
May 21, 2020
I have rarely read collections of correspondence that begin at such an early point in life, so it made for interesting reading to note the progression of Ralph Ellison’s interests, thinking, and prose from his late adolescence through his adulthood. Also interesting to note was the marked improvement of his letter writing after his departure from college and arrival in New York, as if the city had inspired him to newer heights. In any given period, Ellison writes to a fairly small circle of intimates, which allows for a real sense of development not only of his own personality but of the addressees. His approach changes along with his stature in life; his earlier letters, largely to family and friends from home in Oklahoma, are newsier, but as his correspondence shifts toward exchanges with literary and intellectual peers, he becomes more engaged in lengthy discussions and arguments.
As he comes to be respected for his writing, and is at times employed as an editor at periodicals, he is asked for formal and informal comment on the work of others, which provides a fascinating lens on what he looked for in literature that was not his own. He doesn’t seem to have dwelled much on the success of Invisible Man, but he responds to occasional inquiries (especially a relative flurry of them in the 1960s, perhaps prompted by an anniversary, or a new edition, or a critical reassessment), appreciative of the careful readers who have contacted him and doing his best to recall his intentions, while admitting a lack of current familiarity with the work. His letters, meanwhile, reveal that this lack of familiarity may be due, in part, to his focus on his second novel, never to be finished, of which he once, in 1947, wrote, “I only wish the damn thing was completely finished, agonized over, learned from, and forgotten in my enthusiasm for my next;” this is revealing as to how he may have dealt with Invisible Man internally, and quite striking when one considers that he would continue working on it for the next 47 years.
While his earlier letters often concern themselves with the institutions with which he is involved (Tuskegee and the Communist party), his world (and letters) becomes somewhat more insular and self-defined in middle age. His interests, however, were no less expansive, and his letters are particularly appealing in their cataloging of the books and magazines that he consumes, and in their detailing of his obsessive interest in photography and stereo equipment. This interest in the world around him, and the perspectives of others on the world, manifested itself in his attentiveness to folkloric traditions, local vernaculars, and high and low culture alike, all of which he discusses in great deal in his letters, in addition to integrating it into his fiction. Meanwhile, his correspondence showcases a vernacular all his own—one of the greatest delights of the book is all of the fun, inventive usages and turns of phrase with which he liberally peppers his letters; I was constantly pausing to add to a long list of my favorite examples.
Ellison at one point writes that “I work with the same reality, say, that Thurgood Marshall does, but the meaning which reality might have for him as a lawyer would not have the same meaning for me as a novelist. His approach is apt to be more analytical whereas mine insists that I not only analyze but that once the analysis is made I re-arrange it into a new synthesis so as to achieve form and significance,” which hints at why Ellison sought out, at least in written form, so many perspectives on the world—inputs, in a sense, to produce his own output. This was one of many aspects in which I related deeply to Ellison (not only in terms of our approaches to writing but also our personalities). This constant mining of his experience for material, as well as the sensitivity to different perceptions, seems to have shaped Ellison’s approach to writing generally; one highly compelling passage, from a letter in which Ellison comments on an acquaintance’s manuscript, reads, “Most of all, you should consider the possibility that the story I read is not the book you wrote; that is a possibility arising out of the circumstance, or convention, that places the reader’s imagination and the writer’s text in a collaborative relationship. For while he is guided by the writer’s narrative directions and evocative skills, the reader must bring the fiction to life in his own individual imagination, and this on the basis of his own experience and vision of social and psychological reality. The degree to which he reads ‘creatively’ and perceptively depends upon the strength of the writer’s poetic, rhetorical, and analytical skills.”
As might be expected, while Ellison’s thoughts on writing are never less than intriguing, they are most trenchant in the last set of letters, Ellison, presumably, having learned the most by then. He is intimately in tune with his particular preoccupations and his impulses, and is quick to respond to critical assessments of his oeuvre that, for example, attribute undue weight to certain influences; he does not deny such influences, but notes that such deep influence as is suggested would constrict his own imagination (and, implicitly, that such a constrictive reading would limit what the reader—always on his mind—could take away from the text). (He was acutely sensitive to the distinctions between authors and their influences, and in his own criticism sometimes noted the scenario that he sought to avoid, highlighting evidence of writers stifling their own creativity because of indebtedness to models that were incompatible with their own impulses.)
As his age increased, so too did the space in Ellison’s letters given over to reminiscing over past memories; this makes for a poignant bookend to this collection, as we hear once again, through the lens of a lifetime’s worth of distance and perspective, about experiences that we read fresh accounts of earlier. His resurfacing of these memories, stirred perhaps by his continuing progress on his second book, or merely by aging, forms a rhyme with a habit he had in earlier letters of repeatedly mentioning specific memories—moments and places—that made their marks on him. Much of his most starkly beautiful writing in the letters collected here is not in his delivery of recent news but in service of revivifying his memories. One gets the sense that these—more than any literary influences could have been—were, however refracted, the truest source of inspiration for his fiction, wrought into gemlike prose that went on to become memorable in its own right.
As he comes to be respected for his writing, and is at times employed as an editor at periodicals, he is asked for formal and informal comment on the work of others, which provides a fascinating lens on what he looked for in literature that was not his own. He doesn’t seem to have dwelled much on the success of Invisible Man, but he responds to occasional inquiries (especially a relative flurry of them in the 1960s, perhaps prompted by an anniversary, or a new edition, or a critical reassessment), appreciative of the careful readers who have contacted him and doing his best to recall his intentions, while admitting a lack of current familiarity with the work. His letters, meanwhile, reveal that this lack of familiarity may be due, in part, to his focus on his second novel, never to be finished, of which he once, in 1947, wrote, “I only wish the damn thing was completely finished, agonized over, learned from, and forgotten in my enthusiasm for my next;” this is revealing as to how he may have dealt with Invisible Man internally, and quite striking when one considers that he would continue working on it for the next 47 years.
While his earlier letters often concern themselves with the institutions with which he is involved (Tuskegee and the Communist party), his world (and letters) becomes somewhat more insular and self-defined in middle age. His interests, however, were no less expansive, and his letters are particularly appealing in their cataloging of the books and magazines that he consumes, and in their detailing of his obsessive interest in photography and stereo equipment. This interest in the world around him, and the perspectives of others on the world, manifested itself in his attentiveness to folkloric traditions, local vernaculars, and high and low culture alike, all of which he discusses in great deal in his letters, in addition to integrating it into his fiction. Meanwhile, his correspondence showcases a vernacular all his own—one of the greatest delights of the book is all of the fun, inventive usages and turns of phrase with which he liberally peppers his letters; I was constantly pausing to add to a long list of my favorite examples.
Ellison at one point writes that “I work with the same reality, say, that Thurgood Marshall does, but the meaning which reality might have for him as a lawyer would not have the same meaning for me as a novelist. His approach is apt to be more analytical whereas mine insists that I not only analyze but that once the analysis is made I re-arrange it into a new synthesis so as to achieve form and significance,” which hints at why Ellison sought out, at least in written form, so many perspectives on the world—inputs, in a sense, to produce his own output. This was one of many aspects in which I related deeply to Ellison (not only in terms of our approaches to writing but also our personalities). This constant mining of his experience for material, as well as the sensitivity to different perceptions, seems to have shaped Ellison’s approach to writing generally; one highly compelling passage, from a letter in which Ellison comments on an acquaintance’s manuscript, reads, “Most of all, you should consider the possibility that the story I read is not the book you wrote; that is a possibility arising out of the circumstance, or convention, that places the reader’s imagination and the writer’s text in a collaborative relationship. For while he is guided by the writer’s narrative directions and evocative skills, the reader must bring the fiction to life in his own individual imagination, and this on the basis of his own experience and vision of social and psychological reality. The degree to which he reads ‘creatively’ and perceptively depends upon the strength of the writer’s poetic, rhetorical, and analytical skills.”
As might be expected, while Ellison’s thoughts on writing are never less than intriguing, they are most trenchant in the last set of letters, Ellison, presumably, having learned the most by then. He is intimately in tune with his particular preoccupations and his impulses, and is quick to respond to critical assessments of his oeuvre that, for example, attribute undue weight to certain influences; he does not deny such influences, but notes that such deep influence as is suggested would constrict his own imagination (and, implicitly, that such a constrictive reading would limit what the reader—always on his mind—could take away from the text). (He was acutely sensitive to the distinctions between authors and their influences, and in his own criticism sometimes noted the scenario that he sought to avoid, highlighting evidence of writers stifling their own creativity because of indebtedness to models that were incompatible with their own impulses.)
As his age increased, so too did the space in Ellison’s letters given over to reminiscing over past memories; this makes for a poignant bookend to this collection, as we hear once again, through the lens of a lifetime’s worth of distance and perspective, about experiences that we read fresh accounts of earlier. His resurfacing of these memories, stirred perhaps by his continuing progress on his second book, or merely by aging, forms a rhyme with a habit he had in earlier letters of repeatedly mentioning specific memories—moments and places—that made their marks on him. Much of his most starkly beautiful writing in the letters collected here is not in his delivery of recent news but in service of revivifying his memories. One gets the sense that these—more than any literary influences could have been—were, however refracted, the truest source of inspiration for his fiction, wrought into gemlike prose that went on to become memorable in its own right.
March 27, 2020
Ralph Ellison (1913-1994) completed only one novel in his lifetime, but he was an accomplished essayist and letter writer. In a letter to Richard Wright, he wrote, "Letters come with difficulty." But "there was a time when I was more myself when writing a letter than at any other time." His voluminous correspondence is part memoir and part astute observations on literary and social issues. John F. Callahan, Ellison's literary executor, provides outstanding biographical overviews before each chapter.
Ellison's 1952 novel, "Invisible Man," won the National Book Award for Fiction (besting Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" and John Steinbeck's "East of Eden"). But it proved a hard act to follow. Over the next 42 years, Ellison worked on his second novel. "I've got a natural writer's block as big as the Ritz and as stubborn as a grease spot on a gabardine suit," he wrote to Saul Bellow in 1958. At the time of his death, the manuscript ran more than 2,000 pages. ("Juneteenth" was published posthumously in 1999, edited down to 368 pages. An expanded version, running 1,100 pages and retitled "Three Days Before the Shooting...", was published in 2010.)
Ellison's most frequent correspondents include Langston Hughes, Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, close friend Albert Murray and his wife, Fanny. Particularly fascinating are the letters he wrote to his wife in the late 1950s during his affair with a married woman. Ellison's letters are as stirring, vital and well-crafted as his published essays and fiction. This is a monumental and irresistible collection.
This monumental collection of Ralph Ellison's letters over seven decades illuminates the writer's personal life, writer's block and astute opinions on social issues and the literary landscape.
Ellison's 1952 novel, "Invisible Man," won the National Book Award for Fiction (besting Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" and John Steinbeck's "East of Eden"). But it proved a hard act to follow. Over the next 42 years, Ellison worked on his second novel. "I've got a natural writer's block as big as the Ritz and as stubborn as a grease spot on a gabardine suit," he wrote to Saul Bellow in 1958. At the time of his death, the manuscript ran more than 2,000 pages. ("Juneteenth" was published posthumously in 1999, edited down to 368 pages. An expanded version, running 1,100 pages and retitled "Three Days Before the Shooting...", was published in 2010.)
Ellison's most frequent correspondents include Langston Hughes, Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, close friend Albert Murray and his wife, Fanny. Particularly fascinating are the letters he wrote to his wife in the late 1950s during his affair with a married woman. Ellison's letters are as stirring, vital and well-crafted as his published essays and fiction. This is a monumental and irresistible collection.
This monumental collection of Ralph Ellison's letters over seven decades illuminates the writer's personal life, writer's block and astute opinions on social issues and the literary landscape.
June 18, 2020
Of you like Allison's Invisible Man and wonder why a second novel never came out, these letters dramatize his struggle with the problem as well as the many successes he had in life. He went from hoboing trains to get to Tuskegee to becoming a major literary American voice and a leader in Afro American thought who felt it was his responsibility to represent African Americans in American culture. I finished the book admiring him for all he accomplished and genuinely liking him as a human being. A must read.
February 2, 2024
Is it possible to read a lifetime of letters and not form a parasocial relationship? I would never feed you onions and garlic <3
Read
May 29, 2023There's something inherently amazing about a collected letters of any famous person, or in this case a famous writer. For one, there's extraordinary amount of research and footwork put into the project, from collecting the letters from a potential wide-ranging set of recipients to placing them in order, providing editorial content, and for verifying different aspects of the letters, let alone providing an analysis of the content. So the editors of this collection have been very successful (so far is readily apparent in reading them). In addition to all this, there's the fact that Ralph Ellison has written something like decades of letters to all kinds of different people, and that this book comprises about 1000 or pages of letters all told. It's ordered chronologically as makes sense, and my review will cover these sections.
The 1930s and 40s:
In these first two decades of writing, from the late 1930s as Ellison is moving away to college, experiencing university, and then into the 1940s as he's writing commentary, short fiction, and finally Invisible Man we see a kind of kunstlerroman at work. It's not actually that because, for the sake of thoroughness, this collection does not support a narrative here. This is a life that includes asking for small amounts of money for a winter coat to asking a wife to send cigarettes and does she know where that one book got to, this is not a story. Instead, it's the presentation of a person, through his outward discourse with those people in his life. Later, we'll see the very common and understandable duality (what would more so be a multiplicity) at play depending on who he is writing to (especially about the same subject). The early letters are mostly written to his mother and his stepfather, who through sacrifice and generosity and a sense of duty, help him finance his university education which splits its time between music and literature. Fees must be paid on time, so some semesters are delayed, and even when well-meaning professors try to help him, institutional facades keep him from a timely finish. This present Ellison in one way as a pretty recognizable young man asking him mom for money, promising that this is everything he'll need it for, thanking her, almost immediately needing more, and then thanking her profusely. What is revealed in addition to all this through the subtext, is that despite being at a Black college, there's a really fragility to his studies not because of his capacity (he's more than adequate to the task) but through his position as a young Black man. He does not let this on, and it will be clear in other letters not that he sees himself as exceptional, but that he sees himself as a natural toward this life, compelled by it, and attuned to it.
As these decades move on he begins writing and publishing, thinking about his reading, and beginning the process of joining the variety of literary circles he becomes associated with. He writes letters in the 1940s to Langston Hughes, Albert Murray, and Richard Wright among many others (including Shirley Jackson and her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman).
1950s:
He's on the cusp of publishing Invisible Man, reading and reviewing a lot. He's receiving a lot of attention for early drafts and early sections of the novel and is awarded a lot of writing residencies like Yaddo. One of the more interesting things that comes out of this period of letters is his relative distrust and aversion to James Baldwin (it's important to note that many of Ellison's letters and thinking is informed by a casual to more serious homophobia that is not expressly unique of the time, along with some mild to hefty misogyny as well) and a friendship with Saul Bellow that begins with mutual respect for each other's writing, but includes letters discussing details of rent and utility bills of a house in Italy that Bellow owned and Ellison used for a time. There's also a long series of letter between Ellison and his wife over an affair Ellison had while in Italy, which threatened to, but did not end their marriage.
1960s:
Ellison's fiction becomes more and more mired in stagnancy, and the letters are less fruitful. He's still a valued teacher and critic (coming from a writerly perspective instead of a academic one). His friendships again are shifting, and there's some pained, but also painful to read pleading with his wife over her drinking. Like I said, there's not a narrative here, but we know that Ellison will never publish that second novel. In this section, it's perhaps becoming clear to Ellison as well. He mentions at times that he'd preferred to publish one perfect novel than five bad ones, but it might also be the case that one perfect novel and one bad one would free up his mind to dive back in. So like his character in Invisible Man, there's a hesitancy to commit himself to the publication (as opposed to the writing), and be willing to possibly fail. There remains in this section the continued search for small amounts of money to keep pushing forward in life. One of the best exchanges in this section is where he politely declines a writing assignment from Irving Kristol in one letter, while calling Kristol a son of a bitch in another. It's a wonderful look into the duality of humans in general, and the especial kind that in this case a Black writer has to make to not shut doors.
1970s:
This is where things begin to get decidedly sad. Ellison begins the decade off starting a tiff when his friend Stanley Edgar Hyman, who dies soon thereafter. He's reeling from being labeled an "Uncle Tom" by many in the Left, while he sees himself as active in different ways. And it's clear that he's moving from writer to teacher in more permanent fashion. He spends a lot of the decade working on essays, giving fiction notes, and shoring up details on a variety of subjects.
1980s and 1990s:
He's not going to finish his novel and he knows it. A lot of these letters are legacy pieces. In addition, he spends a lot of time correcting misconceptions, especially with his relationships with Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. The world is passing him by. He spends one long letter defending against criticisms of homophobia, an accusation that might not be accurate in the specific case of an old friend, but definitely permeates earlier letters, including telling us that he thinks James Baldwin only went "gay in France" for some kind of affect. It's a reminder that human lives are complicated and in the playing that the narrator of Invisible Man does with memoir and narration, letters also involve writers telling us who they want us to see them as.
The 1930s and 40s:
In these first two decades of writing, from the late 1930s as Ellison is moving away to college, experiencing university, and then into the 1940s as he's writing commentary, short fiction, and finally Invisible Man we see a kind of kunstlerroman at work. It's not actually that because, for the sake of thoroughness, this collection does not support a narrative here. This is a life that includes asking for small amounts of money for a winter coat to asking a wife to send cigarettes and does she know where that one book got to, this is not a story. Instead, it's the presentation of a person, through his outward discourse with those people in his life. Later, we'll see the very common and understandable duality (what would more so be a multiplicity) at play depending on who he is writing to (especially about the same subject). The early letters are mostly written to his mother and his stepfather, who through sacrifice and generosity and a sense of duty, help him finance his university education which splits its time between music and literature. Fees must be paid on time, so some semesters are delayed, and even when well-meaning professors try to help him, institutional facades keep him from a timely finish. This present Ellison in one way as a pretty recognizable young man asking him mom for money, promising that this is everything he'll need it for, thanking her, almost immediately needing more, and then thanking her profusely. What is revealed in addition to all this through the subtext, is that despite being at a Black college, there's a really fragility to his studies not because of his capacity (he's more than adequate to the task) but through his position as a young Black man. He does not let this on, and it will be clear in other letters not that he sees himself as exceptional, but that he sees himself as a natural toward this life, compelled by it, and attuned to it.
As these decades move on he begins writing and publishing, thinking about his reading, and beginning the process of joining the variety of literary circles he becomes associated with. He writes letters in the 1940s to Langston Hughes, Albert Murray, and Richard Wright among many others (including Shirley Jackson and her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman).
1950s:
He's on the cusp of publishing Invisible Man, reading and reviewing a lot. He's receiving a lot of attention for early drafts and early sections of the novel and is awarded a lot of writing residencies like Yaddo. One of the more interesting things that comes out of this period of letters is his relative distrust and aversion to James Baldwin (it's important to note that many of Ellison's letters and thinking is informed by a casual to more serious homophobia that is not expressly unique of the time, along with some mild to hefty misogyny as well) and a friendship with Saul Bellow that begins with mutual respect for each other's writing, but includes letters discussing details of rent and utility bills of a house in Italy that Bellow owned and Ellison used for a time. There's also a long series of letter between Ellison and his wife over an affair Ellison had while in Italy, which threatened to, but did not end their marriage.
1960s:
Ellison's fiction becomes more and more mired in stagnancy, and the letters are less fruitful. He's still a valued teacher and critic (coming from a writerly perspective instead of a academic one). His friendships again are shifting, and there's some pained, but also painful to read pleading with his wife over her drinking. Like I said, there's not a narrative here, but we know that Ellison will never publish that second novel. In this section, it's perhaps becoming clear to Ellison as well. He mentions at times that he'd preferred to publish one perfect novel than five bad ones, but it might also be the case that one perfect novel and one bad one would free up his mind to dive back in. So like his character in Invisible Man, there's a hesitancy to commit himself to the publication (as opposed to the writing), and be willing to possibly fail. There remains in this section the continued search for small amounts of money to keep pushing forward in life. One of the best exchanges in this section is where he politely declines a writing assignment from Irving Kristol in one letter, while calling Kristol a son of a bitch in another. It's a wonderful look into the duality of humans in general, and the especial kind that in this case a Black writer has to make to not shut doors.
1970s:
This is where things begin to get decidedly sad. Ellison begins the decade off starting a tiff when his friend Stanley Edgar Hyman, who dies soon thereafter. He's reeling from being labeled an "Uncle Tom" by many in the Left, while he sees himself as active in different ways. And it's clear that he's moving from writer to teacher in more permanent fashion. He spends a lot of the decade working on essays, giving fiction notes, and shoring up details on a variety of subjects.
1980s and 1990s:
He's not going to finish his novel and he knows it. A lot of these letters are legacy pieces. In addition, he spends a lot of time correcting misconceptions, especially with his relationships with Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. The world is passing him by. He spends one long letter defending against criticisms of homophobia, an accusation that might not be accurate in the specific case of an old friend, but definitely permeates earlier letters, including telling us that he thinks James Baldwin only went "gay in France" for some kind of affect. It's a reminder that human lives are complicated and in the playing that the narrator of Invisible Man does with memoir and narration, letters also involve writers telling us who they want us to see them as.
November 14, 2025
The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison is an extraordinary window into the life and mind of one of America’s literary giants. Spanning six decades, the collection reveals Ellison’s evolution from a young, aspiring writer and musician into the celebrated author of Invisible Man and a profound thinker on culture, identity, and the human condition.
What makes this collection especially compelling is its intimacy and breadth. Through letters to family, friends, and fellow writers like Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, and Romare Bearden, Ellison’s voice emerges in full: candid, reflective, and intellectually vibrant. Readers witness the tensions between personal ambition and societal expectation, the joys and frustrations of creative life, and the moral and artistic questions that shaped his work.
The letters illuminate not only Ellison’s literary craft but also his engagement with the complex social, political, and racial landscapes of twentieth-century America. They provide rare insight into the private thoughts behind public achievements, creating a narrative that is as emotionally resonant as it is historically and intellectually rich. For anyone interested in American literature, cultural history, or the craft of writing, this collection is an invaluable treasure.
What makes this collection especially compelling is its intimacy and breadth. Through letters to family, friends, and fellow writers like Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, and Romare Bearden, Ellison’s voice emerges in full: candid, reflective, and intellectually vibrant. Readers witness the tensions between personal ambition and societal expectation, the joys and frustrations of creative life, and the moral and artistic questions that shaped his work.
The letters illuminate not only Ellison’s literary craft but also his engagement with the complex social, political, and racial landscapes of twentieth-century America. They provide rare insight into the private thoughts behind public achievements, creating a narrative that is as emotionally resonant as it is historically and intellectually rich. For anyone interested in American literature, cultural history, or the craft of writing, this collection is an invaluable treasure.
February 21, 2020
I received this book as a Goodreads giveaways. First of all “The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison” is an encyclopedic collection of 60 years of correspondence, ranging from the 1930s to the 1990's. So a reader will find some letters more interesting than others, based on the topic discussed on them, but all in some way or another reveal the significant themes in Ellison’s life and writing. Also very helpful are the annotations accompanying the individual letters. The thinker and writer who emerges in these pages is a complicated,intelligent, ambitious, irreverent and disturbing figure.
The collection offers an intimate portrait of the writer and intellectual: and in my opinion the more appealing are the ones that reveal the rich exchange of ideas with the novelists, critics and philosophers who formed Ellison’s inner circle, and the frustrated four-decade struggle to finish a second novel, the posthumously published “Juneteenth.”because the long shadow of “Invisible Man” his first novel will cast his writings efforts forever.
The collection offers an intimate portrait of the writer and intellectual: and in my opinion the more appealing are the ones that reveal the rich exchange of ideas with the novelists, critics and philosophers who formed Ellison’s inner circle, and the frustrated four-decade struggle to finish a second novel, the posthumously published “Juneteenth.”because the long shadow of “Invisible Man” his first novel will cast his writings efforts forever.
January 27, 2020
In full disclosure, I did not read every one of Ralph Ellison's letters in this 1060 page work. John Callahan has done an excellent job of editing the letters and presenting them chronologically by decade. He also provides introductory essays at the beginning of each decade summarizing Ellison's life, work, philosophy, and challenges based on the letters. I started with Callahan's essays and then read all of the 1950s letters because I wanted a sense of Ellison's development. For the later decades, I read selectively. His letters to family, friends-such as Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, and Langston Hughes- and later younger writers and publishers, show the breadth of his writing, teaching, and publishing experiences.
January 15, 2022
Use the timeline appendix as you read through each decade’s letters. It helps orient the reader to the book’s one-sided correspondence structure. Not that it’s required since Ellison is so eloquent in conveying ideas, happenings and recollections. A tome, to be sure, but a fascinating historical documentation captured over one visible novelist’s lifetime. The concept of democracy as a vehicle for an individual to define himself made Invisible Man transcend barriers and speak to all readers, regardless of experience. In this collection, the author helps further clarify IM theme and move beyond it as he grappled with his second novel’s development.
May 19, 2022
Loved it. What strikes me about Ellison is in contrast to the communication of today; he takes his time. He fully fleshes out ideas, he describes a party , wonders about a interaction in full. There is no "I'll tell you about it later," he never seems to shirk on detail.
I'm also amused that a literary giant wrote that someone had "stank breath". Gets right to the essence of the thing, methinks.
I'm also amused that a literary giant wrote that someone had "stank breath". Gets right to the essence of the thing, methinks.
November 14, 2019
I received an advanced reading copy of this book through a goodreads giveaway. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning about how authors work. This book includes correspondence with other authors as well as questions and answers about The Invisible Man, which is one of his best known works.
December 3, 2019
I want to read this but...$43? Criminal.
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February 28, 2020813.54 E475c 2019
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November 6, 2020DNF --
April 6, 2021
It was interesting to read these letters that spanned an entire life. So many letters.
March 3, 2022
3.5 stars. I liked most parts more than that, but it was so long I just got tired.
December 20, 2020
“Perhaps the conception of “leaders” should be broadened by way of recognizing the fact that not all of those who have shaped the nation were politicians nor were they all involved directly with government. A number were writers and even publishers. I think immediately of Emerson, Mark Twain, Thoreau, Melville, Henry Adams, Stephen Crane, writers who created aspects of American character and explored various dimensions of American identity, moral and cultural, in works which developed American vernacular language, style and wisdom in works of literature. Nor would I overlook those who influenced the values of the Nation through works of popular culture—not excluding the minstrel show, the writers of Tin Pan Alley dittys, radio drama, motion pictures and popular musicals. Recall that President Lincoln was killed while watching Our American Cousin. I stress these possibilities because these “unimportant” arts have a profound influence upon our values, and as projectors of myth they have done much to cloud our perception of our history and our moral predicament.”
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September 4, 2020After reading these letters I was surprised to learn of Ralph Ellison's extensive stays in southern Vermont, at Winhall Station, near So. Londonderry, beginning in 1945. He would come through Brattleboro on the train. Ellison began his iconic "Invisible Man," while in Vermont. He has some choice comments on Vermonters that are not so laudatory
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