Book World Live

Ellison's synthesis of such elements in his work formed for me a mesmerizing image of the cultural critic as a kind of protean superhero, rippling with sinews, blessed with an all-seeing gaze and possessing an intellect that crackles with electricity. No matter that the source of all this fearlessly iconoclastic wisdom looked less like a muscular middleweight and more like a trumpeter in Duke Ellington's big band -- dapper, compact, sporting an exquisitely manicured mustache and a studied air of savoir faire. But, as Rampersad convincingly shows, Ellison's carefully applied elegance covered but never completely hid his pugnacious roiling and contradictory temperament. He was, in Rampersad's view, "a somewhat fizzy mixture of pride and vulnerability, joy and despair." Small wonder then, that although he successfully withstood the forces of chaos in his artistic and professional life, his personal affairs frequently teetered on the edge of irreparable disorder.-- (Review: The Man Made Visible, May 20, 2007)

Book World deputy editor Jabari Asim fields questions and comments on Arnold Rampersad's biography of literary great Ralph Ellison and the state of African-American literature on Tuesday, May 22, at 3 p.m. ET.

Jabari Asim is a poet, playwright and author of the recent nonfiction title, "The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, And Why."

Join Book World Live each Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET for a discussion based on a story or review in each Sunday's Book World section.

____________________

Jabari Asim: Hey, folks. Welcome to our discussion of Ralph Ellison, one of the giants of American literature. As Arnold Rampersad's new bio makes clear, there were layers of complexity to the man, and "complexity" was one of his favorite phrases.

_______________________

washingtonpost.com: The Man Made Visible ( Post Book World, May 20)

_______________________

Petworth, Washington, D.C. : Jabari -- I enjoyed reading your review this weekend. I do believe you let Mr. Ellison off a bit easy. For all the flack that James Baldwin and Richard Wright took for expatriating, it was Ellison who effectively removed himself from the national struggle of African Americans. In so many ways, his seems a life void of love and empathy -- the latter being a necessary possession for any productive fiction writer.

washingtonpost.com: The Man Made Visible ( Post Book World, May 20)

Jabari Asim: You may very well be right about that. I tried to allude to that a little bit in the review--the tension between admiring an artist for the things he did brilliantly and being appalled by the things he did poorly. Rampersad compares Baldwin, who answered his critics by returning from Europe and getting involved in the civil rights struggle, and Ellison who did go away to Rome for a couple years and then came home to mostly watch the movement from his apartment on Riverside Drive, far above the fray.

_______________________

Takoma Park, Md.: I've not yet read the book. However, after reading your review and the NYT I struggle to reconcile the images in the reviews with the Ralph Ellison I knew. He and my late father were first cousins and they stayed in touch until my father died in 1979. "Counsin Ralph" and I, along with my father's widow, my stepmother, maintained the connection and I talked to him last about three months before his death. He was unfailingly warm and showed a very strong sense of family and of being black. For example, after I published a short piece in Boston's black newspaper, The Bay State Banner, he called me, noting that he read the Banner regularly. I look forwared eagerly to learning more about my own family as I read the book.

Jabari Asim: Rampersad does make clear that Ellison enjoyed good relations with some of his cousins, especially in Oklahoma. His relationships with mother and his brother were both problematic, however. We know so much about those relationships, as well as his union with Fanny, because Ellison left so many letters behind--and Rampersad makes judicious use of them.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: How did Ellison react to the success of "Invisible Man"?

Jabari Asim: He was thrilled. He could not have anticipated some of the things that came his way--the National Book Award, for example, but the success of the novel provided entry into a level of society, both literary and otherwise, to which he thought he properly belonged. He probably regarded himself has having surpassed his mentors Hughes and Wright even before the novel was published, and its acclaim likely vindicated those beliefs.

_______________________

Washington, D.C.: A major part of your review concentrates on Ellison being quite the contrarian in his personal life, seems difficult to get along with. Why do you think he was this way? Was this personality evident in his work?

Jabari Asim: I'm hesitant to speculate about Ellison's prickliness, but Rampersad makes a fairly persuasive case that much of his insecurity stemmed from his hardscrabble youth. The family descended into poverty when Ellison was very young, following the death of his father. He had trouble trusting people, had little patience, and, as Rampersad puts it, "an aversion to feelings of obligation or gratitude."

_______________________

Falls Church, Va.: Hello and thanks for taking my question. In the current field of African-American authors -- who do you consider the best in science fiction, mystery and regular fiction? Are there any newcomers we should be reading? Thanks.

Jabari Asim: Far more than I can mention here. In science fiction, Samuel Delany and Nalo Hopkinson are still doing exemplary work, and the late lamented Octavia Butler has many volumes to choose from. I'd also recommend Dark Matter, a good collection of speculative fiction edited by Sheree Thomas--lots of good stuff in there. I don't read a lot of mysteries, but I've always liked Grace Edwards, Charlotte Carter, Nicole Tramble, Jake Lamar and Gary Phillips. I also like Gar Anthony Haywood and Walter Mosley, and there are plenty others.

Regular fiction: Colin Channer, Colson Whitehead, Tananarive Due and Christopher John Farley are a few whom I admire.

_______________________

Takoma Park, Md.: On college campuses in the 60s the "cool" thing among blacks was to reject integration as a societal goal. To what extent was the tension between R.E. and black political and literary leaders an outgrowth of his tenacious commitment to the integrationist approach?

Jabari Asim: Ellison clashed quite a bit with younger black writers and activists who embraced cultural nationalism and rejected integration. Part of that was certainly ideological--Ellison couldn't endorse a confrontation view toward American culture because he believed so much of it was in fact African-American--or Negro, as he would have put it. He also appeared to clash with younger blacks because he didn't want any up-and-comers to challenge what he saw as his rightful place atop the cultural pantheon. He didn't seem to have it in him to mentor younger talents of any race or background. When Toni Morrison, then an editor at Random House, sought his assistance in helping a group of younger black writers, Ellison had good things to say about Leon Forrest and that was about it. At other times, he did encourage James Alan MacPherson, but some point he seemed to sour on him as well.

_______________________

Annapolis, Md.:"Juneteenth" is one of his books. What's that title mean?

Jabari Asim: Although the Emancipation Proclamation was announced on Jan. 1, 1863, word didn't reach Galveston, Texas until June 19, 1865. That date, shortened over time to Juneteenth, became a holiday in which black Texans celebrated their freedom. Eventually the practice spread to African-Americans living elsewhere.

_______________________

Alexandria, Va.: What other works would you recommend reading besides his famous "Invisible Man" to get a sense of what made him great as a writer? Thanks!

Jabari Asim: The other books Ellison published in his lifetime were essay collections, Shadow and Act, and Going to the Territory. He never managed to complete the novel that he struggled with for so long, but David Remnick and others have argued--persuasively, I think--that the nonfiction work is in many ways as valuable as the fiction. Flying Home, a collection of his short fiction, was published posthumously.

_______________________

Baltimore, Md.: What are your feelings about black writers being labeled and their books being in special sections in certain book stores? I refer to a story that ran sometime last week.

Also, do you think Ellison now would like to referred to as an African American writer or just as an American writer?

Jabari Asim: It drives me batty. Retailers argue that they segregate black writers as a service to customers who routinely come in and request them, but that doesn't console me in the least. Speaking as an author, I want my books all over the store, not just in one corner. To make matters worse, the organization of those sections is often inconsistent. For instance, I wrote once about going into a mega-store looking for work by Ellison and Baldwin. Ellison was in the African-American nook, but Baldwin had somehow escaped! I think Ellison clearly would have preferred to be regarded as an American writer.

_______________________

Nashville, Tenn.: I am intrigued by Ellison's extraordinarily lofty ambitions for Invisible Man -- "creating a novel so rich in its symbolic, allegorical, psychological, social, and historical insight that it would be acclaimed as a masterpiece." Was this ambition generally known by Random House and others in the publishing world, and if so, how was such a bold and boastful proclamation by a novice, and a black writer, received?

Jabari Asim: You're right. Ellison's goal was astonishing for its time and place. He had made a case for such a book, however, in the reviews and essays that he had been publishing--work that helped him establish a credible reputation and acquire a publishing contract. If you look at some of those reviews today, it seems as if Ellison was outlining his vision for the future of the African-American novel. When he reviewed black novelist Walter Turpin, for instance, he said the black writer's responsibility was "to utilize yet transcend his immediate environment and grasp the historic process as a whole."

Evidently Ellison was "preaching" before he was even practicing.

_______________________

West Chester, Pa.: I have only read excerpts from the biography but I am still, to put it mildly, in a state of shock regarding Ellison's lack of generosity to younger writers including James McPherson and his extreme disdain for the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. I find it difficult to understand why Ellison could not find and hear the very modernism that he criticized Langston Hughes for not pursuing in the music of these musicians.

I never expected Ellison to be an angel but I am extremely disappointed at discovering how narrow and petty he could be.

Jabari Asim: I can certainly understand that. There were intervals in which I had to put the book down and walk away from it. With McPherson, for instance, he had a chance to recommend him for a MacArthur "genius" grant and instead wrote a letter saying McPherson's life was too turbulent to justify his getting the prize. I'm with you re the music. Ellison wrote so eloquently about Jimmy Rushing and Charlie Christian but seemed to have a tin ear where the bebop geniuses were concerned. He wasn't just critical of them; he was spiteful.

_______________________

Los Angeles, Calif.: I went to Stanford and actually knew Arnold Rampersad, who is a pretty interesting charcter himself.

Did you get a sense that the author REALLY related himself to Ellison -- perhaps a little too much, in some of his assumptions that led to him to Ellison's limited art as a more relevant part of the man than his personal life?

Jabari Asim: Hmm, I didn't get that sense, but I am sympathetic with Rampersad's attempts to reconcile the art with the man, although, as I said in the review, I wasn't entirely convinced. I've never written a biography, but as a reader it seems as if authors are often faced with a situation in which their subject's personal life seems so disappointing--if not appalling--when compared to the body of work left behind. I've heard that some biographers end up disliking their subject after spending so much time in their dirty linen--and that sounds entirely plausible to me.

_______________________

Anonymous: I actually think 'Juneteenth' is his best work. Your thoughts?

Jabari Asim: I tend not to think of "Juneteenth" as Ellison's work. It was cobbled together by John Callahan from material Ellison's left behind. No offense to Callahan, but I tend to regard such posthumous projects with healthy skepticism.

_______________________

St. Louis, Mo.: Currently in many academic literature departments, "Invisible Man" is regarded as perhaps the greatest American novel of the twentieth century. Was Ellison aware of this reputation during his lifetime? (Surely that should have eased some of his "lit canon" status anxieties.)

What's your opinion of "Juneteenth"?

Jabari Asim: Ellison was certainly aware of the novel's exalted status, and was gratified that it never went out of print during his lifetime. I think some of that anxiety you refer to doubtless stemmed from his failure to write another novel while his rivals and contemporaries--folks like William Styron and Saul Bellow--continued to produce.

_______________________

Philadelphia, Pa.: It can be easily argued that Ellison was THE finest of 20th century and, now even, 21st century African-American writers. "Juneteenth" is underestimated. He is among the greatest of all American writers, definitely in the pantheon. His personal struggles aside, what is it about black literature now? Perusing the bookshelves of present African-American writers, the quality seems lost in a messy milieu of "ghetto fiction" and fantastic tales of sex, voyeurism, gangsta life and troubled relationships. The recent crop of black fiction writers seem stuck in a purgatory of cultural identity, not knowing where to go or where they should end up. As a writer, this discussion is very much prevalent and heated in our circles. It extends, for example, into the raging debate over rap vs. hip hop -- bling-bling and "ghetto-fabulousness" entertainment vs. true lyrical, independent, "underground" force and candid perspective. Are Ellisons, Morrisons, Baldwins, Hurstons, Schuylers, Hughes, Moseleys etc., emerging? Few in the last count. In your view, is there a problem? What can be done about it?

Jabari Asim: I think the descendants of Baldwin, Ellison, et al, are writing and publishing. I named some of them earlier, and there are far more than a few.I t's hard to find their books at the chains because they are buried beneath the mountainous piles of "ghetto" and "street" lit, which is much more attractive to merchandisers and to many publishers. But the high-quality literary work definitely continues to be produced.

_______________________

Mt. Rainier, Md.: How much, if any, of Ellison's influence and importanct is felt by writers today? Does he maintain a lofty position still with America's top writers? And does the current hip-hop community recognize or mention him in any of their contemporary work?

Jabari Asim: Ellison continues to be regarded as one of the best writers the nation has produced. "Invisible Man" is almost an unavoidable text on college campuses. You'd have to ask someone from the hip-hop community how his work is regarded (or not regarded) there.

_______________________

Arlington, Va.: Hi Jabari,

In your opinion, where would you place Mr. Ellison among American authors and was he a favorite of yours?

Jabari Asim: As I said earlier, Ellison's membership in the pantheon is secure, and rightly so. He is definitely one of my favorites, and his essays have probably been more of a personal influence than the novel, although I do think it is a work of genius.

I'm going to close out now. I thank you all for your time, attention and valuable feedback. Putting together a biography of such breadth is quite a feat, and I hope Arnold Rampersad will be able to take some time off and savor his achievement.

_______________________

washingtonpost.com: This concludes the discussion with Jabari Asim. Thank you for joining.

_______________________

Editor's Note: washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions. washingtonpost.com is not responsible for any content posted by third parties.