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Thumper
Regular Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 470
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 07:35 pm: | 
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Hey Everyone,
I'm back from school...for the summer. How's everything. It's good to see that nobody burnt down the joint while I was gone. I took my finals a couple of weeks ago and naturally, I dived head first into a waiting pile of books. A few I could not stand, it breaks my heart to say. There was a couple that I loved, surprisingly, including Hoodwinked. Yeah, I'm stunned by that one myself. Right now I'm in the middle of Want Some Get Some by Pam Ward. It's alright, not as fast paced as the book description, but I'll tell you all about it later. |
Crystal
Regular Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 319
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 07:55 pm: |
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Yeah Thumper! Good to see you back. Enjoy your summer reading! |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4766
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 09:24 pm: |
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Hello  |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2051
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 09:34 pm: |
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Well, hello! I don't think I've ever actually "met" you, but I sure have heard a lot about you. What are you studying in school? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8610
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 17, 2007 - 12:27 pm: |
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Welcome back, Thumper. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4409
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 17, 2007 - 01:15 pm: |
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Welcome back and where did you go where you couldn't hook up to the internet and dash us off a line everynow and then and have you heard from Carey? |
Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 252
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 17, 2007 - 01:46 pm: |
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Howdy, stranger.
MANUSCRIPT TO BE PUBLISHED
Ralph Ellison published only one novel during his lifetime, Invisible Man in 1952, but the writer left behind about 2,000 manuscript pages.
In 1999, a portion was published as the novel Juneteenth.
Random House's Modern Library has announced that it will publish the entire manuscript, including Juneteenth, in January. The manuscript will be unedited but will have supporting notes.
The project is being overseen by Ellison's literary executor, John Callahan. It tentatively is titled Three Days Before the Shooting.
The plot involves a young boy named Bliss of indeterminate race who is raised by a black Baptist minister. He grows up and assumes a white identity. After being elected as a race-baiting U.S. senator, he is assassinated in the Senate.
- Deirdre Donahue, USA Today |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1002
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 17, 2007 - 02:15 pm: |
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Excellent news--about Ellison's unfinished work. |
Emanuel
Regular Poster
Username: Emanuel
Post Number: 298
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 17, 2007 - 03:40 pm: |
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Welcome back to your corner Thumper.
Steve, thanks for the news on Ellison's manuscript. I'll be on the lookout. |
Thumper
Regular Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 471
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 17, 2007 - 07:38 pm: |
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Hello All,
Thanks everyone.
Chris, I've been in school and working at the same time. It's killing an old son of a b*tch like me, I can tell you. I have to survive one more year and then I'll be done and free! I haven't heard from Carey in a long time.
Steve S: Thanks for the news on Ellison's Juneteenth. You know its so strange how Ellison is being brought up now. I just got a copy of a new Ellison biography by Arnold Rampstead (Langston Hughes biographer). Correct me if I'm wrong, but when Juneteenth came out all those years ago, I read that the complete manuscript was only suppose to be read by scholars and Ellison biographers. I wonder what happened to change their minds? I'm not sure if I like the "unedited" stand they're taking. I would have asked Toni Morrison to edit it, especially after the excellent job she did editing Toni Cade Bambara's last novel. |
Troy
Veteran Poster
Username: Troy
Post Number: 651
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 18, 2007 - 11:03 am: |
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Hey Thump. Now that you are free, when you gonna "contribute" some reviews to AALBC.com. As you know, but none of our lurkers know, none of your commissioned reviews ever see that light of day.
By the way y'all, Thumper will be at BEA NYC in a couple of weeks helping to man the AALBC.com booth.
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Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4424
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 18, 2007 - 11:45 am: |
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Thump:
Do you know that the last we heard of him he was facing a bank robbery charge? |
Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 254
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 18, 2007 - 01:04 pm: |
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Thumper, I think you may be right. I haven't gotten far in the new biography but judging by the index, it appears to contain only one paragraph about Juneteenth. I wonder why?
I'm sure there will be some explanation of the editing decision by John Callahan when it gets close to the publication date.
I'll be reading this biography for a few weeks and I look forward to discussing it with you, Schakspir, Emmanuel, and anyone who is planning to read it.
PS One book that contains an analysis of Juneteenth is "Jazz Country: Ralph Ellison in America" (University of Iowa Press, 2001) by Horace A. Porter, a professor of English at UI.
thanks
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Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2341
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 19, 2007 - 12:54 am: |
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welcome back ol' chap! |
Msprissy
Regular Poster
Username: Msprissy
Post Number: 62
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 19, 2007 - 02:09 pm: |
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Please visit myspace. I've added interesting pictures and the bulletins are very informative.
I found some wonderful pictures of Ralph Ellison. Here is one. His sole book became a best seller. "The Invisible Man."
Can you imagine suffering from writer's block for the balance of your life? Yipes!!
Enjoy!
www.myspace.com/minnie_e
Minnie E Miller
Author of The Seduction of Mr. Bradley and Catharsis.
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Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 256
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 19, 2007 - 02:53 pm: |
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Hi Msprissy, Thank you for the beautiful photo of Ralph Ellison (Riverside Park?).
Much of the manuscript for his second novel was destroyed in a tragic fire at his summer home in Massachusetts in 1967, just as the novel was nearing completion. But he never really suffered from writer's block, in fact, he published two highly-acclaimed essay collections during his lifetime and when he passed he left behind 2,000 pages of an unpublished novel written over a 20-year period - a portion of which was published posthumously as Juneteenth - as well as the short stories contained in the posthumously published collection "Flying Home."
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Msprissy
Regular Poster
Username: Msprissy
Post Number: 63
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 19, 2007 - 03:21 pm: |
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Thank you for the correction, Steve! That's important. The New York Times says the pictue was taken in Riverside Park, Manhattan, July 1986. The other one (on myspace) was taken by Gordon Parks in "the 1950s.
Minnie E |
A_womon
Veteran Poster
Username: A_womon
Post Number: 1552
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 19, 2007 - 08:34 pm: |
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Oh YES! Dreams do come true! Welcome home Thumper!! YOU HAVE BEEN MISSED!!!!! Thumper back! HEEHEE! DISHYEAH THUMPER's CO'NAH! |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1010
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 19, 2007 - 10:52 pm: |
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I read the Ralph Ellison bio with great interest. James Baldwin said in his VERY last interview (two weeks before his death) that both Albert Murray and Ralph Ellison were "totally trapped." And after reading the bio sadly Baldwin was quite correct. Ellison was a brilliant writer, but unfortunately he absorbed a little too much of Malraux, too much of these white academics' concepts of metaphor and leitmotif....at the same time, he because personally obsessed with upward mobility, to the point of shunning other black writers who didn't share his increasingly narrow views of what constituted "art". Ellison apparently had a tough time finishing his manuscripts, and in my assessment it wasn't just because of "perfectionism"--it was also because, artistically speaking, he was too self-limiting. It took him six years to squeeze "Invisible Man" out of his system, and it gave him a lot of headaches. That's to be expected when writing a book of that magnitude and brilliance. (I respect and admire it, though I don't particularly like it, or its concepts.) Ellison was also an outrageous snob; he would have nothing to do with most black writers. He fretted over the problems Hungary faced vis-a-vis the oppressive Soviet Union in the mid-fifties, but had absolutely nothing at all to say about the emerging nations of Africa, and certainly nothing about Cuba, Algeria, or the Congo(he did support the Vietnam war). He eventually dismissed his old friend Langston Hughes as a "sentimentalist" for wanting to live in Harlem; he once called Ishmael Reed(much later)a "criminal." Just about the only other black writer (besides Murray)that he ever endorsed or even acknowledged was James Alan McPherson, whom he also later snubbed! He constantly quarreled with his wife Fanny, often while rip-roaring drunk(that's just the tip of the iceberg).
Ellison liked to use the Plainfield fire of '67 as a convenient alibi to justify not finishing his novel on time. In reality, not much was lost in that fire that he could not have recaptured within a matter of months. The truth was that Ellison's compulsive personal need to wall himself off from his fellow black writers(and subsequently learn nothing from them), his equally compulsive need to rub elbows with the white (and frequently Southern) cultural elite--and still more damaging, his artistic tunnel vision--essentially wrecked him as an artist. |
Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 257
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 20, 2007 - 08:09 am: |
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Hi Msprissy (Minnie E),
There have been a lot of opinions about whether Ralph Ellison's failure to produce a second novel was the result of "writer's block." I'm certainly no expert and I don't know if my opinion is correct. He apparently told Saul Bellow that he was suffering from a case of writer's block "as big as the Ritz," however, Charles Matthews, in his Houston Chronicle review of the new biography by Arnold Rampersad, states that:
His failure to produce elicited scathing comments from some younger writers. The poet Nikki Giovanni said that "as a writer Ellison is so much hot air, because he hasn't had the guts to go on writing." But Rampersad suggests that Ellison suffered not so much from writer's block as from an inability to focus, and often from the difficulty of keeping his material contemporary.
The second half of Ralph Ellison's career was very politicized, as you can tell from Nikki Giovanni's comments, which hint at something more than what's commonly referred to as "writer's block." |
Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 258
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 20, 2007 - 09:05 am: |
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I've read 100 pages of the new Ralph Ellison biography and I've only read one other book by Arnold Rampersad, "I, Too, Sing America: The Life of Langston Huges Vol. 1"
Does anyone have any biographical information about Arnold Rampersad? If I'm not mistaken he's an Indo-Trinidadian like V.S. Naipaul, as opposed to an Afro-Trinidadian like Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure) or C.L.R. James, He's a distinguished academic born in 1941 who emigrated to the States to attend one of the elite universities, where he's remained throughout his career -- in other words Stanford, Princeton, etc., as opposed to Howard or C.C.N.Y. (whose student body is 90+ percent non-white, according to bell hooks, who I believe currently teaches there.
His specialty, obviously, is African American biography. Thumper, can you fill us in? For instance, he considers Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) a major literary figure and he closer to the same generation.
Ralph Ellison was born in 1913, Arnold Rampersad in 1941, and another Ellison biographer, Lawrence Jackson, who's noticeably much younger, probably was born sometime around 1957 or later. In the 1960s the generational divide was also a political and cultural divide. I like Lawrence Jackson's "Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius" particularly because it seems like an intellectual next-generation take on Ralph Ellison. Jackson also questions what he calls the "short-shrifting" of Ellison during the sixties. Jackson's is a partial biography because he's not much interested in Ralph Ellison's work after Invisible Man.
He famously told Ishmael Reed, "You hustler," to his face. Ishmael Reed's legend, like Topsy in Uncle Tom's Cabin, just "grow'd."
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Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 260
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 12:42 am: |
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Rampersad, Rampersaud, and Rampersadsingh are Hindu surnames. it's not about race, it's about culture.
http://www.icatt.org/database/students/index.php?table_name=studentsinfo&functio n=search&where_clause=&page=29&order=last-name&order_type=DESC&PHPSESSID=a2190e1 ba64226e23ba733d17d766b0c
My neighbor is a Hindu but he's not from India, he's from British Guyana in South America. His skin is brown and his hair is black. His wife is white, fair-skinned and redheaded. Their three children as dark-haired and olive-complexioned.
This year marks the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade, however, the institution of slavery continued in the British Empire until 1834, at which time Trinidad began importing workers from India, China, and Portugal (specifically the Madeira Islands off the coast of Morocco in North Africa). There were eventually some freedmen and -women from the U.S. who settled in Jamaica.
Arnold Rampersad's father, Jerome Rampersad, a journalist, has a Hindu surname and a Christian first name, while his mother's maiden name, Evelyn De Souza, is Portuguese. She worked as an operator for the telephone company. Are the Rampersads people of African descent? I have no idea. Am I a person of African descent? No, but I'm not the one describing Ralph Ellison's supposed "muddled sense of kinship with black America," his supposed "conflicted feelings about black America, which repelled him as much as it compelled his admiration," the supposed belief that "Ralph saw no reason to push for change based on racial reasons. He had earned his way in. Let other blacks do the same," and all the rest, like his supposed "sentimental relationship to Harlem." What does that mean, by the way?
Arnold Rampersad was 21 years old when Trinidad achieved independence in 1962, which was followed by a postcolonial power struggle between the African-based People's National Movement and the Hindu-supported People's Democratic party, described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism_in_the_West_Indies
Do I know how the Rampersads came down in relationship to this power struggle? No.
The immigration quota of Trinidadians to the U.S. from 1962 and 1965 was 100 annually, usually elites. When Trinidad joined the Organization of American States in 1965, immigration opened up. This was the year that Arnold Rampersad, age 24, began his college career at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where he earned a BA and a Master's degree before moving on to Cambridge, Mass. where he earned another Masters and a PhD at Harvard.
http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Sr-Z/Trinidadian-and-Tobagonian-Americans.html
The idea that Ralph Ellison is now to be blamed for not "helping" the young writers designated as worthy by Arnold Rampersad, specifically Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, John Edgar Wideman, James Alan McPherson, and Gloria Naylor, seems a bit silly since they all achieved success on their own. Instead, the 8 writers Ellison chose for MacArthur Fellowships included lesser-known black male writers: Robert Stepto, Michael Harper, John S. Wright, and Leon Forrest, plus four white writers. But Rampersad claims that Ellison chose these four because they "had promoted his work in some way," which is just his opinion, albeit fairly representative of the kind of bias involved in this book -- which one perceptive Amazon.com customer reviewer describes as "assassination by adjective and adverb," under the heading, "Elegant but slanted."
I'm on p.160. |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1013
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 01:43 am: |
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I'm sorry: Ellison was a conceited, self-absorbed asshole. And Invisible Man is overrated. |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 505
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 02:06 pm: |
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Hello Thumper, welcome back. I didn't really know that you were "gone". I've only had brief moments to peek in and when I did I didn't see a post by you. Yeah, as Chris was saying, I've been off to school as well. Anyway, I see the gang really missed you and of course so did I. Of course Chris and cyn-cyn have been doing thier thang.....damn, 8 THOUSAND POSTS. Dat der be a whole lot of sumtin.
I'll drop in when I can. For a second, awhile back I thought you were dead or locked up in some institution because no one mentioned your name and I was affraid to ask. In fact, strange as it is just yesterday I asked my girl A_women what was up with you. At least you didn't go off and rop a bank or something like that *smile*. For some reason I just can't see you in prison orange stipes.
Carey
Carey |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4471
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 02:07 pm: |
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I'm sorry: Ellison was a conceited, self-absorbed asshole. And Invisible Man is overrated.
(I think that the conceit was a mask he hid behind to mask his insecurities. All artists are self absorbed. He might have been an asshole--most geniuses are in some way and that is why I don't go out of my way to meet artists, singers, painters, writers etc--you are bound to be disappointed.
You don't want them anyway, you want the book which is a masterpiece.
I was reading over that passage where he orders and eats the sweet potatoe up in Harlem a while back. Exquisite. No wonder he couldn't write anything else like it.
I will say this--though I love the writing and the style I don't so much care anymore for the main unnamed hero/narrator of the book. He seems to be so powerless and swept along and overcome all the time--
Perfect existential hero
Existentialism was big at the time. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4472
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 02:08 pm: |
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By the way, Schakspir did you ever meet Ellison? |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4473
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 02:10 pm: |
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Carey:
So what's up with you? Can you give us some details? Or are you on the run with Osama? |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 506
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 02:22 pm: |
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Well Chris, it goes something like this.......
One day a man fell in a hole and he couldn't quite figure out how he ended up in such a spot but knew he was in a real bad fix. As he peeks out from the bottom of the hole he's still trying to figure out where in the hell he is at. Today he is at a coffee house using their Internet service to catch up with a few friends.
I am not out from under the gun so we will just leave it at that.....for now. Don't get me wrong I don't mind answering questions about my ordeal, not at all, hell I brought it to the board but today I am on another page. Today is a good day! Hey......Thumps BACK!!! |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 507
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 02:24 pm: |
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Hey Chris, I really have appreciated you over the years....thanks man. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8671
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 02:41 pm: |
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Hello Carey. Chin up. You'll be fine. You're still waking up every morning. In your quiet time, create your own reality, just make your mind the architect of your environment and construct a haven within the confines of your skull. Peace.
cyn-cyn |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4477
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 02:44 pm: |
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Carey:
You sound good.
Keep ya head up. Keep in touch. |
Crystal
Regular Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 324
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 03:27 pm: |
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Good to see you checking in Carey. You sound like . . . you!
p.s. that's a good thing, LOL. |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 509
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 03:41 pm: |
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What I want to know is don't you guys have jobs? I mean I know some of you are ahhh of an older age but Crystal ain't you got some place to be like....work *smile*.
Thanks Cyn-Cyn for those words of wisdom. I really mean that. I don't know how far down any of you have fallen but man, nobody loves you when your down and out including oneself. Hey, what does "you sound good' mean. Crystal said I sound like me. I hope I don't ever drop my sense of humor. If ever I loss that dream i may as well turn out the lights. I'll let you guys know when I am about to check out. |
Crystal
Regular Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 325
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 03:44 pm: |
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Just Great! Somebody else checking up on me . . .
Be quiet before my boss catches on! |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 511
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 03:51 pm: |
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OHHHH I's sorry, didn't mean to bust you out. You could have said you were on you lunch break since you are on the west coast. But see, that's just like a women.......kissin' and tellin'. I knew you couldn't keep a secret. NOW......lets get back to that clown suit LOL. |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 512
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 03:53 pm: |
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Sorry, I forgot that there are some purist on the board and our discussions should stay somewhere close to books. It's just that I've been gone for some time .........come to think of it I never really paid much attention to that rule anyway.......did I. |
Crystal
Regular Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 326
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 03:57 pm: |
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No you didn't and don't worry we are Elder Statesmen of this board and can do what the hell we want! Clown suit and all.
However, exactly what ARE you reading? |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1017
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 04:51 pm: |
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I agree with Chris Hayden about his conceit being a mask. All the trappings--elegant clothes and haughty demeanor, clipped mustache, etc.--was a shield to hide what was essentially an emotionally tortured, fatherless young black kid from Oklahoma, which--in many ways--he remained till the end. Still, in the bio, he does not come off as being very likeable. I didn't meet him. However, others (for instance Chester Himes and James Baldwin) have said that in private company he could be a lot more agreeable, even though he was "very pompous," Himes's words. |
Schakspir
Veteran Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 1018
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 04:58 pm: |
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BTW I know a number of artists who are close friends of mine and yes, they can be a handful--even yours truly. But if we weren't somehow unhinged or eccentric or even psychotic, we might not have anything to write about. |
Sese
Newbie Poster
Username: Sese
Post Number: 40
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 - 11:26 pm: |
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Carey Good to read your post. Am I to assume that things are looking up? Having difficulty deciphering post of 5/22@ 2:22pm, can you break it down a bit more?
Just rememer to keep the faith and that God will not take you, where his grace will not protect you. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4479
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 11:25 am: |
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I didn't meet him. However, others (for instance Chester Himes and James Baldwin) have said that in private company he could be a lot more agreeable, even though he was "very pompous," Himes's words
(Neither have I but that's what I mean. I have been told some people were assholes and when I met them they were fine--on the other hand I have had people praised and it turned out the other way.
I like to make up my own mind--they might have had a bad day.
Plus they are writers and usually they are lacking in people skills--Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, et al. That's why they write instead of go into politics or entertainment.
I think also what got him was his failure to ever write another book during his life--the problem with hitting a home run right out the box (even if the right out the box was 10-15 years after he got serious about writing) |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 517
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 11:58 am: |
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Sorry Sese, I couldn't find what you were refering to. However, I'd be glad to answer any other question. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8674
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 01:30 pm: |
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Ellison seems to have been plagued by the one-hit wonder syndrome, like Margaret Mitchell author of "Gone With The Wind" and Harper Lee author of "To Kill A Mocking Bird", who both retired from public life and never produced another book, possibily inhibited by the tremendous success of their first novels. There seems to be something a little mystical about writing landmark books. It's like the books were already there in the nether world, just waiting for an author to channel them into print. A lot of artists report how things just "come to them" and they are hard pressed to ever achieve the success of an "inspired" work. Alex Haley claimed this about "Roots". Songwriters have also reported experiencing this..... Slow day at the office, folks. |
Thumper
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 25, 2007 - 06:48 pm: |
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Hello All,
I've been busier than a ho at a men prison keg party. JCAHO is coming to my facility real soon (those of you who work at a hospital or health care institution knows the hell I am going through) so before I've had time to exhale from finishing my finals, I'm thrown into another time consuming mess. Oh, well, I need the money. But, it hasn't stopped me from reading, check out my post on Chester Himes autobiography, My Life of Absurdity. Funny Shakspir should mention Himes. More on that later.
Carey: Its so good to hear from you!!
Hey Chris, there Carey is...he's right there! *smile*
I want to read the Ellison biography before I make a definitive comment on the man. I don't know if the negative vibe you all are picking up is due to the man OR the black male authors from that generation in general. Langston Hughes is the only black male author from that time that I would love to meet. Wright, Baldwin, Himes, Ellison, Toomer; they all seemed like assholes to me. There quite a bit of self loathing, intra-racism, arrogant, egocentric, pompus (sp) and other stuff going on there. I wouldn't recommend any of them for Black Male Role Model Hall of Fame.
There's one quote that sums up Ellison for me. I forget where I read it from, probably from one of the many articles that came out on Ellison soon after his death, right after I read Invisible Man. Some of you may know this one. It was written that some time after Invisble Man was published and Ellison was basking in all of the acclaim, he was at some function or party honoring a celebrated French novelist. When Ellison was introduced to the novelist, the novelist asked him how many novels had he written. Ellison replied one. The French novelist told Ellison then you are not a novelist. Nuff said.
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Steve_s
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, May 27, 2007 - 09:07 pm: |
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From Public Radio International host Chris Lydon's post-game analysis of the Arnold Rampersad interview show:
The nuances of feeling and angles of analysis around Ellison — and shadings of emphasis around blackness — would fill volumes. Among the tensions in the near or far background at the Harvard Book Store were Ralph Ellison’s personal distaste for W. E. B. DuBois, who was a Communist by the time Ellison arrived in New York. Ellison was personally wary of the young Skip Gates at Yale in the Seventies. To many black people and scholars, it matters that the admired scholar Rampersad is a Trinidadian — from the Caribbean rim that Ellison pointedly excluded (with Africa) from his interest in Negro America.
In the bookstore as in our studio, Rampersad granted that he didn’t like Ellison much. He’d had a three-year wait and then an awkward time interviewing Ralph Ellison for his biography of Ellison’s former friend Langston Hughes. It grates on Rampersad, he told us, that Ralph was so emotionally chintzy with the younger generation of writers, while Langston was generous to a fault. (Rampersad said his heart is with Langston Hughes, though his own shyness makes him more like Ralph Ellison.) It goes without saying in all of these discussions that Ralph Ellison was, is, and will stand as a god. Yet there is a palpable pleasure that Rampersad has found a way to spot some divine flaws in his character: his haughtiness especially, his use and misuse of women, his perhaps self-destructive distance from black America. There are people who’ve been waiting for this side of the story to emerge — among them Cornel West. Rampersad last night remembered West remarking when he started the Ellison project, that he would discover about Brother Ellison what T. S. Eliot learned about Matthew Arnold: “that he had no real serenity, only an impeccable demeanor.”
Yeah, it's a pity that Ellison "pointedly excluded" Rampersad's below-the-rim Trinidad from his interest in Negro America and then followed it up by putting Rampersad's beloved steelpan idiophones on indefinite hiatus from Jazz Casual, U.S.A. (and don't let the Locrian "five chord" hit you on the way out, Arnold!). Schakspir, you mean Ellison "showed a personal distaste" for Dr. Dubious, who snubbed James Reese Europe on two continents, forbade Yolande from marrying Jimmy Lunceford (instead, packing her off to "Raintree" Countee), but then sent Rayford Logan to pass the collection plate for his Pan-African Conference among the cash-strapped jazzers at Montmartre, all the while reminding us that Trinidadian Hazel Scott married Adam Clayton Powell? Gosh, and Ms. Scott exuded such "dignity," too, to bad she was oppressed by that sh*t material from Tin Pan Alley, read: "(white) Western Learned Culture." Yeah, I know, Ellison didn't like Powell either, or Ben Davis. In fact, he didn't like anybody! Good for him!
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Steve_s
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 28, 2007 - 01:08 am: |
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Last point. This is a psychoanalytical style of biography which I would compare to Michael Weiss's recent bio of Irene Nemirovsky, the French Jewish emigre who in 1942 was arrested by French police in the occupied zone and deported to Auschwitz where she died. She had completed the first two novellas of a projected five-book cycle about the occupation, which was published last year as Suite Francaise. However, her early work often featured Jewish characters which bordered on anti-Semitic stereotypes. So Weiss's biography investigates Irene's sense of her own Jewishness.
Rampersad's biography, ostensibly an exploration of Ralph Ellison's relationship to "the black community," draws on the biographer's own interpretations of one novel and some short stories which readers know well, and so his interpretations often seem factitious, not real.
For instance, when the Invisible Man leaves Mary Rambo's apartment where he's recovered from the shock therapy he received after the explosion in the paint factory, Prof. Rampersad would have us believe that the act of leaving Mary "mimics Ralph's growing distance from blacks around him" and that he (Ralph) "rejects those who touch his heart."
The short story "Flying Home" supposedly proves "his punitive reserve with most blacks (whom he associates with poverty and ignorance)."
The short story King of the Bingo Game "brought nothing utterly new to African American fiction (In the 1920s, a decade of writing largely dismissed by Ralph and Wright, Jean Toomer had explored the surreal and absurd in urban life to more brilliant effect.)" Of course!
You don't have to be a semiotician to understand the intention of this sentence:
"New Masses loved the essay. Ecstatic at having the services of such a skilled, loyal black reporter, the editiors sought more material from Ralph."
Look at it another way :
"Senators Smathers and Spessard-Holland loved the speech. Ecstatic at having the services of such a skilled, loyal black campaigner, the candidates sought more oratory from Zora."
Here's another sentence notable for its "objectivity":
"Whether hosted by Jews or Gentiles, Ralph and Fanny craved what superior whites had to offer them in the way of stylish cocktail or dinner parties, fine wines, urbane dinner conversation, and social eclat." [italics mine]
With such a gift for psychoanalysis, it's interesting that at the end of his two-volume encyclopedic biography of Langston Hughes, Prof. Rampersad has to admit that he just can't say for sure if Hughes was gay. Not enough evidence. However, it's funny how he interrupts his interrogation of Ellison's supposed betrayal of Hughes just long to enough to have Ralph confirm his thesis:
"During the long extent of our friendship," he wrote privately about Hughes's sexuality, "he never once revealed it to me. Indeed, he always struck me as asexual...."
I read the Barry Bonds book which is more objective and fair than this one, which should have been called "Game of Shadows and Act."
I'm halfway through, but so far, in my opinion, the the Lawrence Jackson biography, "Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius" is more insightful, though not as detailed, in its treatement of Ellison's childhood, and its chapter about his tenure at the Tuskegee music school was a revelation. The new biography no doubt describes his years of struggle in New York in much more detail.
That's really all I have to say about this book. Thanks for the opportunity to express it.
I will say this. In the past 25 years, jazz education has entered the college curriculum across the country and in other parts of the world. Ralph Ellison has become an unlikely figurehead in the jazz interdisciplinary studies curriculum at Columbia University and elsewhere. And that's a threat to some in academia.
Ralph Ellison's books, and those of Albert Murray and others are reaching a whole new generation of readers. I even met a 30-year-old musican working at a Borders who told me he had read Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus and Joseph and His Brothers because Albert Murray analyzes them as "blues" novel in his monograph, Hero and the Blues.
So one bad biography won't affect any of that.
PS My question about his ethnicity was serious. |
Cynique
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 28, 2007 - 11:31 am: |
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Your treatise was really interesting, Steve. Do I remember reading something about - Ellison being at a party and a young person asking him something about his work and Ellison breaking down crying much to the embarssement of those in attendance???? |
Rondall
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - 11:22 am: |
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Hey Thumper,
Sorry I did not get a chance to say goodbye before I left. Give Ma my love and say hello to Luther for me.
Houston beautiful by the way...
Rondall |
Steve_s
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 - 03:36 pm: |
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Concerning Arnold Rampersad's (mis)representation of Ralph Ellison's feelings about Africa:
It's not true that Ralph Ellison had no interest in Africa. In fact, he had a principled position. And by the way, Lynne Duke, who was the Johannesburg bureau chief for the Washington Post at the time of the Rwanda massacre, has a few choice words in her Hurston-Wright Award-nominated book for Ms. Morrison, who dubbed Bill Clinton the "first brotha" shortly after his shameful failure to act to prevent the genocide and counter-genocide in Rwanda. The cost of preventing the genocide, which someone estimated at $20 per human life, was deemed prohibitive at the time. It also would have required REAL political power in order to influence the government's Africa policy, but instead, we're still talking, forty years later, about SYMBOLIC cultural politics, whether it's the accommodationism of declaring Clinton an honorary black man or whether it's beating down a briliant African American writer based on some half-truths about his personal opinions on African politics.
There are three references in the biography to Ellison's ambiguous personal feelings, circa 1954 through 1959, about the African Independence Movement. The first refers to his blurb of Richard Wright's book, Black Power, written after Wright's visit to the Gold Coast (soon to be Ghana) in West Africa and published in 1954. Ellison's blurb reads, "Whether we like the developments reported in Black Power or no, it is not a book that can be easily dismissed. Certainly it cannot be safely ignored." The second refers to his wait-and-see attitude following Ghanaian independence in 1957. And the third refers to Ellison's lack of interest in "gathering books" to send overseas; his refusal to take part in a State Department tour of Ghana in 1959 (the insinuation being that he was not in synch with African independece as he supposedly was with, say, the defense of Hungarians and Bulgarians); and finally, some muddled reference to his position on race and jazz music. Rampersad writes: "Langston Hughes, helping to gather books to send to Ghana, noted that all 'of the prominent contemporary writers of color in the U.S.A., to whom we wrote' donated volumes -- except Ralph."
First of all, I've read Penny Von Eschen's history of the State Department cultural exchange tours during the Cold War from 1965 through the late 1970s, and it's a history too complex to describe in a few words, however, let me just say that a lot of good came out of the program, even though, unbeknownst to the musicians, they were often accompanied by covert CIA dirty tricks. But by 1959, a number of African American musicians like Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie had already resigned for principled reasons. And by the way, these tours did go to Hungary as well as Africa, although, obviously (or maybe not so obviously), they didn't go to Bulgaria.
The main point is that Ellison, along with a number of other prominent African American artists and musicians, was scheduled to participate in the 1966 World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, until the overthrow of President Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana less than two months before the festival.
Following the coup which overthrew Nkrumah, Ellison and other African American artists -- James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis, and Sidney Poitier -- boycotted the Dakar festival in protest, mostly over the CIA-funding of the festival organizers, the US-friendly politics of Senegal, but especially over the accommodationist cultural politics -- known as "Negritude" -- of Leopold Senghor (which Langston Hughes, on the other hand, favored!). Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Randy Weston, et al, were the main attractions at Dakar, but many other participants -- like Katherine Dunham and Alvin Ailey -- were in agreement with Ellison and Baldwin about Negritude, which they felt echoed Western ethnocentric beliefs about the essential nature of Africans. However, Von Eschen notes that "most American participants were firmly in a pro-Senegalese and anti-Nkrumah camp," without specifying who those participants were.
From Von Eschen's book, Satchmo Blows Up the World:
Although leftist critics of Senghor did not attend the festival, its organizers had inadvertently provided a forum for black diasporic and African critics of U.S. foreign policy in Africa. These critics indicted the United States and Senegal for their prompt recognition of the post-Nkrumah military regime in Ghana and their weak protests against Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) as a white minority government. Novelist James Baldwin and singer Harry Belafonte boycotted the festival, criticizing the "approach" of Senghor, by which they meant everything from the concept of Negritude to the U.S.-friendly politics of Senegal. (Ralph Ellison and the actor Ossie Davis and Sidney Poitier also boycotted.) Belafonte had visited Guinea several times as a cultural adviser to President Sekou Toure, and had criticized Senegal for failing to break off relations with Britain over Rhodesia's UDI, as Guinea had done.
So I think Rampersad is misrepresenting Ellison's position. In addition, Rampersad shows his colors in his criticism of Ellison's position at the panel discussion of jazz and race, i.e. Ellison's opposition to the idea that "jazz is a black phenomenon largely ruined by whites, which itself smacks of something like Negritude. Easy for him to say!
James Baldwin's essay, "Princes and Powers," is his report from the Pan-African writers' conference in Paris in 1956. It's an exploration of his thoughts on such topics as the differing roles of the storyteller in oral and written cultures; the idea of jazz as a social art (which is what attracted me to the essay); black literature, etc. I remember that he describes the writer in Western culture (like, dare I say, Baldwin himself or Ralph Ellison), as the "one who steals the fire," that is, lives and works in isolation from the group.
At the Paris conference, Leopold Senghor mentions in his speech that Richard Wright's writing reflects African psychological "tensions" and perhaps an African consciousness (although he doesn't use that exact phrase). Even though Wright didn't know how to take that remark, it's the kind of African essentialism (to use another example, that all people of African descent have "natural rhythm") which might describe Negritude.
In "Soul on Ice," Eldridge Cleaver goes on a homophobic rant against Baldwin for criticizing both Senghor and Norman Mailer, saying, among other obscenities that I would not like to validate, that Baldwin "wants to have the white man's baby." That's an obvious reference to Mailer's essay "The White Negro" from his collection, Advertisements for Myself. Baldwin's reply to Mailer is in the essay titled "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy." The Mailer essay is primarily about his belief in the stereotype of the sexual superiority of black males who "live with danger." As I remember, it was secondarily about dope and Beat writers and/or white jazzers attracted to the black urban experience. Nelson George wrote a reply in The Death of Rhythm and Blues called "On White Negroes," but it doesn't deal at all with the issue of sexuality, which was the main point of Mailer's essay. Instead, it's a piece about Elvis.
Baldwin paid a price for allowing himself to be enlisted as a spokesman for the cause in the 1960s. (see: The Welcome Table by Henry Louis Gates.) I think the main reason that Ralph Ellison was vilified by a small group of writers in the '60s is that he refused to enter the public arena on behalf of civil rights, and as Gerald Early states in "Decoding Ralph Ellison," his decision was probably a wise one considering the treatment received by Baldwin, because neither man was psychologically suited for the role.
There have long been theories proposed by black and white writers about why Ralph Ellison never completed the second novel; either that he was a perfectionist, or an "anxiety of influence"-type theory (which refers to Harold Bloom's theory abut the Oedipal nature of literary influence), or that he was under the influence of Faulkner, and many others. In the second half of the biography, Rampersad asserts that Ellison’s failure to complete a second novel stemmed from his hobnobbing with white writers and subsequently distancing himself from the black community. This is sometimes even described as a Faustian bargain.
After reading some more (I'm up to p. 300), I'll modify my previous position, because there is some good information contained in the book.
However, the attempt by Rampersand to subliminally connect Ellison to Shelby Steele, of all people, is absurd. Toward the end of the biography there's a prominent Shelby Steele defense of Ellison. Sprinkled throughout the book are Shelby Steele-like homilies like the following, intended to push readers' buttons:
Ellison believed in "the need for individuals to accept personal responsibility." That's ridiculous.
In the prologue to Invisible Man, the narrator is like a madman, living in the basement of a whites-only apartment building on the edge of Harlem, tapping into the city's electricity. Arnold Rampersad's comment is that in stealing utilities from the city, the Invisible Man is victimizing the poor people of Harlem, who he knows will be blamed for it.
Rampersad also characterizes being the only African American at a social function as contributing to Jim Crow.
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Steve_s
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 02, 2007 - 01:03 pm: |
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Dear Troy, Cynique, Thumper, and friends,
On February 24 1966 while Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah was away on a state visit to Vietnam, his government was overthrown in a CIA-backed military coup.
This is the reason that Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Ossie Davis, Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitier boycotted the World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar Senegal which began on April 1st, less than two months after the coup, as explained in my previous post. Langston Hughes, on the other hand, attended the festival.
You can check those dates online at Wikipedia or elsewhere.
In Volume 2 of the biography of Langston Hughes, "I Dream a World," author Arnold Rampersad reverses the order of the two events, so that the coup comes "later in the year," or after the festival.
In other words, the last 4 or 5 pages of Chapter 15 describe Langston's participation in the CIA-funded Senegalese world arts festival and his embrace of President Leopold Senghor's concept of "Negritude," which as previously noted, all of the above mentioned artists, along with Alvin Ailey and Katherine Dunham rejected.
On the first page of the next chapter, "Chapter 16. Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me, 1966-1967" (p. 404), the first sentence of the first paragraph reads:
"After a triumphant month in Dakar, Langston left Senegal to begin his grand tour of Africa for the U.S. State Department."
The first two sentences of the second paragraph read:
"In a sour epilogue to the independence movement that had transformed the former European colonies into a growing array of new black nations, coups d'etat now seemed to threaten the dream of democratic progress for Africa. In Ghana later that year would come the most decisive blow -- the overthrow of the most ambitious leader of the African independence movement, Kwame Nkrumah."
This is a classic disinformation technique. He changes the order of events and then neglects to mention the protest of the U.S. writers. This way he doesn't have to explain Langston's appearance at the festival. And more gallingly, in the new book he accuses Ellison of having no interest in Africa.
Note also on p. 402 of the Langston Hughes biography, what Langston has to say about the younger generations of writers, who, we're supposed to believe, were embraced by all of the older generation of black writers except Ellison.
He himself believed in a flawed but redeemable America, but the consensus among many blacks "is that America is simply falling to pieces, going to the dogs, stewing in its own iniquity, and bogged down in the gutters of Saigon." Tragically, many books by these same younger blacks "are about as near the gutter as -- in their opinion -- America seems to be." Mentioning by name LeRoi Jones, James Baldwin, and Charles Wright....Langston marvelled at the bizarre relationship between abusive black writers who "talk about whites badly right in the middle of the whites' own parlors, lecture halls and libraries," and whites who seemed to adore this abuse. In this relationship lay a perversion of the function of art: "The most talented of the young Negro writers have become America's prophets of doom, black ravens cawing over carrion."
Unlike Jones and Baldwin, other black writers (he mentioned Ralph Ellison, John O. Killens, Julain Mayfield, and Paule Marshall) had criticized America "but without finger-painting in excrement on America's lily white canvas." An even older generation -- Richard Wright, Bontemps, Anne Petry, and Hughes himself, for example -- "never dreamed of revealing the Negro people to themselves in terms of mother____ers; or of shocking white readers with bad words rather than bad facts." At the root of the situation was the oldest tension in black writing: the existence of a double audience, black and white, exerting a potentially disastrous force on the writer unless resisted by racial and personal confidence... -- Arnold Rampersad, I Dream a World: The Life of Langston Hughes
I'm up to p. 360 in the Ellison biography.
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Thumper
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 04, 2007 - 08:32 pm: |
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Hello All,
Steve_S: I see you've been busy while I was away that the Book Expo. *smile*
Answer me this, now, I'm just asking, I have no beliefs one way or the other: but why is it that any successful AA author has to speak on or about Africa? From the literature I've read, written by African writers, the African writers need little help from AA authors in explain the plight of their people to the world.
Second, in your opinion, why didn't Ellison finish his second novel, if not for writer's block or perfectionism? |
Yukio
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 05, 2007 - 01:38 pm: |
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Steve_S and Thumper:
I haven't read Rampersad's bio of Ellison. I might add though, Steve_S, that there is no such thing as an objective text. A biographer needs to come to some kind of conclusion, why else would one do the research? |
Cynique
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 05, 2007 - 01:48 pm: |
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Biographers also rely on hearsay and the recollections of subjective people. So while a biographer may be subjective, he may not be entirely accurate. |
Yukio
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Steve_S: What good came out of the Jambassadors or Goodwill Ambassadors program?
I haven't read Von Eschen's Satchmo Blows Up the World, but have read her first book, Race Against Empire paints the State's program as propaganda to mask racism in the U.S. in order to attract the nonaligned African, Asian, and poor European countries to the side of the U.S.
Thumper:
I wouldn't say that successful black wrters outside of African "ha[ve] to speak on or about Africa." The fact of the matter is that the majority of successful black writers have ususally somehow dealt with race and racism or black culture. And they therefore have dealt, if not indirectly, with the question of Western Culture.
This is what Baldwin, Langston, Wright, Morrison, Ellison, and others are constantly engaged with.
And since in this country being black and successful almost makes you a black leader, they have often been solicted for their opinion.
And many of them, except for the most recent batch--post 1990s, have been informed by the culture, literature, or political movements of and in Africa. So, it makes sense that they would have something to say about Africa. Also, these folk have often been politically involved in Pan Africanists efforts, though they may not have been ideologically Pan Africanists.
So, I think its less about Africans need help from AA authors to explain the plight of Africa, and more that many of them have a political affinity with Africa. And considering the political leverage that these artists held, especially during the Cold War, they have certain resources that Africans at the time did not have. And, since the U.S. is racist as hell, African Americans and Caribbeans could use the racism of the U.S. or of the West in general as leverage to push the West and the U.S. to accomodate Africa more so than it had....of course, this did not work....
And that this political affinity was mutual, though they all may not have shared the same ultimate goals.
I think, as Steve_S states, however, that Rampersad is clearly subjective. |
Steve_s
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 06, 2007 - 06:18 pm: |
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Yukio writes: What good came out of the Jambassadors or Goodwill Ambassadors program?
I haven't read Von Eschen's Satchmo Blows Up the World, but have read her first book, Race Against Empire paints the State's program as propaganda to mask racism in the U.S. in order to attract the nonaligned African, Asian, and poor European countries to the side of the U.S.
...............................
Yukio, the Soviets at the time were sending classical musicians and ballet companies to the non-aligned nations in order to promote Russian culture, so the U.S. goverment hit upon the idea of sending jazz musicians (and later soul, rock, and dance performers) to represent "freer" and more "democratic" U.S. art forms. Yes, the government was using these jazz groups - at first, mostly integrated - to try and counter perceptions of U.S. racism, but as Von Eschen shows, the musicians used the opportunity to further their own agenda and make personal connections with musicians and regular people in other countries. In one country, for example, Dizzy Gillespie refused to perform unless a group of children standing outside the gate was allowed in and seated at the front. Louis Armstrong's tour of the Congo was an amazing emotional experience - almost like a homecoming - for both Louis and the people, but unfortunately, as the author shows, the democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba, was under arrest at the time (with U.S. government involvement).
About the boycott of the Dakar festival. Although Penny Von Eschen doesn't claim that the U.S. artists knew of the CIA involvement in Kwame Nkrumah's overthrow, the New York Times article she cites, written by Seymour Hersh, is dated 1978, ten years before the Langston Hughes biography was published, so Arnold Rampersad definitely knew. And to be fair, the first two paragraphs I cited also refer to the military takeover in Nigeria in January of 1966, so technically, the overthrow of Nkrumah in February took place "later that year," but still earlier than the Dakar festival in March, so I think it's misleading the way he presents it.
How is Race Against Empire and what is the book about? |
Steve_s
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 06, 2007 - 06:55 pm: |
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Yukio writes: I haven't read Rampersad's bio of Ellison. I might add though, Steve_S, that there is no such thing as an objective text. A biographer needs to come to some kind of conclusion, why else would one do the research?
Cynique writes: Biographers also rely on hearsay and the recollections of subjective people. So while a biographer may be subjective, he may not be entirely accurate.
.........................
Yukio and Cynique, I've finished the Arnold Rampersad biography of Ralph Ellison and I'm considering re-reading the Lawrence Jackson, which, although a partial biography which ends in 1953 when Ellison wins the National Book Award, is, in my opinion, a better biography: more intellectual, deals with Ellison's ideas rather than his foibles, pecadilloes, and characher flaws, and therefore, has no commercial potential.
I don't want to say too much more until others have read it, however, in my opinion, Rampersad looks at history in reverse. He starts with the fact that Ellison failed to produce a second novel, and then attributes a character defect to this failure. In my opinion, he tips his hand when he traces it back further than Invisible Man. For instance, he even sees the metaphor of invisibility as a sympton:
This quote from the biography refers to 1955, two years after winning the National Book Award for Invisible Man:
Ralph, with a growing distance between himself and the black social reality around him, was finding it hard to turn that reality into fiction. The first words of Ralph's one published novel -- "I am an invisible man" -- testify that this growing sense of his own relative social amorphousness already leeched his vitality in 1945. To the contrary, the first words of Bellow's breakthrough novel -- "I am an American, Chicago born" -- testify to his social anchorage. (-- Rampersad)
In that case, I wonder how expatriates and exiles, say, from Africa, manage to write novels while teaching in small New England college towns?
And in my opinion, invisibility doesn't just define a psychic state, it's a social reality among many Americans or groups of Americans, which is probably why it has meaning for so many people. Even in Steinbeck's East of Eden, one of the books which Invisible Man beat out for the NBA in 1953, there's a Chinese character named Lee who, although he's college educated, has to speak in pidgen English in order to be understood. I think that's a kind of invisibility, especially since the novel takes place around the time of the anti-Chinese legislation of the 1880s.
Cynique, this might be considered hearsay:
"It was not unusual for us to have a class outside on the grass or even down at Adolph's" (a local bar), recalled Vera Gordon. On the whole, he was disciplined, but one evening he drank far too much. "We had to help him home that night," Werthman remembered. The sight of a black man dancing with white coeds offended some locals, he noted, but he seemed to have no wish to sleep with students. In fact, "I felt he was scared by women," Werthman added. "He hardly ever talked about the women in the novels he taught. I always felt that women were 'The Other' to Ralph."
Had Arnold Rampersad attributed those recollections of 49 years ago to "Dr. Eric Werthman, retired director of psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan, who, at the time, was a second-year undergraduate at Bard College and student of Ralph Ellison," and not "according to Eric Wertheim, a former student," I might not have taken it more seriously.
Seriously, I think Rampersad's main criticism is that Ellison opposed the cultural politics, mostly of art, which was current in the sixties. However, I don't think he ever really explains what cultural nationalism describes. He just uses the terminology.
He seems to also describe cultural nationalism and modernism as mutally exclusive, which, I don't think they are. He also seems to give these "isms" a racial value without ever really explaining why or what they represent. Lawrence Jackson doesn't do that. Rampersad's style may be more "readable" though. |
Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 267
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 06, 2007 - 07:17 pm: |
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Thumper writes: Steve_S: I see you've been busy while I was away that the Book Expo. *smile*
Answer me this, now, I'm just asking, I have no beliefs one way or the other: but why is it that any successful AA author has to speak on or about Africa? From the literature I've read, written by African writers, the African writers need little help from AA authors in explain the plight of their people to the world.
Second, in your opinion, why didn't Ellison finish his second novel, if not for writer's block or perfectionism?
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Thanks, Thumper. How have you been? I love the Javits Center! Is it an industry-wide book convention?
Although I like African literature, I don't expect everyone to. I remember Zakes Mda said that after apartheid, the job of the fiction writer in South Africa became more difficult. Arnold Rampersad explains that for Ralph Ellison, Brown v. Board had a similar effect, and later the political assassinations of the 1960s because, as you know, Juneteenth is a novel about a political assassination. So he had to keep revising the novel as he was working on it. It's interesting that Rampersad sees a connection to Lincoln's assassination in Senator Sunraider's.
I listened to an interview with Ian McEwan about "Saturday," his post-9/11 novel, and he talked about the influence a 1961 Philip Roth essay had on him, which described how American fiction had been outstripped by American reality. In other words, events more fiction-like than anything a fiction writer could imagine. So it required a new kind of fiction. It sounds like Ellison was feeling the same thing years earlier.
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Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2394
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 06, 2007 - 09:10 pm: |
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Had Arnold Rampersad attributed those recollections of 49 years ago to "Dr. Eric Werthman, retired director of psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan, who, at the time, was a second-year undergraduate at Bard College and student of Ralph Ellison," and not "according to Eric Wertheim, a former student," I might not have taken it more seriously.
But they are quotes from the text no? And at the end of the day, he was former student of Ellison, no? I'm not sure if I understand your point.
The nature of history is imperfect. The historian or in this case the biographer has to reconstruct the past with the sources that are available, so part of the job is to get a variety of sources, and especially, to get additional sources to try and verify oral histories. Because, as you suggest Steve_S, memory plays a part in oral histories. |
Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 268
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 06, 2007 - 11:13 pm: |
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Yukio, My point, probably a bad one, is that Arnold Rampersad, who could find no evidence of Langston Hughes's sexuality in years of research, validaters the opinion of a student who was 18 in 1958 about his 45 year old teacher's sexuality in a 2004 interview. It's an opinion that doesn't carry any weight. He often does this; he digs up dirt, validates it, and then proceeds to contradict it.
The biography isn't an oral history (I know you didn't say that it was), there is an extensive written record. Rampersad and Lawrence Jackson both researched their biographies for about seven years, the difference being that Rampersad had access to the Ellisons' personal papers which they donated to the Library of Congress. The Ellisons saved everything for posterity including multiple drafts of letters of recommendation, copies of private correspondence sent to friends, notices Ellison posted to tenants when he worked as a janitor, multiple drafts of scenes in the second novel, etc., which Rampersad sometimes uses to hang Ralph Ellison.
Rampersad does not like Ralph Ellison. This bio often feels like payback on behalf of a generation of writers.
I found the following explanation of the Anxiety of Influence theory, which I think is at work here, although not acknowledged. Perhaps it should have been:
On the surface of things, the concept of influence seems straightforward. An artist trying to define a space for himself or herself under the weight of tradition is inspired by precursors. She or he selects elements that are useful or admired, interpolates them with implicit commentary of his or her own, and arrives at an "original" production that nevertheless grasps what has gone before. Influence is pervasive and inescapable, even if the artist is a revolutionary and acknowledges the past only to condemn it. In this way history in the arts makes progress.
In 1973, the literary theorist Harold Bloom published a study which questioned this commonsense formulation. In The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, Bloom explored the psychology of influence, and concluded that it was conflict of Oedipal dimensions between the poet and his or her literary forbearers. It is the struggle of the artist, Bloom argued, to find his or her own voice through an ambivalent, anxiety-ridden relation precisely with those precursors whom they most admire. Through creative misinterpretations of these shadowy figures, the artist, in the very act of holding up certain past artists as admired precursors, also imagines them as incomplete, failing for all their genius, and falling short of the mark that only the present artist is capable of reaching. If the present artist did not believe that, what would be left for him or her to accomplish? Admiration therefore necessarily becomes accusation, and the present artist only discovers his or her own power by distorting, demonizing, and then devouring those influences that he or she loves so much. Originality is achieved in the misinterpretation of the precursor as incomplete, which allows one to write the past according to one’s own agenda, that is, to influence (in imagination) one’s precursors instead of letting them influence one. One unconsciously takes credit for their work and completes their failed intentions in one’s own work. History progresses in the arts if only in the anxious unconscious of the artist. Bloom’s analysis became enormously influential (indeed a Laius to an entire generation of critics), and has been widely applied not only to literature but many other artistic disciplines including music....
http://www.americansymphony.org/dialogues_extensions/2000_01season/2000_11_19/bo tstein.cfm |
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