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The definitive biography of an important American cultural intellectual of the twentieth century--Ralph Ellison, author of the masterpiece Invisible Man. In 1953, Ellison's explosive story of a young black man's search for truth and identity catapulted him to national prominence. Ellison earned many honors, but his failure to publish a second novel, despite years of striving, haunted him for the rest of his life. Rampersad, the first scholar given complete access to Ellison's papers, provides a complex portrait of an unusual artist and human being. This biography describes a man of magnetic personality who counted Saul Bellow, Langston Hughes, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, Richard Wilbur, Albert Murray, and John Cheever among his closest friends; a man whose life and art were shaped mainly by his unyielding desire to produce magnificent art and by his resilient faith in the moral and cultural strength of America.--From publisher description.
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Previews available in: English
Showing 4 featured editions. View all 4 editions?
Edition | Availability |
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1
Ralph Ellison: a biography
2008, Vintage Books
in English
- 1st Vintage Books ed.
0375707980 9780375707988
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2
Ralph Ellison: A Biography (Vintage)
January 8, 2008, Vintage
Paperback
in English
0375707980 9780375707988
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3
Ralph Ellison: A Biography
April 24, 2007, Knopf, Alfred A. Knopf
in English
0375408274 9780375408274
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4
Ralph Ellison
2007, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Electronic resource
in English
0307267326 9780307267320
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Originally published: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [569]-624) and index.
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Work Description
Ralph Ellison is justly celebrated for his epochal novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953 and has become a classic of American literature. But Ellison's strange inability to finish a second novel, despite his dogged efforts and soaring prestige, made him a supremely enigmatic figure. Arnold Rampersad skillfully tells the story of a writer whose thunderous novel and astute, courageous essays on race, literature, and culture assure him of a permanent place in our literary heritage. Starting with Ellison's hardscrabble childhood in Oklahoma and his ordeal as a student in Alabama, Rampersad documents his improbable, painstaking rise in New York to a commanding place on the literary scene. With scorching honesty but also fair and compassionate, Rampersad lays bare his subject's troubled psychology and its impact on his art and on the people about him.This book is both the definitive biography of Ellison and a stellar model of literary biography.From the Trade Paperback edition.
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