Juneteenth - Softcover

Ellison, Ralph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375707549 ISBN 13: 9780375707544

Publisher: Vintage, 2000

Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"[A]n extraordinary book, a work of staggering virtuosity. With its publication, a giant world of literature has just grown twice as tall."--Newsday

From Ralph Ellison--author of the classic novel of African-American experience, Invisible Man--the long-awaited second novel. Here is the master of American vernacular--the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech--at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century.

"Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? Brilliantly crafted, moving, wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master.

About this title

Review:

Invisible Man, which Ralph Ellison published in 1952, was one of the great debuts in contemporary literature. Alternating phantasmagoria with rock-ribbed realism, it delved into the blackest (and whitest!) corners of the American psyche, and quickly attained the status of legend. Ellison's follow-up, however, seemed truly bedeviled--not only by its monumental predecessor, but by fate itself. First, a large section of the novel went up in flames when the author's house burned in 1967. Then he spent decades reconstructing, revising, and expanding his initial vision. When Ellison died in 1994, he left behind some 2,000 pages of manuscript. Yet this mythical mountain of prose was clearly unfinished, far too sketchy and disjointed to publish. Apparently Ellison's second novel would never appear.

Or would it? Ellison's literary executor, John Callahan, has now quarried a smaller, more coherent work from all that raw material. Gone are the epic proportions that Ellison so clearly envisioned. Instead, Juneteenth revolves around just two characters: Adam Sunraider, a white, race-baiting New England senator, and Alonzo "Daddy" Hickman, a black Baptist minister who turns out to have a paradoxical (and paternal) relationship to his opposite number. As the book opens, Sunraider is delivering a typically bigoted peroration on the Senate floor when he's peppered by an assassin's bullets. Mortally wounded, he summons the elderly Hickman to his bedside. There the two commence a journey into their shared past, which (unlike the rest of 1950s America) represents a true model of racial integration.

Adam, we discover, was born Bliss, and raised by Hickman in the bosom of the black community. What's more, this rabble-rouser was being groomed as a boy minister. ("I tell you, Bliss," says Hickman, "you're going to make a fine preacher and you're starting at just the right age. You're just a little over six and Jesus Christ himself didn't start until he was twelve.") The portion of Juneteenth that covers Bliss's ecclesiastical education--perhaps a third of the entire book--is as electrifying as anything in Invisible Man. Ellison juggles the multiple ironies of race and religion with effortless brilliance, and his delight in Hickman's house-wrecking rhetoric is contagious:

Bliss, I've heard you cutting some fancy didoes on the radio, but son, Eatmore was romping and rampaging and walking through Jerusalem just like John! Oh, but wasn't he romping! Maybe you were too young to get it all, but that night that mister was ten thousand misters and his voice was pure gold.

In comparison, though, the rest of the novel seems like pretty slim pickings. For one thing, much of the plot--including Bliss's transformation from pint-sized preacher to United States senator--is absent. For another, Ellison's confinement of the two top-billed players to a hospital room makes for an awfully static narrative. Granted, he intended their dialogue to exist "on a borderline between the folk poetry and religious rhetoric" (or so he wrote in his notes). But this is a dicey recipe for a novel, and Juneteenth veers between naturalism and hallucination much less effectively than its predecessor did.

None of this is to assail Ellison's artistry, which remains on ample display. The problem is that Callahan's splice job--which well may be the best one possible--remains weak at the seams. So should readers give Juneteenth a miss? The answer would still have to be no. The best parts are as powerful and necessary as anything in our literature, evoking Daddy Hickman's own brand of verbal enchantment. "I was talking like I always talk," he recalls at one point, "in the same old down-home voice, that is, in the beloved idiom... [and] I preached those five thousand folks into silence." Ellison, too, is capable of preaching the reader into silence--and that's not something we can afford to overlook. --James Marcus

From the Publisher:

Ralph Ellison Reflects on Winning the National Book Award

For me the most important single affect attending my winning of the National Book Award was the feeling of affirmation which came with the news that a committee or respected writers had considered my novel worthy of a major literary prize. Despite my having received a good press during the months before the award, and although sales were moving much better than I had dared hope, these were by no means reliable indicators as to the degree of the only type of success which had really concerned me. The anticipated relief of having published a novel turned to frustration. I puzzled as to whether the book was being well received because it possessed recognizable literary quality, or if were for other, non-literary reasons. I was uncomfortably aware that some of my most favorable reviews were ëgoodí for startlingly wrong reasons, and I knew only too well that poor novels too often out-sell quite superior ones. Thus I was like a traveler who after a long and difficult journey arrives at the promised landóonly to discover that here his eyes no longer focus correctly and that his ears distort all sounds. In short, a land pleasant but decidedly ambiguous.

I had indeed just emerged from an obscurity in which I had worked for five years undisturbed by thoughts of future sales or reviewers notices, and in which the possibility of winning prizes was utterly undreamed. My sold preoccupation had been with transforming a body of seemingly intractable material into a work of art. Thus, while the sudden publicity was quite heady and the sales most welcome, my true sense of fulfillment came only when this committee concerned precisely with literary quality had, through its choice of my novel, justified all of the time, the sacrifices and the aspiration which had gone into it. Even now, long after the post-award publicity had faded, and with the money from the increased sales long spent, it is their act of recognition which continues with me. It is this which gives me certain comfort today as I feel my way slowly toward the completion of what will surely be regarded a rather arrogantly ambitious novel. I hope, by the way, that no one will blame this on the fateful committee.

You ask whether the award has affected my status as a writer, to which I must reply that the question has never occurred to me. I will say however, that where Negroes are concerned, all questions of status are likely to be reduced to, and confused with, questions of racial and social status. One has long been intertwined with the other and it has seemed to me a mistake for a writer to worry about themócertainly in any effort at self-evaluation. Much better to spend the time trying to learn oneís craft. Lest however, this seems an attempt at evasion, let me go on to say that I did not regard it as especially significant that a Negro should win the NBA, but I was please, nevertheless, that the conditions of the award make it mandatory that even a novel, which happens to be written by a Negro must be subjected to as rigid and as ëobjectiveíóand as non-racialóa scrutiny, say, as that now commonly faced by major league baseball players who also happen to be Negroes. The trick here is that of creating oneís own identity through the medium of oneís chosen art; not that of having it thrust upon one as an act of racial policy, or as a gesture of liberal sentiment. One wishes only to compete freely and with no special considerations pro or contra. I had won prizes in the form of scholarships and fellowships before, but the NBA was the first (though not the last) not hedged by considerations of race. This is an extra-literary consideration but one of significance for many of my people, and one which has affected both their evaluation of me and their sense of what is possible in the world of publishing; make of it what you will.

Which reminds me that where it was once considered an honor simply to be the first Negro to win recognition in a given field, it has now become something of an embarrassment; it creates an uncertainty as to whether one has compete successfully or simply been the recipient of parternalistic encouragement. This is no complaint, mind you; I find it most amusing. Besides, uncertainty of this order is precisely the one condition of freedom which cannot be done away with. Is this the price of being a free man and an artist? Very well, Iíll gladly whirl and quiver in such an atmosphere of uncertainty until I resemble the neddles on the instruments of some space-bound missile.

While I can say nothing definite concerning the affect of the award upon my status as a writer, I can say that although it has not increased my rate of production, the excitement generated by its yearly ceremony has helped to keep my identity fresh in the minds of many reviewers and readers. This is no small advantage for one who writes as slowly as I. It has also been called to my attention that INVISIBLE MAN has been discussed in several recent books of criticism, both here and abroad, and Iím told further that it is being discussed in various college coursesóone of them a class in abnormal psychology. I canít say whether the concern here is with my own psychology or that of my hero, some people insist upon confusing the two. Nor can I say how much of the attention is due to the award for I am aware that some of the oritics had dealt with the book quite seriously before the great event.

As for certain disadvantages which go with the award, I found them intertwined, as always, with the advantages. I can say definitely that winning the award made for an intense focus of attention in terms of publicity, radio and television appearances, lecture engagements and interviews. These in turn brought various crackpots to my door and various looks screws to my telephoneósome of them quite entertaining. It also made for many new acquaintances and for an increase of social invitations; which in turn made it necessary that my wife and I try to reciprocate. Indeed, a good part of the increased royalties from the award went for this purpose, which made it no less enjoyable; though I still feel defeated over that fact that after avoiding it successfully for years I had finally to purchase a dinner jacket.

Perhaps the most critical thing I have to say of the award is that the wave of publicity which goes with it is apt to leave one exhausted if one rides it for too long a time. It makes for interruptions and losses to time (as with these paragraphs in which I'í trying to discuss matter about which Iím much too subjectiveóand uninterestedóto be at all competent). True, such loss of time can be spent in most charming ways of course and it is up to the individual writer to determine when to break away and seek again his own obscurity. In my own case I gave myself freely to the experience of being swept along by what surely is one of our most amusing cultural phenomena, by which I mean our publicity industry, the so-called big media, which very often can make truly big men seem small, but which can also give obscure little men such as I a taste of fame. In spite of the wear and tear which I sustained, the glimpse which it provided me into an important area of our national life might well prove as important as the sense of affirmation which came with the award. Without doubt, it provided me a new context of experience, something which is not too easy to come by after a writer has passed his twenties. In this connection, let me say that one unquestioned affect of the award for which I am most grateful, is itís bringing my wife and I to the attention of certain men and women of great gifts and accomplishments, thus leading to several creative associations. And, in a few precious instances, to friendships that have enlivened and enriched our lives in ways too numerous to describe. I hope it isnít necessary to state here that I am most proud to be numbered among those who have won the award.

Courtesy of The National Book Foundation

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0375707549
• ISBN 13: 9780375707544
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400