Ralph Ellison  A Biography  by Arnold Rampersad  Ralph Ellison
Hardcover, 657 pages, Random House Inc, List Price: $35 |
purchase   Purchase Featured Books    • Ralph Ellison   • A
Biography   • Arnold Rampersad  Book Summary  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; aman
whose life and art were shape