2.  b. March 1, 1914; Oklahoma City, OK  Lewis Alfred Ellison  Ida Millsap  Named for Ralph Waldo Emerson  Invisible Man, 1952  National Book Award 1953  New York University 1970 – 1979  d. April 16, 1994, pancreatic cancer, NYC

3.  "I have always read a lot, and I began to realize I had a certain talent for it. It was not easy to be the kind of musician I wanted to be: I did not have enough money to go to Juilliard [school of music]. So I stuck with what I had.”  "One day I wrote, 'I am an invisible man.’ I did not know what those words represented at the start, and I had no thought about what gave me the idea.”  "You do not write out of your skin. You write out of your ideas and the quality of your mind."

4.  “who wore their everyday clothes on Sunday, and those who wore their Sunday clothes every day. I wanted to wear Sunday clothes every day.” (on what he wanted to be)  “tell us about the unity of American experience beyond all considerations of class, of race, of religion.” (task of the writer)  "I tried to use my ear for dialogue to give an impression of just how people sounded. I developed a technique of transcribing that captured the idiom rather than trying to convey the dialect through misspellings."

5.  1933 – Tuskegee Institute – music scholarship  Cited The Waste Land as a major influence  T.S. Eliot (link here)(link here)  NYC – sculpture and photography  Odd jobs: book reviews, articles, photography, shoe shining  Hired to cover race riots in Harlem  Met Richard Wright  Encouraged him to write fiction  Merchant Marines WWII  Idea for first novel: black solider in Nazi camp  Writes 1947 – 51; publishes IM in 1952

6.  Contrary to other literature of the time  Intelligent, articulated protagonist  One day in 1945, Ellison sat at his typewriter in Vermont, thinking of an ironic joke he had heard from a black face comedian about his family becoming so progressively dark in complexion that the new baby's mother could not even see her. In this vein, he suddenly wrote, "I am an invisible man". He nearly rejected the idea but was intrigued and decided to give it a try.  Differences in Northern/Southern racism  Black nationalism (i.e. Marcus Garvey)  Opposed to multiculturalism  Redefinition of indigenous identity

7.  Parallel to Marxism  Struggle  Actions and institutions are economically installed  Are you in control of your destiny? Caste systems?  Experimental attitude: style  Contrary to Realism and naturalism  Bildungsroman – a novel of education  Symbolism: see The Waste Land  Jazz  Structure  Riffs? Parts? Melodies? Content?

8.  Openness of anonymity  Armor of invisibility  Equality of men  Invention of culture  What else?

9.  Liberty Paint  Pure White vs. Optic White  Brockman  Jack’s glass eye  Coin bank at Mary’s

10.  Lights  Darkness  Blindness  Visions  Dreams  Jazz