Going to the Territory
Published on 1. June 2011
352 pages
978-0-307-79738-4 (ISBN)
Description
The work of one of the most formidable figures in American intellectual life."
-- Washington Post Book World
The seventeen essays collected in this volume prove that Ralph Ellison was not only one of America's most dazzlingly innovative novelists but perhaps also our most perceptive and iconoclastic commentator on matters of literature, culture, and race. In Going to the Territory, Ellison provides us with dramatically fresh readings of William Faulkner and Richard Wright, along with new perspectives on the music of Duke Ellington and the art of Romare Bearden. He analyzes the subversive quality of black laughter, the mythic underpinnings of his masterpiece Invisible Man, and the extent to which America's national identity rests on the contributions of African Americans. Erudite, humane, and resounding with humor and common sense, the result is essential Ellison.
-- Washington Post Book World
The seventeen essays collected in this volume prove that Ralph Ellison was not only one of America's most dazzlingly innovative novelists but perhaps also our most perceptive and iconoclastic commentator on matters of literature, culture, and race. In Going to the Territory, Ellison provides us with dramatically fresh readings of William Faulkner and Richard Wright, along with new perspectives on the music of Duke Ellington and the art of Romare Bearden. He analyzes the subversive quality of black laughter, the mythic underpinnings of his masterpiece Invisible Man, and the extent to which America's national identity rests on the contributions of African Americans. Erudite, humane, and resounding with humor and common sense, the result is essential Ellison.
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Ralph Ellison
Going to the Territory
Book
06/1986
Random House USA Inc
€34.12
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Person
Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) was born in Oklahoma and trained as a musician at Tuskegee Institute from 1933 to 1936, at which time a visit to New York and a meeting with Richard Wright led to his first attempts at fiction. Invisible Man won the National Book Award. Appointed to the Academy of American Arts and Letters in 1964, Ellison taught at several institutions, including Bard College, the University of Chicago, and New York University, where he was Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities.
Content
- Intro
- About the Author
- Other Books by This Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- The Little Man at Chehaw Station
- On Initiation Rites and Power: Ralph Ellison Speaks at West Point
- What These Children Are Like
- The Myth of the Flawed White Southerner
- If the Twain Shall Meet
- What America Would Be Like Without Blacks
- Portrait of Inman Page: A Dedication Speech
- Going to the Territory
- An Extravagance of Laughter
- Remembering Richard Wright
- Homage to Duke Ellington on His Birthday
- The Art of Romare Bearden
- Society, Morality, and the Novel
- "A Very Stern Discipline"
- The Novel as a Function of American Democracy
- Perspective of Literature
- Acknowledgments
