New Releases by Ralph Ellison

Poéticos, vivazes e intensos: assim são estes catorzes contos de Voando para casa e outras histórias, de Ralph Ellison, autor vencedor do Pulitzer por Homem invisível. Em uma mala de couro esquecida debaixo de uma mesa, Ralph Ellison, um dos maiores escritores estadunidenses do século XX, guardava uma série de manuscritos inéditos. Após a morte de Ellison, sua esposa, Fanny, presenteou John F. Callahan — editor e grande amigo do marido — com esses escritos. Assim, seis contos inéditos foram selecionados, junto a outros já publicados pela imprensa, para compor esta antologia Voando para casa e outras histórias. Aqui estão reunidos os primeiros contos de Ellison, escritos entre 1937 e 1954, nos quais o autor já aborda seu tema preferido: a formação de uma identidade negra nos Estados Unidos. Ao mesmo tempo, revela uma realidade particular que transcende a vida ordinária. Em catorze histórias curtas, leitoras e leitores encontrarão traços autobiográficos de um autor que soube transpassar sua vivência para a literatura. Herdeiro declarado do estilo cru e poético de Ernest Hemingway, Ellison nos emociona com a inocência infantil em "Garoto em um trem" e impressiona com a brutalidade dos linchamentos em "[Uma farra no parque]" — um retrato de um século XX que se faz atual ainda em tantos momentos. Publicados pela primeira vez no Brasil, os contos de Voan do para casa e outras histórias são considerados pela crítica o esboço de Homem invisível, a obra-prima de Ralph Ellison. A presente edição conta com tradução de André Capilé, poeta, tradutor, pesquisador de produções literárias afrodiaspóricas e professor de literatura brasileira na Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. "Vistos em conjunto, os contos de Ellison apontam para sua visão consistente sobre a identidade estadunidense construída durante os cinquenta e cinco anos de vida em que ele escreveu." — John F. Callahan, escritor e crítico literário "Maravilhoso, anterior aos riffs de Homem invisível — e mais uma excelente contribuição para a obra de Ellison." — Kirkus Reviews "As histórias de Ellison demonstram, individualmente, seu comprometimento em criar e, em conjunto, a bagagem adquirida que, mais adiante, o permitiram construir, tijolo por tijolo, um dos maiores monumentos da literatura estadunidense." — Publishers Weekly "Ellison é um romancista completo, que utiliza as palavras com grande habilidade, que escreve com intensidade poética e imenso vigor narrativo." — The New York Times

The radiant, posthumous second novel by the visionary author of Invisible Man, featuring an introduction and a new postscript by Ralph Ellison''s literary executor, John F. Callahan, and a preface by National Book Award-winning author Charles Johnson “Ralph Ellison’s generosity, humor and nimble language are, of course, on display in Juneteenth, but it is his vigorous intellect that rules the novel. . . . A majestic narrative concept.”—Toni Morrison In Washington, D.C., in the 1950s, Adam Sunraider, a race-baiting senator from New England, is mortally wounded by an assassin’s bullet while making a speech on the Senate floor. To the shock of all who think they know him, Sunraider calls out from his deathbed for Alonzo Hickman, an old black minister, to be brought to his side. The reverend is summoned; the two are left alone. “Tell me what happened while there’s still time,” demands the dying Sunraider. Out of their conversation, and the inner rhythms of memories whose weight has been borne in silence for many long years, a story emerges. Senator Sunraider, once known as Bliss, was raised by Reverend Hickman in a black community steeped in religion and music (not unlike Ralph Ellison’s own childhood home) and was brought up to be a preaching prodigy in a joyful black Baptist ministry that traveled throughout the South and the Southwest. Together one last time, the two men retrace the course of their shared life in an “anguished attempt,” Ellison once put it, “to arrive at the true shape and substance of a sundered past and its meaning.” In the end, the two men confront their most painful memories, memories that hold the key to understanding the mysteries of kinship and race that bind them, and to the senator’s confronting how deeply estranged he had become from his true identity. In Juneteenth, Ralph Ellison evokes the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech to tell a powerful tale of a prodigal son in the twentieth century. At the time of his death in 1994, Ellison was still expanding his novel in other directions, envisioning a grand, perhaps multivolume, story cycle. Always, in his mind, the character Hickman and the story of Sunraider’s life from birth to death were the dramatic heart of the narrative. And so, with the aid of Ellison’s widow, Fanny, his literary executor, John Callahan, has edited this magnificent novel at the center of Ralph Ellison’s forty-year work in progress—its author’s abiding testament to the country he so loved and to its many unfinished tasks.

“Ellison sought no less than to create a Book of Blackness, a literary composition of the tradition at its most sublime and fundamental." —Henry Louis Gates, Jr., TIME From the renowned author of the classic novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth is brilliantly crafted, moving, and wise. With a new introduction by National Book Award-winning author and scholar Charles R. Johnson. Here is Ellison, the master of American vernacular—the preacher’s hyperbole and the politician’s rhetoric, 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 Reverend A. Z. Hickman, the itinerant 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. His history encompasses camp meetings where he became the risen Lazarus to inspire the faithful; the more ordinary joys of Southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker; lovemaking with a young woman 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?

Homem invisível , de Ralph Ellison, o grande romance seminal do cânone afro-americano, retorna às livrarias com nova capa. Homem invisível narra a vida de um jovem afro-americano que migra do sul racista dos Estados Unidos em direção à Nova York, a cidade das oportunidades, nos primeiros anos do século XX. Ao longo da história, o protagonista se envolve com grupos políticos e núcleos sociais diversos, desde uma organização socialista até um movimento nacionalista negro, mas nunca se sente verdadeiramente visto ou compreendido. Com uma escrita rica e simbólica, Ellison cria uma obra que vai além da crítica racial, mergulhando em questões universais sobre a busca por identidade e o lugar do indivíduo na sociedade. Homem Invisível é uma reflexão poderosa e atemporal sobre a luta por reconhecimento e a complexidade da condição humana. Para o crítico Harold Bloom, "Mais de um terço de século após sua publicação original (1952), Homem invisível, de Ralph Ellison, está completamente confirmado como um clássico estadunidense." Essa edição ampliada tem texto de orelha assinado por Luiz Mauricio Azevedo e prefácio de Gabriel Trigueiro, especialistas na obra de Ellison Livro vencedor do National Book Awards. "Um dos romances mais importantes do século XX." – New York Times " Homem invisível, de Ralph Ellison, está completamente confirmado como um clássico estadunidense." – Harold Bloom

A radiant collection of letters from the renowned author of Invisible Man that trace the life and mind of a giant of American literature, with insights into the riddle of identity, the writer’s craft, and the story of a changing nation over six decades A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK These extensive and revealing letters span the life of Ralph Ellison and provide a remarkable window into the great writer’s life and work, his friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and all the questions about identity, art, and the American soul that bedeviled and inspired him until his death. They include early notes to his mother, written as an impoverished college student; lively exchanges with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, from Romare Bearden to Saul Bellow; and letters to friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount. These letters are beautifully rendered first-person accounts of Ellison’s life and work and his observations of a changing world, showing his metamorphosis from a wide-eyed student into a towering public intellectual who confronted and articulated America’s complexities.

»Einer der bedeutendsten Autoren der amerikanischen Nachkriegsliteratur.« Paul Ingendaay, FAZ. Ralph Ellison, neben Toni Morrison und James Baldwin eine der großen Stimmen der afroamerikanischen Literatur der Gegenwart, gewann 1953 den National Book Award und wurde mit seinem gefeierten New-York-Roman schlagartig berühmt. Die Geschichte von der Odyssee eines namenlosen Schwarzen, die ihn von ganz oben bis ganz unten durch alle Schichten der amerikanischen Gesellschaft führt, ist eines der Lieblingsbücher von Barack Obama und bleibt hochaktuell: als schonungslose Abrechnung mit den alltäglichen rassistischen Ideologien und als Lob auf das gewachsene Selbstbewusstsein der noch immer um ihre selbstverständlichen Rechte Kämpfenden. »Ich bin unsichtbar, verstehen Sie, weil sich die Leute weigern, mich zu sehen. Wer sich mir nähert, sieht nur meine Umgebung, sich selbst oder die Auswüchse seiner Phantasie – in der Tat alles und jedes, nur mich nicht.«

''If he only knew what it was, he would fix it; he would kill this mean thing that made Mama feel so bad.'' Belonging and estrangement intertwine in these four lyrical short stories from the the author of Invisible Man. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series,with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York''s underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Nominada por los estadounidenses como una de las 100 mejores novelas en la serie de PBS The Great American Read La obra cumbre de Ralph Ellison es una feroz visión de la sociedad estadounidense durante los primeros años del siglo XX. Considerada la obra cumbre de Ralph Ellison y una de las cien mejores novelas de lengua inglesa del siglo XX, esta novela es el relato en primera persona de quien se describe a sí mismo como un «hombre invisible», no por una anormal condición fisiológica, sino porque la sociedad permanece ciega ante él; se niega a verlo. Ellison desgrana así, desde el presente oscuro, «bajo tierra», del protagonista, las preocupaciones sociales e intelectuales de su tiempo con crudeza y sensibilidad. De ello resulta una dura crítica tejida con poesía e inteligencia, ganadora del National Book Award de ficción en 1953. Saul Bellow dijo sobreEl hombre invisible... «Un libro de primerísimo orden, una novela superba.» ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot''s The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.

La obra cumbre de Ralph Ellison es una feroz visión de la sociedad estadounidense durante los primeros años del siglo XX. Considerada la obra cumbre de Ralph Ellison y una de las cien mejores novelas de lengua inglesa del siglo XX, esta novela es el relato en primera persona de quien se describe a sí mismo como un «hombre invisible», no por una anormal condición fisiológica, sino porque la sociedad permanece ciega ante él; se niega a verlo. Ellison desgrana así, desde el presente oscuro, «bajo tierra», del protagonista, las preocupaciones sociales e intelectuales de su tiempo con crudeza y sensibilidad. De ello resulta una dura crítica tejida con poesía e inteligencia, ganadora del National Book Award de ficción en 1953. Saul Bellow dijo sobre El hombre invisible... «Un libro de primerísimo orden, una novela soberbia.»

"Un home invisible" és una obra clau de la literatura nord-americana que ha captivat els lectors des de la seva aparició l''any 1952. Primera novel·la d''un autor fins aleshores desconegut, va assolir ràpidament un èxit popular enorme, i va rebre el Premi Nacional de Literatura de ficció, fets que van convertir Ralph Ellison en un dels escriptors més rellevants del segle XX. "Un home invisible" és un tour de force enginyós i apassionat. El protagonista anònim de la novel·la''una de les primeres que planteja el conflicte racial des del punt de vista dels negres''és un jove del sud dels Estats Units que es trasllada al nord en ser expulsat de la universitat per a negres on estudia. A Nova York sortirà de l''anonimat, es lliurarà a la missió de lluitar pels drets de la seva comunitat i s''erigirà en un dels seus portaveus, per acabar finalment sucumbint davant la violència i la confusió, mancat de veu i convertit en un home invisible.

Compiled, edited, and newly revised by Ralph Ellison’s literary executor, John F. Callahan, this Modern Library Paperback Classic includes posthumously discovered reviews, criticism, and interviews, as well as the essay collections Shadow and Act (1964), hailed by Robert Penn Warren as “a body of cogent and subtle commentary on the questions that focus on race,” and Going to the Territory (1986), an exploration of literature and folklore, jazz and culture, and the nature and quality of lives that black Americans lead. “Ralph Ellison,” wrote Stanley Crouch, “reached across race, religion, class and sex to make us all Americans.”

At his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison left behind several thousand pages of his unfinished second novel, which he had spent nearly four decades writing. Five years later, Random House published Juneteenth, drawn from the central narrative of Ellison’s epic work in progress. Three Days Before the Shooting . . . gathers in one volume all the parts of that planned opus, including three major sequences never before published. Set in the frame of a deathbed vigil, the story is a gripping multigenerational saga centered on the assassination of a controversial, race-baiting U.S. senator who’s being tended to by an elderly black jazz musician turned preacher. Presented in their unexpurgated, provisional state, the narrative sequences brim with humor and tension, composed in Ellison’s magical jazz-inspired prose style. Beyond its compelling narratives, Three Days Before the Shooting . . . is perhaps most notable for its extraordinary insight into the creative process of one of this country’s greatest writers, and an essential, fascinating piece of Ralph Ellison’s legacy.

As the book gets started, the narrator is expelled from his Southern Negro college for inadvertently showing a white trustee the reality of black life in the south, including an incestuous farmer and a rural whorehouse. The college director chastises him: "Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of an education are you getting around here?" Mystified, the narrator moves north to New York City, where the truth, at least as he perceives it, is dealt another blow when he learns that his former headmaster''s recommendation letters are, in fact, letters of condemnation. What ensues is a search for what truth actually is, which proves to be supremely elusive. The narrator becomes a spokesman for a mixed-race band of social activists called "The Brotherhood" and believes he is fighting for equality. Once again, he realizes he''s been duped into believing what he thought was the truth, when in fact it is only another variation. Of the Brothers, he eventually discerns: "They were blind, bat blind, moving only by the echoed sounds of their voices. And because they were blind they would destroy themselves.... Here I thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference, when in reality it made no difference because they didn''t see either color or men." Invisible Man is certainly a book about race in America, and sadly enough, few of the problems it chronicles have disappeared even now. But Ellison''s first novel transcends such a narrow definition. It''s also a book about the human race stumbling down the path to identity, challenged and successful to varying degrees. None of us can ever be sure of the truth beyond ourselves, and possibly not even there. The world is a tricky place, and no one knows this better than the invisible man, who leaves us with these chilling, provocative words: "And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?"

This absorbing collection of letters spans a decade in the lifelong friendship of two remarkable writers who engaged the subjects of literature, race, and identity with deep clarity and passion. The correspondence begins in 1950 when Ellison is living in New York City, hard at work on his enduring masterpiece, Invisible Man, and Murray is a professor at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Mirroring a jam session in which two jazz musicians "trade twelves"—each improvising twelve bars of music around the same musical idea-their lively dialog centers upon their respective writing, the jazz they both love so well, on travel, family, the work literary contemporaries (including Richard Wright, James Baldwin, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway) and the challenge of racial inclusiveness that they wish to pose to America through their craft. Infused with warmth, humor, and great erudition, Trading Twelves offers a glimpse into literary history in the making—and into a powerful and enduring friendship.

Before Ralph Ellison became one of America’s greatest writers, he was a musician and a student of jazz, writing widely on his favorite music for more than fifty years. Now, jazz authority Robert O’Meally has collected the very best of Ellison’s inspired, exuberant jazz writings in this unique anthology.

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La progression de ces treize nouvelles correspond à ce que l''auteur de L''Homme invisible connaissait ou imaginait de son enfance et de son adolescence. C''est la période de la normalité trompeuse des années 20, le choc de la Dépression puis de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, quand l''expérience des Noirs révèle leurs espoirs et leurs impossibilités. Ils peuvent être musiciens, instruits, croire un instant qu''ils ont, comme dit Ellison, des ailes, et hop ! on les fout à la porte du paradis avec une carte de l''Alabama : Retour au pays. Tout au long des cinquante ans qu''aura duré sa vie d''écrivain, Ralph Ellison a cru en l''identité américaine et aux valeurs qu''elle représente. Ses personnages aussi : témoins de lynchages, traversant le pays sur les toits des trains. Persécutés par des policiers blancs sadiques, joueur de trompette ou simple gosse des rues qui essaie d''accrocher un parachute à un poussin pour le faire voler... Ils "sont " américains. On peut résumer la quête d''Ellison par une histoire : un enfant demande à son père : "Marron, c''est plus joli que blanc, hein, papa ? " "Certains pensent comme ça ", répond le père, "mais le mieux, c''est américain, mon petit ". C''est la réponse d''Ellison : la croyance en une identité démocratique commune - pas identique, mais commune.

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.

With the same intellectual incisiveness and supple, stylish prose he brought to his classic novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison examines his antecedents and in so doing illuminates the literature, music, and culture of both black and white America. His range is virtuosic, encompassing Mark Twain and Richard Wright, Mahalia Jackson and Charlie Parker, The Birth of a Nation and the Dante-esque landscape of Harlem—“the scene and symbol of the Negro’s perpetual alienation in the land of his birth.” Throughout, he gives us what amounts to an episodic autobiography that traces his formation as a writer as well as the genesis of Invisible Man. On every page, Ellison reveals his idiosyncratic and often contrarian brilliance, his insistence on refuting both black and white stereotypes of what an African American writer should say or be. The result is a book that continues to instruct, delight, and occasionally outrage readers.

Interviews with the author of Invisible Man and many other works