Ralph Ellison
Subtitle: a biography
By: Arnold Rampersad
Edition: 1st Vintage Books ed.
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 657
ISBN-13: 9780375707988
Subjects: American Novelists; Biography; African American novelists
Description: 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; a man whose life and art were shaped mainly by his unyielding desire to produce magnificent art and by his resilient faith in the moral and cultural strength of America.--From publisher description.
Notes: Originally published:  New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [569]-624) and index.