Having Read Invisible Man, Lord of the Flies, Komarr 10-11-2014

 [ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 6/15/2025] 

Read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Do not worry about its age, as I did. Don't think of it as a "black" novel. It is an American novel of genius. The odd thing, our leisure library lists this under fiction rather than "Black Interest" in its card catalog. The writing, the story, I thought so good I stopped reading it so I could finish my "Mike Devlin's Homecoming" without too much self-loathing.

Do you want to write? Get the Vintage International Edition of 1995 (Random House) that I read. It has Ellison's own Introduction. He gives a background to the novel's creation and influences. I want to know more about its creation and its reception. This novel had to have gone off like a nuclear bomb.

Let me give you an example of Ralph Ellison's writing:

So I'd accept it, I'd explain it, rine and heart. I'd plunge into it with both feet and they'd gag. Oh, but wouldn't they gag. I didn't know what my grandfather ahd meant, but I was ready to test his advice. I'd overcome them with yeses, undermine them with grins. I'd agree them to death and destruction. Yes, and I'd let them swoller me until they vomited or burst wide open. Let them gag on what they refused to fee. Let them choke on it. That was one risk they hadn't calculated. That was a risk they had never dreamt of in their philosophy. Nor did they know that they could discipline themselves to destruction, that saying "yes" could destroy them. Oh, I'd yes them, but wouldn't I yes them! I'd yes them till they puked and rolled in it. All they wanted of me was one belch in it. All they wanted of me was one belch of affirmation and I'd bellow it out loud. Yes! Yes! That was all anyone wanted of us, that we should be heard and not seen, then heard only in one big optimistic chorus of yassuh, yassuh, yassuh! All right, I'd yea, yea and our, oui and si, si, si them too; and I'd walk around in their guts with hobnailed boots. Even these super-big shots when I'd never seen at committee meetings. They wanted a machine? Very well, I'd become a supersensitive confirmer of their misconception, and just to hold their confidence I'd try to be right part of the time. Oh, I'd serve them well and I'd make invisibility felt if not seen, and they'd learn that it could be as polluting as a decaying body or a piece of bad meat in a stew. And if I got hurt? Very well again. Besides, didn't they believe in sacrifice? They were the subtle thinkers - would this be treachery? Did the apply to an invisible man? Could they recognize choice in that which wasn't seen...?

Chapter 23

Besides Ellison's declared influence of Faulkner and Dostoevsky, I read Camus into that passage. I also catch hints of Kafka. Maybe I am only Kafka and Camus mad. I think we may all be on the way to becoming invisible people. Do all our demographics make us any easier to see as people? 

If we want to understand ourselves as Americans, we need to read Mark Twain and Henry James; F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner; Ralph Ellison and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr; Alice Walker and Joyce Carol Oates; Dashiell Hammett and Cormac McCarthy; Saul Bellow and Phillip Roth; John Updike and Amy Tan.

I think Invisible Man belonged on Entertainment Weekly's 100 Best Novels of All Time. I have put it on my own list of books that almost made coming to prison worthwhile. I want to read more of Ellison. I think I can say this only of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Alasdair Gray.

 And also maybe William Golding's Lord of the Flies. After decades of hearing about, knowing about the book, and avoiding reading it, I can say it is now read. No quotes, sorry. It is not quite a quotable book. I would have swapped Cold Mountain from the 100 best novels list for Golding's novel. But he did leave me thinking of Anthony Burgess (so did a scene in Native Son with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in the background and an implication of a lobotomy).

The unit has come under close scrutiny - a correction officer was removed reportedly for having a hand in importing contraband. So a particularly hard nose counselor has been brought in to inspect us. Beating us on the head is more like it. The practical result for me was jamming books into my locker and giving me the need to read them. So the reading list goes on hiatus.

This also explains my reading Lois McMaster Bujold's Komarr. I had read one or two of her Miles Vorkosigan stories. Liked them - they were amusing. Miles has me thinking of Lord Peter Wimsey. Which, I guess, makes this a less neurotic version of Dorothy L. Sayers' Strong Poison. But for a lightweight science fiction story, this story of an emotionally abusive marriage cut me to the bone. I thought of me and A-. It reminded me how I cannot atone for the harm I did her. Not bad for a "lightweight science fiction novel". Or maybe my madness did swallow me whole and still everything feeds my depression. I can only hope it is a bad conscience and can be kept to only that. Managing my stress manages my depression - brooding feeds the depression. And so I write and write.

sch

[6/15/2025: I would not deduct anyone from my list of writers, but would add Junot Diaz and Alexis Sherman. If you can think of others, please add them to the comments below. The correction officer removed was later returned to the unit, as a counselor. The sentence where I mention Burgess and Native Son, is one I do not understand now, but that is how I wrote it 11 years ago. What can I say? These notes are first drafts. sch.]