The barbershop atmosphere continued after we recorded our Ralph Ellison show last night. Chris followed Arnold Rampersad to the Harvard Book Store for a reading and Q & A co-sponsored by Skip (Henry Louis) Gates and the W. E. B. DuBois Institute at Harvard. Stars and up-and-comers among Af-Am scholars were out in force, including Gates; the literature buff Werner Sollars (who did a book on Ellison’s worst enemy, Amiri Baraka); the philosopher of “We Who Are Black,” Tommie Shelby; Harvard Law professor Randy Kennedy; Adam Bradley from Claremont College who emerged as one of the stars on our Ellison show; and Dell Hamilton of the DuBois Institute.
Here’s Chris’s report:
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Chris’s Post-Game Analysis
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The nuances of feeling and angles of analysis around Ellison — and shadings of emphasis around blackness — would fill volumes. Among the tensions in the near or far background at the Harvard Book Store were Ralph Ellison’s personal distaste for W. E. B. DuBois, who was a Communist by the time Ellison arrived in New York. Ellison was personally wary of the young Skip Gates at Yale in the Seventies. To many black people and scholars, it matters that the admired scholar Rampersad is a Trinidadian — from the Caribbean rim that Ellison pointedly excluded (with Africa) from his interest in Negro America.
In the bookstore as in our studio, Rampersad granted that he didn’t like Ellison much. He’d had a three-year wait and then an awkward time interviewing Ralph Ellison for his biography of Ellison’s former friend Langston Hughes. It grates on Rampersad, he told us, that Ralph was so emotionally chintzy with the younger generation of writers, while Langston was generous to a fault. (Rampersad said his heart is with Langston Hughes, though his own shyness makes him more like Ralph Ellison.) It goes without saying in all of these discussions that Ralph Ellison was, is, and will stand as a god. Yet there is a palpable pleasure that Rampersad has found a way to spot some divine flaws in his character: his haughtiness especially, his use and misuse of women, his perhaps self-destructive distance from black America. There are people who’ve been waiting for this side of the story to emerge — among them Cornel West. Rampersad last night remembered West remarking when he started the Ellison project, that he would discover about Brother Ellison what T. S. Eliot learned about Matthew Arnold: “that he had no real serenity, only an impeccable demeanor.”
All of this makes me more interested than ever to read Ellison. I got home too late last night to hear the whole show (which I will listen to in its entirety at another time), but I liked Arnold Rampersand. There was so much balance and intelligence in his voice that I wanted to read the biography after listening to him. I have read only a few of the jazz pieces. They are wonderful, beautifully written, original, but his anger is inescapable, and in an essay on Charlie Parker, I’m fairly certain, some of the time, he sounded like a snob. On the other hand, when he wrote about Parker’s pain, it reminded me clearly of why, when I’ve watched footage of Charlie Parker, I always cry, even when I’ve seen it many times before. I probably wouldn’t have written about the anger, if I hadn’t heard Arnold Rampersand speak about Ellison, and I’ll probably read all of Ellison’s work.
Chris, I’m down with every thing you’ve said about Mr. Ellison. We now have a new perspective on the man, and that’s a cool thing.
But,
I want to ask you, don’t you find an amazing irony here, jumping up and down …waving it’s tired arms? You’ve referenced many people who have felt jilted by the man – Gates, Morrison, West, and Rampersad himself. You write:
“It grates on Rampersad, he told us, that Ralph was so emotionally chintzy with the younger generation of writers, while Langston was generous to a fault.â€
Does this not all feed right into Ellison’s hands? Remember, he ends the book in solitude! He doesn’t end the book in the company of the “younger generation of writers.†He finds salvation only when he separates himself from society all together.
“I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest.â€
Maybe when people read those words they want to believe he’s talking about someone else, like the bigots, or the just plain ignorant. No, no, no, he’s talking about Mr. Rampersad, and Mr. West, and you, and me, and society.
If Mr. Ellison had the chance to be in the Harvard Book store the other night, is it possible his own words might come back to him:
“In my presence they could talk and agree with themselves, the world was nailed down, and they loved it. They received a feeling of security. But here is the rub: Too often, in order to justify them, I had to take myself by the throat and choke myself until my eyes bulged and my tongue hung out and wagged like the door of an empty house in a high wind.â€
Chris, I’m sure through the years, there were many people who received Mr. Ellison’s generosity, but unfortunately, they might not write books, or teach at Harvard, or “make history.†When the invisible man follows those young boys in the subway he writes:
“But who knew (and now I began to tremble so violently I had to lean against a refuse can) – who knew but that they were the saviors, the true leaders, the bearers of something precious? The stewards of something uncomfortable, burdensome, which they hated because, living outside the realm of history, there was no one to applaud their value and they themselves failed to understand it.â€
I can almost hear Mr. Ellison chuckling underground.