#greatamericannovel

In our seventh episode we explore a Great American Novel that's so ubiquitous it's almost hard to believe there was a time when the media wasn't full of contrast, random references to The Great Gatsby. The story of a mysterious millionaire who turns up on Long Island, throwing lavish parties and spinning fables as transparently invented as they are enthralling, captures something essential about the promise of America. We explore why the term used for that something---the American dream---falls flat in this day and age, and what exactly we can still learn about class boundaries in a democracy that promises prosperity and affluence for anyone willing to work for it. The Great Gatsby is an easy book to take for granted: there are so many movie versions, so many theatre and opera and ballet adaptations, that we can forget just how beautiful F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose can ring out if we stop to listen to it. We dive deep into the novel's own mythic backstory, in which a young and successful author aims for high art only to discover the public would rather he stick with formulaic romance stories. Jay Gatsby remains one of the most indelible creations in American literary history: a version of Stephen Foster's beautiful dreamer, a self-fabulist who fools nobody but himself and yet intrigues everyone.   

On the eve of its seventieth birthday, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) occupies a unique place in the American canon. On the one hand, it was instantly heralded as a Great American Novel---indeed, as Lawrence Buell notes in his study of GANs, it was the first novel by an African American to be universally admitted to the pantheon of important national fiction. At the same time, the book's subsequent reputation has ridden a rollercoaster of praise and complaint suggesting our uncertainty about what degree an epic novel about race relations should emphasize the political over the aesthetic. But while some critics find the novel a little too conservative in its insistence on the absolute autonomy of individuals to create their own identity in America, there is no doubt that Ellison's tense interrogation of the power institutions like the police and political groups exploit over minorities makes it absolutely relevant to the Black Lives Matter era.

In this episode, we explore how Ellison fused European modernism with African American jazz to create the singular voice of his narrator, whose name we're never told. We examine how the plot's picaresque form differs from Bildungsroman many coming-of-age novelists were rewriting in the 1950s and delve deep into the use of symbolism, perhaps the most telltale trait at the time Ellison wrote of a GAN's "literariness." We ask why Ellison never published a second novel after Invisible Man even as he was able to produce some of the most enduring essays on race in literature and culture until his death in 1994. Most importantly, we ask what it means for people to be invisible in American society, and how Ellison's unique exploration of the issue results in a philosophically complex story that insists that the Self must first retreat from the world to forge itself before emerging to rewrite the cliches and stereotypes the culture imposes on it.  

Music in order of appearance: “Old Ralley” by Lobo Loco; "Up in My Jam" by Kubbi; "Rap Dreams" by LOWERCASE_n; and “Inspector Invisible,” also by Lobo Loco. Clips of Ellison courtesy of (respectively) the Iowa State University Library; New York Public Library; and the Oklahoma Historical Society Film and Video Archives.