The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison

By: Ralph Ellison, John F. Callahan - editor, Saul Bellow - preface

Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman, Arthur Morey

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.”

Critic reviews

“[Ellison’s] essays never fail to be elegantly written, beautifully composed, and intelletually sophisticated.”—Los Angeles Times

Ellison was an American experience

The author was called the patriot and after reading and listening to his work I think he coined the phrase “American Experience” used by PBS. The breadth and depth of the black experience worked to his advantage. He might have written more novels had he not tried to write 800 pages for invisible man. Nonetheless prolific and predict.