Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
Book Read on 9 / 7 / 2008
Enh. I wasn't impressed. It wasn't too hard to read, and that was its saving grace. It generally had good drive and pacing
but the confused and redundant navel-gazing got to be too much. It started to bore the crap out of me. And the episode with
the doctors made zero sense. Like a second rate Faulkner, he seemed to try too hard to make art instead of telling a compelling story. The narrator wasn't a sympathetic character. If he would have left out the moralizing "deep crap" and simply stuck to the story, perhaps the reader would have "got it" without having to be bludgeoned to death; at least I would have enjoyed it more.
For example the epilogue was tortuous and I was left scratching my head and wondering what exactly happened in the story. Why did I read it?
Perhaps being number 19 in the list of 100 best books ever written is an exaggeration. I felt like I was reading a story by someone in a creative writing class who was a bit out of their depth.
Reviewer: William Koplitz
2 out of 5