But, as Ellison was fond of saying, “it’s a crazy country” - by which he meant that the diversity of the American experience often occasions unexpected confluences of people and circumstance. Nonetheless, Ellison - like Hughes and Austen and Chaucer - remained intangible to me, aloof, distanced both by time and by achievement. I read Ellison’s 1952 novel, “ Invisible Man,” for the first time as part of a class on African American literature and was drawn to his wise-foolish protagonist with whom, looking back now, I shared more than a passing resemblance: a young Black college student with vague aspirations for leadership who stumbles upon writing as a means of illuminating his identity. I had encountered him - just as I had Langston Hughes and Jane Austen and Geoffrey Chaucer - by more conventional means the year prior, as an attentive reader of his published work.

On a summer evening in 1994, he appeared to me in the attic of an old manor house on the campus of a small college in the Pacific Northwest. I first saw Ralph Ellison when I was 19 years old and he had already passed away. to a virtual conversation about “Invisible Man,” to be led by Adam Bradley and held on June 17.

This essay is part of T’s Book Club, a series of articles and events dedicated to classic works of American literature.

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