Ralph Ellison
Uomo Invisibile

THE REVIEW

I hold a glass prism in my hands, tilt it, and let the light pass through it, lingering to watch, completely bewildered, the changing plays of light that form and dissolve on the floor. What fascinates me is the simplicity with which the designs that now cover the tiles in the room change. And it's just a matter of millimeters. Ellison writes like this. A classic prose that within just ten lines becomes experimental, surreal, psychedelic, and dreamlike with constant shifts in rhythm where the reader almost struggles to keep up. Published in 1952, Invisible Man is a coming-of-age novel with a racial background but not only that. Set in America in the '40s/'50s, the protagonist is a nameless boy whose hopes are not only dashed but destroyed and finely ground. He will find himself breathing this thin, deadly dust until the violent and extreme finale in which he almost suffocates. Half dead, agonizing, he will find the only solution for survival in invisibility.

It begins like this.

“I am an invisible man. I am not a ghost, no, one of those from Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I a Hollywood movie ectoplasm. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, of fiber and mood. [...] When people meet me, they see only everything around, and they see themselves and see the fruits of their imagination: in short, everything except me. [...] There is often the doubt of not existing. You wonder if you are not just a ghost in the minds of others. It is when you feel this way that, out of resentment, you also start bumping into them. You need to convince yourself that you exist in the real world, that you are part of the noise and the anguish, and you attack with your fists, curse them, blaspheme, to be recognized. And unfortunately, it almost never works.”

Follow the unfulfilled illusions of the protagonist in the Southern university, the descent into the underworld of New York society that marginalizes him, and finally the rapid rise and fall in the Communist Brotherhood of Harlem. You read and realize that it is not a conventional accusation that Ellison makes. There are no morbid descriptions intended to pity those who scale these rough, densely filled pages in which reality is described in an experimental and unconventional way. The protagonist is a bastard, and he defines himself as such. He is irresponsible because how could he be responsible if society doesn't see him and doesn't recognize him? The novel is raw, pessimistic, devoid of rhetoric and compassion, and unfortunately, it offers no solution other than the realization of one's invisibility; the starting point from which to face the world for future redemption.

Seven decades have passed, and the psychedelic and strong images of this book, which centers on the unresolved drama of African Americans in the U.S.A., are extremely relevant and demonstrate that unfortunately, its depiction is still valid today.