CU professor helps author come alive: New [Ralph] Ellison book on salePosted in Articles, Media Archive, United States on 2010-03-01 23:07Z by Steven |
CU professor helps author come alive: New [Ralph] Ellison book on sale
CU Independent
University of Colorado
2010-02-07
Kaely Moore
Adam Bradley, a CU associate professor of English, and John Callahan, a professor of humanities at Lewis and Clark College, have come together after author Ralph Ellison’s death to produce unpublished work.
Ellison’s novel “Invisible Man” became a literary success after its release in 1952. From the time of its publication, to Ellison’s death in 1994, the author worked on putting out a second novel that he never finished…
…Bradley, who has a black father and a white mother, said that he didn’t have much of a connection with the black side of his family while growing up.
“When I read this book in college, it had a clarifying influence on me,” Bradley said. “I saw parts of myself in it in the search for identity, in the search for a father figure and all these sorts of things that are really quite personal, played out in a public work of fiction. It inspired me to understand what exactly my multiracial identity means.”…
…Bradley said the book centers around the relationship between two characters. One is a black jazzman turned preacher and the other is a child of indeterminate race whom the preacher raises as his own. The two travel around the country as a part of a revival sermon until the child strikes out on his own and disappears for years, emerging decades later as a white, racist senator.
The central plot of the book is about an attempt upon the senator’s life by the hands of his own estranged son, Bradley said, as the preacher races to Washington to try to save the man he knew years before…
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