Reviewing the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century
by Anne Ferran
Invisible Man
I
read Invisible Man (#19 on the Modern
Library’s list) for the first time in high school. It was required reading, as it is deemed a Very Important Novel
in American Literature. At that
time it was a complete mystery to me, unfathomable, incomprehensible even at
the sentence level. But it left a
mark on me, like a worm furrowed into my consciousness.
When
I read it for the second time some 20 years later, the mystery became intrigue,
and on a third reading the intrigue deepened. This is a very
important novel. It is probably the greatest explication of this unique
phenomenon that is American racism. It is also the kind of novel you can read
again and again, always finding some new layer to it.
The
story flows in a first-person stream of consciousness from a nameless
narrator. It is full of scenes of
violence that are shocking not so much because they are graphic (which they
are) but because they are so real.
It is driven by a character who is as off-putting as he is
attractive. He is pained,
idealistic, eccentric, angry, ambitious; he is smart, he is weak unless he is
strong, he is cynical and loving.
The story is filled as well with all kinds of other lively scenes—it is chock-full, in fact, of action and plot. The narrator starts by reminiscing
about events from his boyhood, his grandfather who’d been born into slavery and
whose dying words set seeds of revolt in his heart, the mystifying and
frightening ordeals he was forced to endure because he hadn’t yet found a way
to resist, and continues on through his increasing formulation of himself
against the dominant white world and his intertwining interactions with
societies of supposedly like-minded revolutionaries. What makes it a challenging and intriguing read is the
density of it. There is so much
going on—so many thoughts, so many emotions, so many activities, so many people,
so much talk. And the prose itself
is dense. It is full of allusions
and wonderful words. It captures dialects. It is humorous. It is 500 pages of poetry wearing the
mantel of a plot-driven narrative.
The
novel when written was contemporary, of course. It captured its own time and place, and gave voice to the
attitudes and feelings that were bubbling up at the time. It was in the avant-garde of the civil
rights movement, which would reach its full expression a decade or so later but
had been fomenting for a long while.
From the vantage point of today, some 60 years after this novel’s
publication, it offers both an interesting view through a window of history and
also, simultaneously, an uncomfortable reminder of the persistence of American
racism, its long, long poisoning infusion, that makes it as much a part of Americanism
as any of the other notions
explored in the novel: New York
City, Louis Armstrong, church-going, freedom of thought and expression, ingrained
inclination toward rebellion against injustice, optimism.
Aside
from its place in the civil history of this country, the novel stands strong as
literature. Anyone reading this
novel could see him- or herself as the invisible man. Anyone could be the
person not seeing him. It
speaks to something deep inside the human spirit, and it is an engrossing story with an artistic style. It is a work of art that burrows into
you and stays with you for life.
Every American should read this
novel. I recommend once in
adolescence, when the brain and spirit are pliant enough to absorb it without having
to understand it, and then at least two or three more times as an adult.
Annette
Ferran lives in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and
works in Philadelphia as an editor for a medical publisher. She is also an editorial assistant
for 10,000 Tons of Black Ink, a
Literary Writers Network publication. She has a degree of dubious practical
use, in German, and is a lifelong avid reader of fiction and lover of lists.
She has had a few short stories published, most recently in RE:AL.
