Ralph Ellison is as celebrated today as one of America's finest authors as he was fifty years ago. This is quite a legacy for a man who only wrote one novel during his lifetime. "If I'm going to be remembered as a novelist, I'd better produce a few more books," Ellison once acknowledged to an interviewer (Bark 1C). There is little doubt that this author will ever be forgotten. Half a century after its publication in 1952, "Invisible Man" remains a constant staple on reading lists at colleges across the country and Ellison remains one of the most celebrated authors of the Twentieth Century (Bark 1C). Professor Clyde Taylor of New York University says, Ellison "showed us that you could do with black life what Homer did with Greek life, what Joyce did with Irish life" (Bark 1C).

Ellison paved the way for writers as diverse as At a time...
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