| Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke focuses on thelittle-known but important friendship between two canonical American writers. The story of thisfifty-year friendship, however, is more than literary biography, Bryan Crable argues that theBurke-Ellison relationship can be interpreted as a microcosm of the American",racial divide.",Through examination of published writings and unpublished correspondence, he reconstructs thedialogue between Burke and Ellison about race that shaped some of their most important works,including Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives and Ellison's Invisible Man. In addition, the book connects this dialogue to changes in American discourse about race. Crable shows that these two men were deeply connected, intellectually and personally, but the socialdivision between white and black Americans produced hesitation, embarrassment, mystery, andestrangement where Ellison and Burke might otherwise have found unity. By using Ellison'snonfiction and Burke's rhetorical theory to articulate a new vocabulary of race, the authorconcludes not with a simplistic",healing", of the divide but with a challenge to embracethe responsibility inherent to our social order.AmericanLiteratures Initiative |
