The Great American Read--The Book of Books

by PBS

  Whitehead strives to make each book different from the others. John Henry Days (2001) reimagines the classic American tale of man versus machine; the autobiographical Sag Harbor (2009) depicts coming-of-age in the black middle class during the 1980s; Zone One (2011) focuses on a postapocalyptic world of zombies. The Colossus of New York (2003) is a series of impressionistic essays about his hometown, while The Noble Hustle (2014), a memoir, twines high-stakes poker with Whitehead’s midlife depression.

  In 2016, Whitehead returned to the intersection of identity and technology with The Underground Railroad. This prizewinning novel follows Cora, a 16-year-old slave who boards the underground railroad—a real, physical train, complete with stations, tunnels, and conductors. When Oprah picked it for her book club, she launched it onto the bestseller list before it had even arrived in stores. Whereas The Intuitionist uses the elevator as a metaphor to explore the ways in which race distorts our perception of the world, The Underground Railroad renders the metaphoric literal.

  The author is also funny. When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, Whitehead called it a victory for “Skinny Black Guys” in a New York Times op-ed. His Twitter feed is full of wit and sarcasm, such as this gem: “Computer? Notebook? I engrave all my first drafts in stone tablets. Just get it down, you know? I can edit later.” As long as he gets his words out there, not one of us can complain.

  A paperback edition cover of The Invisible Man, originally published in 1952.

  Ralph Ellison, posing in New York City in 1966, moved to the city in 1936 and met some of the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Literary figures like Langston Hughes and Richard Wright encouraged Ellison to write.

  Here of the typescript of The Invisible Man, housed with the author’s papers in the Library of Congress.

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  INVISIBLE MAN

  Ralph Ellison · 1952

  The nameless narrator of Invisible Man lives in a basement amid 1,369 lightbulbs, which he keeps simultaneously illuminated. He seeks to record key moments of his life and to explain his present circumstances: “I am an invisible man,” he writes. “No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

  One of the most important novels of the 20th century, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man directly addresses the alienating effects of racism. It also describes significant aspects of African American history, such as the long-lasting legacy of slavery, the Great Migration, and segregation, which was still legal when the novel was published in 1952.

  What has transformed the protagonist into an invisible man? In short, a lifetime of coping with violence, both physical and psychic, and of prejudice, both overt and subtle. The narrator recounts episode after episode of discrimination, betrayal, and cruelty, starting with his adolescence in the South. As a teen, he receives a scholarship to a prestigious black university. But in order to utilize it, he’s forced by the white town elders to compete in a vicious battle royal against other blindfolded black boys.

  He gets expelled from college after inadvertently taking a white trustee into the old slave quarters. The college president gives him several letters of recommendation, which turn out to betray the narrator with false accounts of dishonesty. He settles in 1930s-era Harlem, falls into what he believes to be a multiracial brotherhood trying to change the world, and rediscovers his love of making speeches. He survives an explosion at the paint factory where he works but is unwillingly given shock therapy. He manages to avoid being embroiled in a white woman’s rape fantasy. Finally, he goes into hiding when a black nationalist threatens to lynch him.

  Named for Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Ellison was born in Oklahoma in 1913. He worked a series of odd jobs as a child and teenager, including dental assistant, shoe-shine boy, and waiter, to help support his family. At age 20 he entered Tuskegee Institute, an all-black university in Alabama, because its orchestra needed his skills as a trumpet player. Although he studied music, Ellison also read widely and deeply. He left before graduating, moving to New York City in 1936.

  There, Ellison encountered some of the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance, like Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. With their encouragement, Ellison began writing, focusing on book reviews, articles, and short stories. He worked on Invisible Man for five years, largely supported by his wife.

  His narrator listens to “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” and other songs by Louis Armstrong at full volume, and Ellison’s love of jazz directly informs his prose. Like a song, the novel shifts in tone, style, and genre, but everything forms a unifying whole, in this case a searing portrait of American society. Scholars speculate that the success of Invisible Man stifled Ellison’s creativity; even though he released two books of essays, he spent the next 40 years working on a second novel and left behind roughly 1,600 pages upon his death in 1994.

  In 2003, a sculpture was erected in New York’s Riverside Park and dedicated to Ellison, who had long lived nearby. It features the shape of a man cut out of a huge sheet of bronze. He is invisible, but he is nevertheless striding, head held high, into the future.

  The first American hardcover edition of Jane Eyre, printed in 1848.

  A portrait of author Charlotte Brontë circa 1840. Brontë wove in her personal experiences into those of Jane, such as her time as a boarding-school student and as a governess.

  The first page from Brontë’s handwritten manuscript of Jane Eyre.

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  JANE EYRE

  Charlotte Brontë · 1847

  Consider the dinner-table conversation that must have transpired at the Brontë house in rural Yorkshire. Patriarch Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman, wrote poetry and tutored his son, Branwell, at home. Branwell and his sisters, Anne, Charlotte, and Emily, constructed full-on imaginary worlds with names like Gondal and Angria, and published their own magazines, featuring their stories, plays, criticism, poetry, and histories. Within a few decades, the sisters would professionally publish Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), followed in 1847 by three now-classic novels: Agnes Grey by Anne; Wuthering Heights by Emily; and Jane Eyre by Charlotte. For one household to have produced three novelists is extraordinary enough; for those novelists to still be read and beloved a century and a half later is something else entirely.

  Jane Eyre follows its titular protagonist from her early childhood as a mistreated orphan living with a vile aunt to her first real friendship (and further mistreatment) at school to her first job, as a governess at Thornfield Hall. In that lonely, brooding mansion she encounters the equally lonely and brooding Edward Rochester, an enigmatic and domineering older man whose ward Jane teaches. As Jane finds herself pulled toward Edward, strange things begin to befall the residents of the house, until Jane learns the terrible secret within it and must decide whether to follow her heart or her conscience.

  Charlotte Brontë was born in Yorkshire in 1816. She began writing Jane Eyre while helping her father recover from eye surgery (in the days before anesthesia), and blindness plays a significant role in the resulting novel. She also reimagined her own experiences as an ill-treated boarding-school student—two of her sisters died as a result of the poor conditions at the school—and as a governess. The pseudonymously published novel stirred controversy over its “unfeminine” depiction of passionate feelings and biting social observations, and it engendered considerable speculation about the real name of its author. Two more novels followed, Shirley in 1849 and Villette in 1853, by which time the now-identified Brontë had become a literary celebrity, albeit a reclusive and reluctant one. She married one of her father’s curates in 1854, and died unexpectedly in 1855, likely from pregnancy-related complications.

  A bildungsroman, Jane Eyre portrays its eponymous protagonist in various states of suffering. Yet Jane stays strong and p
erseveres—thanks to books. We meet her first as a 10-year-old, secluded with a text from the awful family she lives with. Reading provides a wellspring from which Jane dips in moments of great difficulty. In constructing her novel, Brontë incorporates elements from literary genres that were popular in the Victorian era, including gothic literature and romance. Jane encounters gloom, ghosts, and the possibility of a life-changing romantic love.

  What has resonated through the years since the novel’s publication is the voice of Jane herself. Through her first-person narration, she often addresses us directly, either by using “you” or the word reader, and she lets us into her private concerns, worries, and struggles to figure out who she is and what she wants. In fact, many scholars point to this novel as pivotal to the construction of our modern concept of selfhood, in which the individual, with all its idiosyncrasies, reigns supreme. In perhaps the book’s most central conflict, Jane must decide whether she wants to pursue the safety and security of marriage, which means subjugating the self, or pursue independence, which means forgoing a deep emotional attachment to another. She has to assess her own conscience, even if her choice may run counter to commonly held Victorian assumptions about gender. Her careful consideration and contemplation make Jane Eyre all the more remarkable and Jane Eyre all the more relatable.

  “What’s the Use of a Book Without Pictures?”

  THE IMPACT OF ILLUSTRATORS

  ILLUSTRATORS CAN MAKE—or break—a book. As contemporary illustrator and author Posy Simmonds remarks, “There’s lots of choice, whether to interpret, decorate, contradict. It can add to or detract from the writing.” In the best instances of illustrated texts, the pictures and writing blend seamlessly, a marriage of two compatible mates who contribute their own unique capabilities and sensibilities.

  As Alice idly watches her older sister reading, she summarizes the opinion of many readers: “‘And what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversation?’” Her creator, Lewis Carroll, concurred, and initially sought to decorate Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) with his own illustrations. However, it was eventually agreed that the book needed a professional’s touch. Enter illustrator John Tenniel, known for his political cartoons done in a dark, grotesque style. All told, Tenniel drew more than 90 illustrations for Alice and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Initially, many found the line drawings, particularly of lovely Alice with her big eyes and rosebud lips, to be even more captivating than Carroll’s words.

  Certainly artwork was seen as a crucial component of bookmaking throughout the 19th century. Charles Dickens originally published his novels as serials in magazines. He believed illustrations to be indispensable to his audience’s reading experience, so he worked closely with artists to ensure that their work matched his creative vision. In fact, a publisher originally approached Dickens to write a novel—his first—based on illustrations drawn by Robert Seymour, then a very successful artist (some scholars believe that the idea for the book even came from Seymour). The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club came out in 1836, but the collaboration proved so taxing that the troubled Seymour killed himself.

  Dickens was right: the best illustrations fundamentally determine our reading experience. As we open the first edition of Charlotte’s Web (1952), for example, the concerned Fern with a messy ponytail on the cover, drawn by Garth Williams, becomes the Fern inside our head. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry both wrote and illustrated The Little Prince (1943); his depiction of the funny little titular character as a blond boy with a flamboyant scarf counterbalances some of the book’s serious philosophical inquiries. J. R. R. Tolkien used a pen to do more than write stories, drafting maps and illustrations for The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955). Kurt Vonnegut likewise loved to doodle, and his drawings—including an American flag and an asterisk-shaped anus—accompanied such novels as Breakfast of Champions (1973).

  Today the author-as-illustrator trend continues unabated, as evidenced by the popularity of graphic novels. Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1991) portrays Jews as mice and Nazis as cats in its consideration of the lasting effects of the Holocaust. As the first graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize, Maus helped elevate this genre in literary circles. Modern hits like Persepolis (2000), Fun Home (2006), and The Best We Could Do (2017) continue the theme of blending words and drawings to deal with difficult, often autobiographical subject matter, and they appeal to readers of all ages.

  Books marketed to children and young adults often feature extraordinary illustrations. Mary GrandPré was tasked with bringing Harry Potter to life, and her designs grace not only the covers of the original American editions of the Harry Potter books but also their chapters. Her work on the series garnered GrandPré many accolades, appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and helped smooth the transition for early or reluctant readers into chapter books. In recognition of the novels’ ongoing popularity, as well as the changing technologies in which to read them, Amazon released a stunning electronic edition for the Kindle, in which Jim Kay’s illustrations move across the screen—ensuring that future generations will fall in love with the series. A picture might be worth 1,000 words, but the worth of a book with pictures just might be incalculable.

  The original book cover illustration by Garth Montgomery Williams for E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. Williams’s illustrations set the scene for young readers in this iconic classic.

  A trade paperback cover of The Joy Luck Club, printed in 1989.

  Author Amy Tan, photographed in New York City in 2011. Tan was born in 1952 to Chinese immigrants, and she explores the relationships between mothers and daughters in many of her novels.

  Tan and Stephen King performed in Bangor, Maine, on May 8, 1998, as part of the Rock Bottom Remainders, whose members included Barbara Kingsolver, Dave Barry, and many other well-known authors, as well. The group played to raise money for a local charity.

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  THE JOY LUCK CLUB

  Amy Tan · 1989

  As a teenager, Amy Tan discovered her mother’s previous life: not only had Daisy Tan been married before, but she left three children behind in Shanghai when she fled the Communists and immigrated to the United States in 1949. Tan traveled with her mother to meet her half sisters in 1987, when she was 35, and drew on her mother’s life story to draft The Joy Luck Club (1989), her debut novel.

  The interlocking stories that make up Tan’s book focus on four pairs of Chinese mothers—members of the Joy Luck Club—and their Chinese American daughters. This range of characters allows Tan to focus on different aspects of the immigrant and first-generation experiences. In the stories narrated by the mothers, readers understand how painful histories in China led to the women’s childrearing philosophies in the United States. From a mother who cuts off a piece of her arm to make medicine for her own sick mother to another who is betrothed at a young age and becomes an indentured servant to her husband’s family, these women lived lives vastly different from their daughters’. Yet despite often-domineering attitudes, the mothers truly want their daughters to be healthy, happy, and successful.

  When Suyuan dies suddenly, members of the Joy Luck Club invite her daughter, June Woo, to take Suyuan’s place. The Joy Luck Club plays mahjong once a week, and its members are one another’s oldest friends. Through the games, June starts to see her mother as an idiosyncratic person; appreciating one’s mother as an individual beyond her maternal identities is an important stop along the road to adulthood, for June and for us. From her mother’s friends, June hears about Suyuan’s twin girls, now grown, back in China. By the end of the novel, June, like Amy Tan herself, travels to China to meet this side of her family.

  Daughters in the novel wrestle with the burden of their parents’ expectations. One must act as an interpreter between her Chinese mother and white American father, while another abandons her talent for chess because she can’t stomach her mother’s compliments or criticisms. The mothers w
ant their daughters to assimilate and fit in but are frustrated when the daughters can’t understand Chinese or don’t recognize the significance of a tradition. Nevertheless, the novel shows the women of both generations coming together, as opposed to drifting apart, in a depiction of the resilience of the mother-daughter bond even when stretched across cultures.

  Tan was born in 1952 in California to Chinese immigrants. Defying her mother’s wishes, she left a religious college and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in English and linguistics from San Jose State University. Later she began a corporate-communications business, drafting such materials as “Telecommunications and You” for IBM. She wrote fiction in her spare time.

  Subsequent books like The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991) and The Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001) continue to explore the relationships between mothers and daughters, but Tan’s first novel remains her most successful. The Joy Luck Club was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. A film adaptation, which Tan cowrote, was released in 1993. With the novel’s bestseller status, Tan was often pushed to act as a spokesperson for Asian American literature, a role she struggled with, as she sees her work not as representative of Asian American experience but rather of human experience. “Placing on writers the responsibility to represent a culture is an onerous burden,” she explained in an interview around the publication of her third novel. “Even when you write in a specific context, you still tap into that subtext of emotions that we all feel about love and hope, and mothers and obligations and responsibilities.”