-
foundly not at home. And so we write our
letters insisting that this is not us, this is not
where we live, this is notwho we are. But we
tend to protest a bit too much. is book re
-
mains hugely popular in schools (when it’snot
banned) for exactly this reason.
But to say that “e Lottery”
means such-
and-such or condemns so-and-so is to miss
the true source of its power.is town is not
named. is place is not visible on a map.
And the trajectories of the various characters
can only really be understood in relationto
the ultimate tragedy here. ey all converge
on the black spot because those are the rules
and that is what these people do and that is
what they have always done. is is the nature
of their community, and once that black spot
is eradicated the community loses its coherence
and disappears. What that black spot “means”
means less than the fact that it is there at all. In
the meantime, we will continue to write our
letters and ban our books. We are not them,
we promise.
•
91.
Journey to Nowhere
From
Invisible Man
By Ralph Ellison
1952
A
side from perhaps Benjamin Franklin and
Frederick Douglass, it’shard to think of
an American gure who has participated more
fully in American life than Ralph Ellison. Born
into relative poverty in Oklahoma City in ,
Ellison was able to attend a good school and
had people around him who encouraged his
interests in music, literature, and technology.
(roughout his life he remained an endlessly
curious human being.) He attended the Tuske
-
gee Institute on a music scholarship, but left
the school to head to New York in . Once
there, he quickly became familiar with Alan
Locke, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright,
and began writing and publishing book reviews
at Wright’s suggestion. His career had begun.
During his time in Depression-era New
York, Ellison also worked with the Living Lore
Unit(part of the Federal Writers Project) on
gathering urban folklore, and began work on
some ction projects as well. During World
War II, he worked in the kitchen of a merchant
marine ship, and at war’send he began work
on
Invisible Man
, which won the National
Book Award for ction the following year. He
wasn’tdone, of course, and taught, wrote, trav
-
eled, and lectured until his death in ; but
InvisibleMan
remains, by far, his masterpiece.
Ellison has much in common with his main
character, and his book draws heavily from
American art and culture of the time. But the
book itself weaves inuence and inspiration
together so adeptly that the resulting work is
something entirely startling and unique. It is,
without a doubt, a great American novel (and
speaks to the fact that it’sunreasonable ever
to talk of one such champion) — but it’salso
an American tragedy. Huckleberry Finn nds
himself on the river by book’send; Ishmael
rises again from the sea after the Pequod sinks;
but our narrator here ends where he begins:
invisible still, and underground.
Tragedy, then, may not be quite the word,
as tragedies require a fall. Ellison’snarrator does
not fall so much as he abides, and his “aw”
is not his own. Heis not invisible, but others
make him so. In“Notes from Underground,”
Dostoevsky’santi-hero lives underground in
an exclusively metaphorical sense. His psyche
is what lies beneath (a fact in which he nds
a perverse elation). Ellison’sunderground is
literal, though it has similarly large metaphori
-
cal implications. In America, the Underground
Railroad served as a route to freedom — but
freedom wasn’tguaranteed, and the manner
of survival that it oered in the meantime was
imperiled and oppressed. It was born of a lack
of other opportunities. And here, in Ellison’s
hands, that underground has become real —
and permanent.
e liberation that life underground oers
to our narrator is a liberation of voice. His un
-
derground dwelling, like Dostoevsky’s under
-
ground of the mind, is a place of greater truth.
But the vitality of the world aboveground, a
place both black and white, with heroes, vil
-
lains, cowards, and a teeming mass of people
and life, is something that will always draw us
out. e lights burn brightly underground —
all , of them — but they oer a sadly arti
-
cial ame. Like the song on the recordplayer,
they oer a lament.
•
95.
The Waiting Room
From
Waiting for Godot
By Samuel Beckett
1953
H
umans are small, but ideas are big. at
is somewhat inspirational, but it’salso
something of a design aw. Our minds outpace
ourselves, and then, before weknow it, we arrive
at the universal, the all-encompassing, the ab
-
solute. Before we know it, we come face-to-face
with Elohim, Allah, Buddah, Jehovah, God,
and… Godot? Or do we? Historically speaking,
it’shard to deny that these deities (or this de
-
ity, depending on one’s outlook) appear quickly
and consistently wherever humans congregate,
but are these truly gods that we encounter, or
are they simply concepts? is simple question
(which often serves as a punchline) is central
to Beckett’siconic play.But there’salso much
more to it than that. (ank God.)
As the Gospel of John famously relates, “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.” But words
(to say nothing of God — Old Testament or
New)are deceitful things. ey are full of con
-
notation and promise but are also nearly impos
-
sible to capture in their entirety.Godot, for its
part (or his? hers?), is a meaningless word, but
as a name it is beyond poignant. We hear the
echo of “I am” in the name of this gure who
is destined to be forever without. His name
appears as a kind of covenant. But then again,
he is not here. Like all the faithful everywhere,
we remain in wait.
Godot is as loud as he is distant. Weare
small beside the enormity of what we imagine
him to be (even s
hould he prove nonexistent).
And we heed our imaginings of Godot even as
reality (via time, for instance, and the changing
of the seasons) imposes itself upon the stage.
Pozzo leads Lucky in the beginning, and Lucky
leads Pozzo at the end. e circular natureof
time itself echoes the circularity (not to say
solipsism) of human thought. ere are some
distant, cultural resonances — of the Sphynx
and the ages of man, for instance — but this
is also
the
play of modernism. Itis bare in the
extreme, and urgent.
e play is words and little else (a tree here,
a bowler hat there), but it is also a living docu
-
ment. is is a play about the thing that we are
waiting for. And it’s a reminder that waiting is,
in itself, an escape. Godot — like the idea of
Godot, like the hint of Godot, like the shadow
of Godot — remains a threat. Toee him is to
live, but then the question remains: to livefor
what? (Good luck answering that one.)
•
101.
I
n cinematic terms, “AGood Man IsHard to
Find” is an ensemble piece. It has no main
character to speak of, just as it has no “good
man” at its core. What we get instead is a ragtag
bunch of self-involved mediocrities: a grand
-
mother who acts like a child (and who nds her
equal in her grandchildren); a son, Bailey, who
lacks the strength to resist either his mother or
his presumed executioners; and a killer who
seems to resent his past as much as he reviles
the present. As far as family vacations go, this
is a bad one.
“AGood Man IsHard to Find,” like “e
Lottery” (see page ), is a staple of high school
English classes. is makes sense. Both of the
stories are haunting, incriminating, and deeply
ambiguous. But the ironic fact (given the au
-
thors’divergent religious inclinations) is that
while Jackson’sstory seems to speak to a sort
of original sin, O’Connor’sfable hones in on
a particularly American crime. O’Connor’s
story is told with a blandness that heightens
the banality of its various evils. is blandness
is shocking, given the story’scontent, but it is
also apt. e family’sutter lack of interest in the
moral component of America’shistory is echoed
in the amoral tone of the narration; in the way
the family car glides past the Civil War monu
-
ment; in the “joke”that the grandmother tells;
and in the anecdotes that e Mist relays.
ese characters are not interested in ethics or
morals, but this remains a deeply moral tale.
e journey of “A Good Man” is a journey
through the American South, and the goal is a
plantation of the mind — the grandmother’s
mind, as it happens. Her memory,in fact, is
one of the most reliable clues that this story
will end badly,despite its blandness. e reve
-
lation of the memory’sfalsehood is provided in
ominous ts in starts, but in the end we learn
the truth: e plantation in question does not
exist, and the resulting wrong-turn takes our
less-than-beloved family into a far deeper reck
-
oning than they ever anticipated.
e grandmother sets the stage for this nal
reckoning in her conversation at Red Sammy’s.
is is where the “good man” makes his appear
-
ance. We see remnants of this good man’sfad
-
ed glory in the idealization of the plantation,
in the grandmother’srecollections of “better
times,” and in the notion of “good blood.” e
grandmother, with her progeny behind her,
refuses to believe that e Mist, a man who
looks and sounds like the kind of people she
grew up with, could be a cruel sadist. As she
puts it, “Why you’re one of my babies!”
Although O’Connor has her nger on the
pulse of the s here, her story is also note
-
worthy for its understanding of place. After all,
it isn’thard to followthis family.eir starting
point is known and their destination is not far
away.(“It took them twenty minutes to reach
the outskirts of the city.”) en as now, Mists
abound, and good men are hard to nd.
•
Flannery O’Connor’s
Family Vacation
From “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
By Flannery O’Connor
1953
105.
.
.
TheWrinkled
TimeContinuum
From
A Wrinkle in Time
By Madeleine L’Engle
1962
A
Wrinkle in Time
is unique in a lot of ways,
but for science-ction lovers it’s
hard not
to nd L’Engle’sreliance on knowledge
(rather
than technology) especially charming. ere
are no phasers here, no spaceships, no thrust
-
ers; instead, what our young protagonists have
is a tesseract — that is, a fairly abstract phenom
-
enon that allows them to travel through space
and time. L’Engle’slack of interest in gadgetry
is important because its result is just one less
veil over the things that really matter: mystery,
romance, drama, and wonder.
e simplicity of the tesseract as a narrative
device results not only in a lack of technological
clutter (in the map, as in the book), but also in
a coherent, if massive, universe. Wecan take in
L’Engle’senormous spaces in a single glance. But
that coherence does not result in alack of awe.
e magic is there despite L’Engle’sfocus on sci
-
ence. In a way, math
is
magic. Knowledge
is
what
drives our heroes across the galaxy.But we may
be getting ahead of ourselves.
As in any great adventuretale for younger
readers,
A Wrinkle in Time
possesses both an
intimate human drama and an epic cosmic
war. Charles Wallace, Meg, and Calvin may
start out in search of Mr. Murry,but it doesn’t
take long before that quest is wrapped up in
the larger mission of defeating “IT” and “e
Black ing.” Despite the looming presence of
these antagonists, the focus is never far away
from the family at its center. Wecare about
their battle with these dark forces because we
care about them, we want them to be together,
we want them to love one another. In these re
-
spects, the story sounds almost absurdly maud
&nbs
p; -
lin, but of course it doesn’tread that way.In
fact,
A Wrinkle in Time
is actually quite dark
(not to say stormy) and takes care to really
reckon with disappointment, disillusionment,
and death. IT has the frightening power to
change people’snatures and obscure the stars
— a threat that nds ready analogues in the ex
-
perience of childhood, a time when the world
is porous and unstable. Even if the enemies are
ctional, the threat here is recognizably real.
All this talk of darkness though does a dis
-
service to L’Engle’sequally fascinating con
-
sideration of loveand light. In her world, the
stars are our angels — a metaphor that seems
central to the book. Angels are, of course, a tra
-
ditionally religious conception, whereas stars
are real, physical things. Stars are the subject
of science, and for two millennia now we have
been learning about them by using perhaps the
most ancient human science there is: the art of
Geometry.But then again, stars arebeautiful,
impossibly distant things. We wish on them as
well. L’Engle’sworld is a deeply ordered world
— but it’s also a magical place. No wonder it
remains so beloved.
•
109.
I
t’scommonly said of great books that they
show us a new way of looking at the world.
In RichardAdams’s(incredibly adult) children’s
classic, that is literally the case. He took an area
that he knew extremely well — the area that
surrounded his home in the English country
-
side — and then made it home to an entirely
new world, where rabbits talk and reason a lot
like humans do but also remain, in a very real
sense, rabbits. ere is verylittle else like it in
this regard. And perhaps that’sthe reason why
so many publishers turned it down beforeit
was nally released, won the Carnegie Medal,
and sold millions upon millions of copies.
e humanish rabbits (or rabbity humans
— whichever you prefer) of
Watership Down
show us a world that is both utterly recog
-
nizable and yet entirely new,with plants that
Plotted: A Literary Atlas Page 5