![]() ![]() It's almost an Elizabethan language, always referring back to the past. "There is a Negro idiom and I have to keep hearing its sounds. I need to hear the language," said Ellison. ![]() An interviewer once asked Ellison why he didn't do what other black artists of his generation had done: leave America and go to Europe. New York City's Harlem was his laboratory and home. ![]() In 1969, President Lyndon Johnson bestowed the Medal of Freedom on Ellison.Ī devoted fan of jazz and the blues, Ellison wrote as if he were composing music. CBS News Sunday Morning Correspondent Randall Pinkston reports.īorn in Oklahoma City in 1914, Ellison's career brought accolades and awards, including the National Book Award and the Prix de Rome. Now, five years after his death, comes a second novel, Juneteenth. That one novel became a literary classic, placing Ellison in the pantheon of great modern authors. While he lived, he completed only one, The Invisible Man, about a young black man's navigation of American society. Ralph Ellison once said he would rather write one good novel than five bad ones. ![]()
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