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Invisible Man gets off to a terrific start with a sequence originally published in 1947 as a standalone story called "Battle Royale," which lets you know in no uncertain terms that you're in for some symbolism. That first segment contains the entire story that's to come.

(view spoiler)[But then it runs almost catastrophically off the rails with a lengthy description of our narrator chauffeuring his school's white benefactor, Mr. Norton, from a bizarre encounter with a man who raped and impregnated his daughter while sleeping (which, as far as descriptions of these things go, I'm sad to say, to a brawl in a brothel. I don't really understand why this part happens. It serves a point, but it takes too long to do it. And it's followed by one of the things I dread most in any novel: a friggin' church scene. Rule #57 of novels: if the protagonist enters a church and a preacher steps to the pulpit, you're about to be bored. It doesn't matter whether the message is religious or anti-; either way, there's gonna be a message, and it's gonna be lengthy. You're about to be told, not shown.

(I'd like to say that the Jonah speech in Moby-Dick is an exception, but it's not, really; it's still telling instead of showing. It's just unusually entertaining telling.)

I finally clicked in around a quarter of the way in, with a blistering speech from our (thrice-named but never identified) protagonist's headmaster: "You're nobody, son. You don't even exist...I'll have every Negro in the country swinging from tree limbs before morning if it means staying where I am." This is a novel that always knows where it's headed, even though it might take a scenic route to get there that you kinda wish it hadn't.

And then there's this whole paint factory bit, with this lonely black guy in the basement churning out all this white paint, and okay I get it dude.

Ralph Ellison was disenchanted with the Marxist movement - as eventually was his mentor, Richard Wright, who was strongly pro-Marxist in 1940 when the mighty Native Son was published. And as Invisible Man finally, for-good-now gets into the story at around halfway through with this line: "I accuse you of relishing hog bowels!" - we will find a blistering attack on the rotting Marxist movement. From here on out it's riveting and stunning. The protagonist's first, impromptu speech to an angry mob, urging them to turn the other cheek while inciting them to do the opposite, surrounded by the relics of slavery - relics that will collect like silt throughout the book; Ellison's fierce, uncompromising update on the situation that caused Bigger Thomas so much trouble - "Why did they insist on confusing the class struggle with the ass struggle?" in one of the best lines Chuck D didn't come up with - and then the crazy, apocalyptic Harlem riot that presage everything from to (bear with me for a moment) Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. The book ends with a bang, and it's been worth the confusion. Hey, my favorite book ever also didn't get started til halfway through. (hide spoiler)]

This is a long book, and there's a lot going on. I don't think it's as good as Native Son. (Must we compare black books to each other? No, but these books are cousins. In a quieter way, Invisible Man owes a lot to Notes from Underground too, and Dostoevsky was only part black.) Our unnamed protagonist lacks the sheer power of Bigger Thomas; the novel isn't as successful. But it's very, very good. Five stars for what it achieves, which is much larger than what it doesn't.

* Also check out Spike Lee's underappreciated joint for more shit Spike clearly got out of Ellison's