Juneteenth
by Ralph Ellison
(Random
House, 352 pages, $25)
"Juneteenth: A Celebration"
First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Ave., 241-0543
7:30 pm Tuesday, June 22
Free, advance tickets required
The New York Times calls the book one of the major
publishing events in years. The New Yorker printed
an excerpt in April; The New Republic published several
of the author's letters in February. For a novel by someone
who has been dead for five years, Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth,
is raising quite a bit of excitement and controversy. The
book, Ellison's second novel, will be released June 19;
it may never have been published without the help of a humanities
professor from Portland.
Ellison died in 1994, but his 1952 novel, Invisible
Man, lives on as one of modern American literature's
most celebrated works. Shortly after his death, Ellison's
wife appointed Lewis & Clark College professor John
F. Callahan executor of her late husband's literary estate.
Callahan was confronted with stacks of manuscripts: essays,
short stories, letters and 1,500 pages of Ellison's second
novel, which the author had worked on for 40 years. Callahan
removed what he calls "the heart of the story" and titled
it Juneteenth. The novel explores the relationship
between a racist U.S. senator who looks white but is "of
indeterminate race" and the black minister who raised him.
For many literature fans across the country, the novel
is cause for great celebration. But others aren't so sure.
Critics question whether Ralph Ellison would have approved
of the final product; whether dead authors' unfinished novels
should be published; and even whether Callahan himself is
the best person to edit Ellison's work.
"I wrote a piece on him in 1977," Callahan told Willamette
Week. "I was very pleased with it, so I sent a copy
of it to Ellison." Five weeks later he received a warm letter
from Ellison. A few months later, Callahan visited the great
author and his wife, Fanny, in New York City, thus beginning
a friendship that lasted until Ellison's death.
No one has even broached the subject that Callahan, a white
man, is the literary executor and editor for a black writer.
"Not to my face," Callahan says. "This is Ralph Ellison's
work and no one else's. He was an American, and he believed
in diversity of all sorts. I don't worry about that at all."
Ellison also believed in exploring the individual rather
than relying on group identity. He had a disdain for categorizing
people. But is that disdain the reason African Americans
don't object to having a white guy take responsibility for
a black literary icon's work? "I'm not going to speculate
about that," Callahan says. "I agreed to do my best by his
work, and that's what I'm trying to do. Ellison took so
much heat for being himself and for having a wonderful sense
of the complexity of American individuals." Ellison thought
that a person gained individuality from the particular groups
to which he or she belonged. According to Callahan, communists
and black nationalists criticized Ellison when Invisible
Man was published. In the politically charged 1960s,
black artists, leftists, white liberals and ideologists
of all sorts attacked Ellison's refusal to be a separatist.
Black students criticized him for writing satirically about
his race. Some people labeled him an Uncle Tom for declaring
himself an American first, then Negro, Oklahoman and writer.
"Ellison took much heat for his sense of the individual,"
says Callahan. "If some heat comes my way, it's OK."
Ellison isn't around to endure any criticisms of Juneteenth,
but some judgments seem aimed more at Callahan's treatment
of the material rather than the material itself. In a recent
New York Times Magazine article (May 23, 1999), critic
and curmudgeon Stanley Crouch conceded that Callahan is
indeed the best person to preside over Ellison's work, but
he doesn't think Ellison would approve of Callahan's Juneteenth
editing choices. Apparently, Crouch has a medium or channeler
to help him contact Ellison from the great beyond.
Too bad Callahan didn't have a hotline to heaven when he
edited the massive manuscript. "What I tried to do for several
years," Callahan explains, "was to figure out Ellison's
chronology--when he did which drafts--and then to get a
feel for how he had hoped to organize the whole of the material
and the different sections."
Callahan plans to publish a scholarly or critical edition
of the novel that could be over 1,200 pages long. He is
also considering publishing another "riotous" subplot that
emerged from the manuscript. Callahan says the story is
"about a drag queen in a Harlem nightclub" and will likely
take the form of a novella.
Some purists question whether an unfinished manuscript
should be published in any form after the author is dead.
Hemingway forbade publication of his work after his death,
yet his third posthumously published book will hit shelves
next month. Callahan doesn't think it's an issue in this
case. "Certainly [Ellison] wanted this book to emerge,"
he says, "because he left it to Mrs. Ellison. I haven't
come across anything that says 'Don't publish this novel.'
He's not a controlling person in that way."
But the affable Lewis & Clark professor isn't really
concerned about what the critics think. "I relish being
the target," Callahan says. "I'd rather people take a shot
at me and give Ellison's work acclaim. I think people ought
to just read the book."
Mercedes Deiz, a senior state circuit court judge who lives
in Portland, is especially eager to read the book. Now 81
years old, Deiz dated Ellison during their salad days in
the late 1930s. "I remember sitting around with wonderful
writers like Ellison and [Richard] Wright, listening and
learning," she recalls. "I was so lucky to have that exposure
to the great minds of the Harlem Renaissance." Deiz, an
acquaintance of Callahan's, isn't worried about his treatment
of her old friend's material. "As long as he has the wife's
consent," she says, "I know it will be credible."
Callahan will introduce Juneteenth to Portland at
a community celebration on June 22 that will feature a reading
from the novel. The program will include music by Portland
State University jazz professor and performing artist Darrell
Grant, who first read Ellison while attending high school
in Denver. "Music was so important to him," says Grant.
"I'm looking forward to providing what I have to offer as
a musical complement to his work."
Apart from the controversy, two very good things are emerging
from the posthumous publication of Juneteenth: The
novel sparks a renewed interest in a revered master of American
fiction, and Callahan's contribution verifies that a major
literary scholar lives and works in Portland.
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Willamette Week | originally
published June 9, 1999
|
