Customer Reviews

Juneteenth

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Of course, this book was difficult to read at times. Anyone who has read Invisible Man had to expect that. Nonetheless, there is a complicated genius that emerges in Ellison's life-work the same way Joyce's Ulysses rewards those who make it to the end. I tried reading this book at the beach, which was a mistake. I was more successful finishing it at home with a serious outlook, an overstuffed chair and long sittings. Whatever you do, don't quit in the middle.

Ellison captures the ambiguity of racial and ethnic heritage in the identities of individual characters. While the large racial drama has played out through our country's history, individual players have lived in their own unique spaces within the play. Hickman and Bliss are exquisitely drawn examples.

While Ellison's skill as a stylist is undeniable (on the level, possibly, of even Joyce or Proust), and while with INIVISIBLE MAN he may have very well written one of the ten greatest books of the 20th century, what we have in his long-awaited, highly anticipated follow-up is nothing but a "momentary glimpse" at the greatness it could have been.

One cannot help but wonder what JUNETEENTH would have been like had the original copy not burned in Ellison's legendary house fire. Would it, in fact, even have been called JUNETEENTH? Callahan says he believes this is what Ellison intended to title his multi-volume epic, but we will never know. It is merely speculation. It is an "editorial decision," as is the whole book. And therein lies the problem with the novel.

JUNETEENTH is a monumental testament to the power of friendship and editorship (Callahan and Ellison). I am not denying the bravery and dedication it had to have taken Callahan to sort through all the disparate notes, and passages of dialogue, and sections of narrative told in the bits and pieces that Ellison left behind, and then to dare to somehow put it all together in some sort of coherent form. It was a monumental task, and Callahan is to be commended. But the final result is messy, incomplete, and largely unsatisfying.

As the editor of an unfinished volume, Callahan was left with making authorial decisions on the line of narrative structure, and character development development, etc. He had to repeatedly ask himself (as editor) questions that only an author can fairly ask, and so I'm afraid the book is finally more Callahan's than Ellison's.

While there are scenes in JUNETEENTH that hint at Ellison's lyrical and haunting brilliance, the "jigsaw puzzle" effect of the storyline is finally disappointing, leaving me with a mixture of emotions--sadness that Ellison never lived to finish his great life work, and anger that JUNETEENTH, as we have it, is a novel that maybe never should have been published.

I found the book a little too much for my liking. But the audio version(Blair Underwood-reader)excellant. He has a wonderful voice and captures the spirit of the story.

Juneteenth was a difficult, but worthwhile read. I have read "Invisible Man" and have been exposed to his prose and masterful imagery before and was somewhat prejudiced about reading "Juneteenth". However, I was not disappointed. The author very rarely slips out of Ellison's prose and carries the mood, the scenes and the language well. It is by no means an easy piece of literature to read. The story is serves as a background to the more prominent foci of the novel which are Ellison's highly descriptive and detailed scenes, the deep-rooted, backwoods southern language and the psychological escapades of a young boy. This book takes some determination to read as it takes much effort to grow accustomed to Ellison's style and I recommend reading "Invisible Man" before reading "Juneteenth". However, despite the work, I enjoyed the novel overall and at times was captivated by the wild scenes and intrigued by the thoughts of Bliss.

As with any other unfinished work (The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Garden of Eden, etc.) it is difficult to read this without wondering what it might have been if Ellison had finished it. On the downside, there is much here that needs explanation and fleshing out. There are interesting nods in certain directions that leave the reader longing for more. And there is the inevitable feeling that a much richer story lies just beneath the surface. However, there are rich passages of prose in this book which are a welcome addition to Ellison's body of work. The concept, the plot, and the route taken to get there is full of rewards along the way. "Juneteenth" is a sketch of something that could have been truly magnificent, but is still nevertheless a fascinating look into the mind of one of America's greatest writers.

I gave this book two hundred pages before I called it quits. Edited down from 2,000 pages to a few hundred pages, I had no clue where the book was going. The early scenes with Bliss and Hickman were the best part. The flowing from past to present was confusing at best. I'm waiting for an edition that is less edited and allows us to see where Ellison wanted to go. We can't go there now that he's gone, but even Moses at least got to glimpse the promise land. As with Alex Haley's post death career, I'm disappointed with the lackluster results; and more commited to NOT seeing an author's reputation tarnished by work that, in the end, isn't his.

Much of the attention surrounding this posthumously compiled and titled novel Juneteenth, has focused on it's unfinished nature. True, in many spots the prose is difficult and plot trasitions are hard to follow. However, Ellison's mastery of the language and his awareness of race relations in the US, make this novel, though unfinished, a poignant follow up to Invisible Man. Ellison, via Callhoun's splicing, delves into the possibilities for equality among races, and the hope that one day we might all, black and white, be led out of the bonds of slavery and into a glorious promised land. Unfortunately, in Ellisons rendering, that Moses is sick and dying, and desperately in need of remembering who he is and where he came from. The end of the novel, although it may be abrupt and full of more questions than answers, might actually be closer to the truth than Ellison might have hoped to achieve. It leaves us as readers to ponder who we are and what we think the outcome might be (infact the last of his notes suggests this kind of relationship of this novel to his redaers). Is racisim truly an eternal bond that we shall never be free of? As in the novel, the answer is up to you.

This book gives you an interesting glimpse into what had the potential to be a truly masterful and brilliant novel. I'll give Callahan credit for making a valiant attempt at pulling together this great work. While there are passages that give you glimpses into what this work could have become, the whole just doesn't hold together well. It's very disjointed, as you would expect an unfinished work condensed from thousands of pages to be. At the end of it, I was glad to have read it, but I wasn't sure exactly what I had read or what had happened.

The interesting thing is that the introductory notes, and the excerpt notes at the end gave me a better feel for what this work's potential was than the actual novel itself. It aspired to greatness, and that has to be admired, but missed the mark.

A novel about the truth as seen through the eyes of a fiction--indeed, the truth, to Ellison, was always suspect to the lie and again, as in the phrase the emancipation myth, where freedom wasn't given by the law but the law was only subject to the people who inforced it as truth, and thus Juneteenth, as the title of the last great work by an even greater artist, seems to be apt, for it suggests this dichotomy that Ellison was to work in all of his career.

Always a symbolist at heart, Ellison demonstates in Juneteenth the potential of words to turn even the most innocent of scenes on its head, fleshing out the meaning of slavery in something so unrelated as a circus as when Daddy Hickman takes Bliss to the circus, and Bliss innocently asks how come the lions don't catch the trainer, and Daddy Hickman explains that the lions are mastered. And with that small amount of information, the reader is instantly transported into the real scene Ellison wants his reader to notice. Of course, the genius of all this is Ellison's use of the word "mastered" instead of "trained," as that one word becomes the window through which we begin to see the ritual of the circus as having the potential to speak to us about the deeper convention of race.

And that is Ellison par excellent, for he is always using unrelated events to talk about other things.

There are so many things that can and should be said about Juneteenth that I could never exhaust the subject. Not that I am trying to, but one thing is for sure, those who have an intimate knowledge of Shadow and Act, and Going To The Territory and of course Invisible Man will see the influence of those books on Juneteenth. In scene after scene, Ellison calls up his references like a bandleader calls on the Brass section to riff on the beat, to live in the music, and Ellison, in Juneteeth, is more than anything else, living inside himself, inside the basement of Invisible Man, inside all of the history of literature and once in a while he peeks out at us, peeks as from a glass darkly to see if it okay to come out and play.

Don't listen to the naysayers. If you love Ellison, you must read this. Albeit a diamond in the rough, it's all here: vivid characters in the round, profound feeling and humanism, musical qualities underneath and at the surface... It's Ellison and it's worth it.