PBS special gives focus to Invisible author

You could do a lot worse in life than to write the great American novel and spend the rest of your days collecting accolades from your peers. But as we learn in "Ralph Ellison: An American Journey," the latest portrait in the PBS "American Masters" series, being Ralph Waldo Ellison was never as simple or easy as that. The 86-minute film airs at 9 p.m. Tuesday on KCPT, Channel 19 and 8 p.m. on Topeka's KTWU. It traces Ellison's 80 years on earth from his difficult childhood in Oklahoma to his 15 years scraping by in New York as he worked on his novel, Invisible Man, to the insult of hearing black radicals call him an Uncle Tom, to the futility of three decades spent on the manuscript for his second novel, which he never did finish. The impression the film leaves is that Ellison's life was at best bittersweet. At worst it was a painful struggle against adversity, despair and loss, those unwelcome setbacks that so often seem to be essential ingredients to artistic success. Invisible Man, published 50 years ago, is widely considered one of the great works of fiction by any American writer. Judging by the accolades showered on it in this special by such notables as Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow and Cornel West, it's as influential today as it was upon its publication. The book is a series of surreal vignettes sewn into a larger narrative of a young black man's awakening of conscience. In the book's opening chapter, the hero goes to give his prize-winning speech to the civic leaders of the sleepy Southern town where he lives. Instead, he is enlisted in a "battle royal" - a boxing match in which he and a dozen other young black men flail at each other in the ring while the white male elite puff on cigars and roar their approval. That scene, like the book, contains several messages, but the dominant message that emerges from Invisible Man is the imperative of personal integrity over the demands of any group; that to be an American is to jealously guard one's unique identity and reject those imposed from outside, including those of racial and group identity. In life as in art, Ellison perched himself between two tethered but opposing views. One is the antique notion of group uplift, seen in the narrator's "battle royal" speech, which parrots platitudes from Booker T. Washington. The other is the strategy of political protest explored in the book's later chapters, which feature a race-baiting agitator and a band of white Communists. Ellison anticipated the struggle for black identity and response to white racism that would bubble over in the next two decades. What he was unprepared for were the attacks on his work by black militants like LeRoi Jones. Now known as Amiri Baraka, he still thinks more than 30 years later that Ellison's detachment from political engagement was backward and - because cloaked in great fiction - especially dangerous. Ellison, who died in 1994, is seen here thanks to archival interviews obtained by the producers. His estate also contributed video adaptations of Invisible Man and a short story, which help illumine Ellison's ideas. The film's chief explainers underscore how Ellison would not allow himself to be pigeonholed: Although Baraka is not in his camp, the left-wing West is, as are conservative authors Stanley Crouch and Shelby Steele. In the final scene, Morrison reads from Juneteenth, an edited abridgement of Ellison's unfinished opus published in 1999. I would've liked to have heard more about Ellison's nonfiction essays on race, jazz and culture. He published two collections regarded as some of the finest essay work by an American writer. But as we know from C-SPAN, conveying serious ideas requires turning a visually rich medium into radio with pictures. I will gladly settle for "Ralph Ellison: An American Journey." To reach Aaron Barnhart, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com