Rating: 
Summary: Unreadable
Review: Let the thirteen page Introduction be a warning to anyone who dares venture beyond. Anyone who reads more the Introduction does so at his or her own peril. The book is barely readable. It should be obvious to even a casual reader that this book was cobbled together. This book does an injustice to the name and legacy of Ralph Ellison.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Finished, but Neither Is the Fight Against Racism
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Genius on a level with Joyce's Ulysses
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: To see is to be!
Review: Ralph Ellison is back on our desks. His posthumous novel, marvellously edited by John F. Callahan, is the continuation of the reality and vision of Invisible Man. It is a book on identity, the identity of the black man, beyond the long period of suffering under slavery, and then discrimination. It is a visionary book about the future rising of the black man over these circumstances and into the future. But it is also a very accurate portrait of the black man's self-inflicted alienation : I mean religion, I mean the rite of Juneteenth to celebrate the end of slavery as a myth of rebirth, in June, in continuation with ancient summer rites, and a total blending with the Christ's resurrection and the belief in a life after death. We feel in the main character, a preacher of that new era, his fear for and defensiveness toward the modern world, the cinema that he accuses of giving the viewers an illusion about reality, without seeing that what he calls the Truth, that is to say his belief in God's will could be seen as an illusion too, but also without seeing that men and women, children and adults are fascinated by new communication techniques, hence by the cinema. And we do know better than this character. Ellison shows very precisely how the black preacher is trapped in his own illusion, in his own fantasmagoric world of « true » intentions that are false because leading to an impasse. He is very critical all along of this preacher's refusing to tell the real truth to Bliss, his white adopted child that he is grooming into becoming his preaching assistant and a preacher himself, so « lying » to the child in the name of a superior Truth, God's Truth. Vanity on his side to pretend he knows God's intentions and motivations. The real truth is always best and any lie is nothing but a lie and it distorts or twists reality. But there is another dimension to that book : its lyrical and poetical approach of man, humanity, growing, human objectives, hatred and love, and it is this dimension that makes Ralph Ellison universal and able to go beyond racial and racist limitations. And this universality has to do with personality : a man cannot deny his deep nature and he has to go along his own road, but his personality will be built little by little along this road with the stones and bricks he will find there, from what he will learn from people he will meet, from the events he will have to face and be confronted to. Freedom is an individual dimension, just like truth, but freedom and truth have no meaning whatsoever if they are not shared with other people and their freedoms and truths. In other words, there is NO ONE TRUTH revealed to us by God or some kind of prophet or any other authority, be it the Senate or the Supreme Court. Truth is a construct just like freedom is a conquest. And conquering and constructing truth and freedom, one's truth and freedom, may be very frightening and disquieting, and it may also hurt many other people if one does not accept to share one's truth and one's freedom with these others. Ralph Ellison in this book reaches the acme of his vision. He leaves invisibility behind and he finds a way to see and represent the invisible. « What goes on in that darkness I create when I refuse to see ? » he writes. And that is exactly what this book is : how to explore and disspell this darkness cast on oneself and on the world by this stubborn refusal to see. And any man, each man, every man and all men are obliged, sooner or later, to open their eyes and see reality. « The light of the body is the eye ! » Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.
Rating:
Summary: To see is to be!
Review: Ralph Ellison is back on our desks. His posthumous novel, marvellously edited by John F. Callahan, is the continuation of the reality and vision of Invisible Man. It is a book on identity, the identity of the black man, beyond the long period of suffering under slavery, and then discrimination. It is a visionary book about the future rising of the black man over these circumstances and into the future. But it is also a very accurate portrait of the black man's self-inflicted alienation : I mean religion, I mean the rite of Juneteenth to celebrate the end of slavery as a myth of rebirth, in June, in continuation with ancient summer rites, and a total blending with the Christ's resurrection and the belief in a life after death. We feel in the main character, a preacher of that new era, his fear for and defensiveness toward the modern world, the cinema that he accuses of giving the viewers an illusion about reality, without seeing that what he calls the Truth, that is to say his belief in God's will could be seen as an illusion too, but also without seeing that men and women, children and adults are fascinated by new communication techniques, hence by the cinema. And we do know better than this character. Ellison shows very precisely how the black preacher is trapped in his own illusion, in his own fantasmagoric world of « true » intentions that are false because leading to an impasse. He is very critical all along of this preacher's refusing to tell the real truth to Bliss, his white adopted child that he is grooming into becoming his preaching assistant and a preacher himself, so « lying » to the child in the name of a superior Truth, God's Truth. Vanity on his side to pretend he knows God's intentions and motivations. The real truth is always best and any lie is nothing but a lie and it distorts or twists reality. But there is another dimension to that book : its lyrical and poetical approach of man, humanity, growing, human objectives, hatred and love, and it is this dimension that makes Ralph Ellison universal and able to go beyond racial and racist limitations. And this universality has to do with personality : a man cannot deny his deep nature and he has to go along his own road, but his personality will be built little by little along this road with the stones and bricks he will find there, from what he will learn from people he will meet, from the events he will have to face and be confronted to. Freedom is an individual dimension, just like truth, but freedom and truth have no meaning whatsoever if they are not shared with other people and their freedoms and truths. In other words, there is NO ONE TRUTH revealed to us by God or some kind of prophet or any other authority, be it the Senate or the Supreme Court. Truth is a construct just like freedom is a conquest. And conquering and constructing truth and freedom, one's truth and freedom, may be very frightening and disquieting, and it may also hurt many other people if one does not accept to share one's truth and one's freedom with these others. Ralph Ellison in this book reaches the acme of his vision. He leaves invisibility behind and he finds a way to see and represent the invisible. « What goes on in that darkness I create when I refuse to see ? » he writes. And that is exactly what this book is : how to explore and disspell this darkness cast on oneself and on the world by this stubborn refusal to see. And any man, each man, every man and all men are obliged, sooner or later, to open their eyes and see reality. « The light of the body is the eye ! » Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.
Rating:
Summary: If you didn't like Invisible Man...
Review: The idea of paternal reconciliation across race lines was what inspired me to choose this book for a summer read. Though the idea is one that could have been a page turner, the stream of consciousness style that is Ellison's trademark completely killed it for me. If you did not apprecitate Invisible Man, reader beware. This book was difficult for me to read as well as enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: If you didn't like Invisible Man...
Review: The idea of paternal reconciliation across race lines was what inspired me to choose this book for a summer read. Though the idea is one that could have been a page turner, the stream of consciousness style that is Ellison's trademark completely killed it for me. If you did not apprecitate Invisible Man, reader beware. This book was difficult for me to read as well as enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Glimpses but Difficult
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Glimpses but Difficult
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Deeply felt message about race--too bad it's not finished
Review: This book reads exactly like what it is: a book Ellison worked on off and on for most of his life, and never finished. Only after he died did someone piece together his drafts into a "finished" novel. Of course, it isn't finished--or Ellison would have sent it off to the publisher himself. This explains why it meanders forever in spots, and doesn't have (in my opinion) a satisfactory end. All that aside, I don't agree that this book is "unreadable" or a waste of time. Ellison always had powerful things to say about race in America, and a mastery of language to bring to the task. Ellison's point in Juneteenth is that Blacks are martyrs in their acceptance of the suffering imposed on them by whites, and that whites are irredemably evil--and, if I read the end right, damned to spend eternity in hell as a result. Apparently this is true even if whites "see the light", are reborn black, and raised black--as Bliss--one of the books two real characters--as, most obviously through nightly staged "resurrection" out of the coffin, but at least symbolically at birth, and then again when he suffers an almost fatal illness as a very young child. Despite these early influences, as soon as Bliss reached adolesence, he abandoned blacks, turned white, and became a populist racist demagogue politician. In contrast, Daddy Hickman (the other character) undergoes his own salvation (turning, through the influence of Bliss' birth and near fatal illness) from a life of a road musician to become a man of god. Even as a traveling preacher, he becomes more Christ-like, in contrast to the typical portrayal in literature (and movies) of white evangilists as charltain hustlers. In the end, Daddy Hickman apparently has the power to reach right into hell to try to save (yet again) Bliss from the eternal fire. It is, of course, unclear whether Hickman succeeds in saving Bliss, but similarly it is unclear (I think this is Ellison's underlying message) whether white America is beyond salvation. On one level, this is a book about the unsettled state of race relations in America. On another level, the story of Bliss is the oft told story of balck and white friendship which is inevitably destroyed at adolesence (triggered here by a white female movie star). I thought Juneteenth was interesting, certainly has a well defined point of view on American race relations, and continues (in spots) Ellison's powerful way with words. But clearly this is not a finished novel, and no one should expect that it is when they pick it up.
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