In 1955, Ralph Ellison took part in a roundtable discussion on the subject 'What's Wrong with the American Novel?' I came across the transcript recently and it opened my eyes. The first speakers twitter along, blaming readers for the novel's decline. Then Ellison speaks up, and blames one party only: 'There has been a failure of writers.' He indicts himself, along with the novelists and publishers sitting beside him. The others try to continue with their original lines of thought, but end up answering him instead. They lack the wit to prove him wrong. You feel Ellison's tremendous intelligence; a certain haughtiness; and even, maybe, an undercurrent of anger, to which so many observers testified: 'a continuous effort . . . to keep a lid on the volcanic parts of his personality', as the writer Jervis Anderson once put it. 'Don't do violence to what I am saying,' he warns one of the participants, a bit violently.

LRB 1 November 2007 | PDF Download