W100 Journal Week 9

I wrote this in class today. I didn’t bring it up because it’s a complicated thought process, and I don’t feel as though I do it justice on paper, and much less so trying to explain it to the class.

While reading “Invisible Man” the thing that has troubled me most of all is my reaction to the text and the questions that have arisen for me during the reading process. Ellison’s writing is clearly very articulate. I really enjoy his writing style as well; I find it familiar without being simple, but at the same time it disturbs me to think that the reason why I like it is because it sounds like the way a white person would write. This idea mainly stems from the current debate over whether or not it was appropriate to call Barack Obama “articulate.” The whole argument really baffles me. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the issue in order to decide exactly where I stand. In regard to “Invisible Man”, I have to consider if I would feel the same about the story if it were written in a more dialectic voice. This brings up issues of cultural identification and how that affects the way that people read and make value judgments of literature. It makes me wonder if there are other books of similar quality that are not as well-received because they don’t sound traditionally intellectual. On the other hand, are they still as high quality if they aren’t written in an “intellectual” voice? Also, are the terms intellectual and white interchangable in this sense? It seems in this book as though they often are. For example, is dialogue that sounds “white” also intellectual and vice versa, how are these parameters assigned, and how much truth is found in them?

These are only questions that have been on my mind while reading “Invisible Man.” I haven’t come up with any answers that satisfy me. Maybe there are no answers that will satisfy. Maybe there are no answers at all.