For my independent study book, I chose to read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Most of us actually read the first chapter of this novel in sophomore year English with Mr. Shipman. I was wondering what you guys chose to read for your independent studies. Also, enjoy some fun facts about Ellison and his novel.
1. Ellison originally planned to be a musician but had to leave music school as he could not afford it after a few years.
2. Invisible Man actually took seven, and he began writing it in 1945 as a cook in the United States Military in World War II.
3. Eliot actually published the first essay as a short story in Horizon magazine in 1947, and we read the first chapter as a short story sophomore year.
4. The FBI had files on him due to his involvement in the civil rights movement and relationship with the communist party. The FBI actually had 1400 pages of information on Ellison.
5. In 2013, the book was actually banned in high schools in 2013 but was quickly reversed after national and local protests.
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1 comment:
Nice choice, and interesting facts!
I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and I loved it. It's about a dystopian America with a totalitarian government that bans books, and anyone caught with a book gets their house burned down and then gets carted off to a mental institution.
Two of the most interesting things I found about my book and its author (outside of the book's actual content) are:
1) Bradbury wrote the first draft of the book in 9 days on a typewriter that he rented for a dime a half hour in UCLA's Powell Library's basement.
2) It was written in 1953, so there's a LOT of historical context that I think is important to the book. Outside of America, there were Nazi book burnings and Stalin's purge (arrest of the "creative" types), and in America itself, of course, HUAC and the Hollywood Ten; McCarthyism; the Cold War; the Truman Doctrine; fear of communism; the Golden Age of Television; the list goes on. The history behind the book is so fascinating.
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