"Society, Morality and the Novel" (1957), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), pp. 699-700.
Context: Perhaps the novel evolved in order to deal with man's growing awareness that behind the facade of social organisations, manners, customs, myths, rituals and religions of the post-Christian era lies chaos. Man knows, despite the certainties which it is the psychological function of his social institutions to give him, that he did not create the universe, and that the universe is not at all concerned with human values. Man knows that even in this day of marvelous technology and the tenuous subjugation of the atom, that nature can crush him, and that at the boundaries of human order the arts and the instruments of technology are hardly more than magic objects which serve to aid us in our ceaseless quest for certainty. We cannot live, as someone has said, in the contemplation of chaos, but neither can we live without an awareness of chaos, and the means through which we achieve that awareness, and through which we assert our humanity most significantly against it, is in great art. In our time the most articulate art form for defining ourselves and for asserting our humanity is the novel. Certainly it is our most rational art form for dealing with the irrational.
Ralph Ellison: Form
Ralph Ellison was American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. Explore interesting quotes on form.“Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement.”
Prologue.
Invisible Man (1952)
Context: I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement.
"Brave Words for a Startling Occasion" (1953), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 154.
"Address to the Harvard College Alumni, Class of 1949" (1974), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 429.
Source: Three Days Before the Shooting... (2010), p. 418.
"Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity" (1953), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 81.
"The Art of Fiction: An Interview" (The Paris Review, Spring 1955), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 218.
Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 12.
“Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains.”
Source: Three Days Before the Shooting... (2010), p. 311.
"Society, Morality and the Novel" (1957), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 699.
"Richard Wright's Blues" (1945), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 129.
“God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.”
Source: Three Days Before the Shooting... (2010), p. 987.