“The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.”

— Ralph Ellison, book Shadow and Act

Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), Introduction, p. xix; in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 56.

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Ralph Ellison82

American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer 1914–1994

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