I'm particularly proud of one of today's entries. I've decided to share it here.
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Ralph Elison’s Richard Wright’s Blues
First Separate Printing, 1945
Ellison, Ralph. Richard Wright’s Blues ...1945. First separate printing of Ellison's seminal essay on Wright, catalyzed by the appearance of Wright’s Black Boy, which Wright had published as an autobiographical account of what it was like to grow up black in the South. Elison offers a powerful critique, likening Wright’s storytelling to a musician blowing the blues. Elison felt the two were one because, like the musician, Wright had heeded the impulse “to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in [his] aching consciousness...to transcend [them]...[with] near-tragic, near-comic lyricism.” Both forms of expression, Elison argues, are lyrical chronicles of personal tragedy. Elison’s slow build and skillfully-woven metaphors slowly uncover the root of Wright’s work: that white society recognizes Negroes only as a group, that black society reinforces this, and woe befall that dark-skinned youth who seeks to stand as an individual. He -- Elison pronounces as Wright’s message -- shall find no sanctuary, no friend among his own or among others. Elison claims that this realization fueled Wright’s righteous anger, that this work was a meeting of the American negro’s pre-individualism with Wright’s angry desire for individualism, and that no balm could be found to soothe this burning but that found in the self.
The powerful depth of Elison’s analysis is matched in this particular copy by its mysterious origin. By most accounts, it should not exist. Not reported in any of the ordinary bibliographic references, not quite an offprint from the periodical, but instead a new setting of the text, this printing contains two clues as to its origin...[and] the Union Printer's slug in the corner of the rear wrapper, which includes the digits '52' to the right of the logo, possibly indicating the year of printing as 1952. If this printing was made in the year of the appearance of the essay, it would precede Wright’s most important work, Invisible Man, by over 6 years; if it was indeed printed in 1952, it may or may not precede the novel. In either case, this is a rare and bold work by one of the most important voices of African-American literature on the most consequential of topics: the societal forces keeping black Americans down. Stapled printed self wrappers. Slight rusting to staples, otherwise a fine copy. It is an uncommon and highly important link between America’s Black Boy and her Invisible Man.
