Praise
for RALPH ELLISON’s
Juneteenth
“Juneteenth is written with unmistakable Ellisonian zest, depth, and elegance.… The work holds together as a complete, aesthetically satisfying, and at times thrilling whole.”
—The Atlantic Monthly
“Ralph Ellison’s generosity, humor and nimble language are, of course, on display in Juneteenth, but it is his vigorous intellect that rules the novel. A majestic narrative concept.”
—Toni Morrison
“[F]irst-rate Ellison, exploring race and America in dreamlike prose.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“A stunning achievement.… Juneteenth is a tour de force of untutored eloquence. Ellison sought no less than to create a Book of Blackness, a literary composition of the tradition at its most sublime and fundamental.”
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Time
“Ellison’s writerly skills are awesome. He enables us to relive the astonishment of the first generation to experience the movies and reanimates the commonplace pleasures of a type of boyhood that may never come again. He recaptures the heated fervor of the revival tent so vividly that you feel yourself begin to sweat.”
—Houston Chronicle
“Impressionistic, jazzy, and Faulknerian, assembled from stories inside of stories, dreams, flights of memory, and bolts of rhetoric.”
—New York
“For anyone who cares about American literature and the seemingly insolvable pain of race, Juneteenth is a must-read.”
—USA Today
“Juneteenth contains the most resonant and alluring uses of the American idiom I’ve read in a while.… It rolls and riffs. Get down to the bookstore and open it and read, brothers and sisters, read.”
—D. T. Max, The New York Observer
“Ellison wrote better sentences than just about anybody.… Juneteenth is good the first time, better the second. His meanings slip and slide, they are associative, like American culture, where nothing is ever quite what it seems, nor stays that way for long, and where absolutely nothing is purely black and white.”
—Newsweek
“Juneteenth is a cause for celebration.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“More than anything, Ellison was a passionate writer, and passion is unquestionably present in Juneteenth.”
—The Boston Globe
“Ellison may be the greatest of jazz sermonizers and homiletic blues guitarists ever to write fiction.”
—The Nation
“A riotous revel in what H. L. Mencken called The American Language, which Ralph Ellison has taken to his beloved Territory and back again.”
—Mirabella
“A uniquely American drama of independence and codependency set in a world of conspicuous racial fractures and invisible solidarities.”
—Boston Review of Books
“A work so long in process that it assumed legendary status decades ago, the successor to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man appears at last.… It is a work of rare and doubtless unique intelligence, purpose, and power—a generous legacy bequeathed to us, persuasive testimony to the genius of Ralph Ellison.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Juneteenth may be one of the most important books of the year, if not the decade.… An eloquent, intelligent, and worthwhile statement on race relations in the country during the twentieth century.”
—The Tampa Tribune-Times
“Ellison stands as one of the exemplary writers of the century.… This painstakingly assembled edition keeps his genius visible.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“Demanding, dense, and undeniably brilliant.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“On display throughout the novel are Ellison’s wit, his marvelous ear for language, and his sublime intellectual approach to the visceral issues eating at America’s heart.”
—The Star-Ledger
“The fun of reading this book—and there is some fun on every page—comes from Ellison’s familiarity with African-American folklore and literature.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“Ellison’s signature preoccupations with language and the racial markings of American Identity stream through a beautifully written tale.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Ellison, both as a prose writer and literary thinker, was and is an American master.”
—The Denver Post
“Ellison’s long-delayed second novel is a fitting testament to his talent.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“Thanks to the astute and dedicated editing of John Callahan, we have a book that can fairly be called Ralph Ellison’s second masterpiece. Juneteenth is, quite simply, a great American novel.”
—The Oregonian