I've read it. Although long enough ago ( before HS) that I think I might confuse it with "Black Like Me."
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Invisible Man is indeed amazing.
Weird. The opening quote on tonight's CM, which I just started watching seconds after reading this thread, is from IM.
Sophia, Invisible Man is really distinct. I had read both Native Son and Black Boy and had zero interest in teaching them. I had approached IM very cautiously because I thought it would be another book of a type.
But damn! It was so amazing -- I think the search for individual identity in the face of societal (of all races) expectations is a challenge and a great story to tell.
I loved it so much.
I loved Invisible Man too, Kat. I wrote a paper on it in college.
There's a ton there to address so it must be a fun book to write ABOUT. It was extremely fun to teach. And I hadn't realized that the Battle Royale scene was actually written to be an intentional stand alone if necessary.
I've been delving into the Paris Review's interviews. The Ralph Ellison one [link] is excellent.
Invisible Man was one of the formative books of my childhood. I think probably I wasn't actually supposed to read it yet, but once I realized that nobody stopped kids from going to the adult book shelves in the library, it was all a lost cause from that point on.
Hmmm.... my formative books were Shakespeare's comedies, though I didn't get 80% of it read in 5th grade. Followed quickly by John Jakes books. Then when I hit high school it was the Brontes. Then there was a Leon Uris phase. I think Handmaid's Tale and Margaret Atwood came next.
Then the next really big memorable book was The Magus. Then a whole mess of nonfiction (Francis Fukuyama). Then Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.
I didn't read TKAM until a few years ago. And I wish I had read IM in high school. But no. I had the Scarlet Letter and Huck Finn (ptooey) shoved down my throat.
I went on a short-story kick recently and just posted my reviews of Fragile Things, Smoke and Mirrors, and Machine of Death (two Gaiman collections and an awesome anthology that everyone should read).
I have read "Invisible Man' but not since I was seventeen...we were assigned it senior year. I imagine reading it would be different now that i have my own power plant. Back then, I was all "Got to, man. This America."