Day 318, Quasi-Quarantine: Ambitious "Juneteenth" Stirs Echoes Of Ellison's Living Voice

"Walking her along Fifth Avenue with all the eyes reacting and she no flapper but something more formed, more realized, more magically achieved, and the crowds' imagination whirling like these blossoms tossed in a whirlwind and blown in the million directions of their hopes, hates, fancies, dreams, and we, she and I, become all things to all minds, drawing out their very souls, their potentialities set athrob by the passage of our forms through their atmosphere, sending them ever seeking for some finer thing."

It's difficult to assess a brilliant work like "Juneteenth" based on the fact that it was published posthumously and required that a lot of creative license be taken by the editor. Ralph Ellison wrote some 2,000 pages in this effort, spanning 40 years, so we have to consider this version an editorial interpretation of what the final book may have been intended to be.

Ellison relies heavily on irony and allegory, and his ability to weave politics, religion, racism, and regional culture into the narrative is beyond approach. However, there were key plot points that were left unclear and, as many have pointed out, "Juneteenth" does not take the traditional form of a novel.

The relationship between the hole-y and holy Reverend Hickman and the fallen Bliss/Sunraider is fraught with hypocrisy and racial under- and overtones, serving as a timeless exploration of the evils done and the values compromised under the guise of politics and power.

"We don't want to have to break anybody's back just to save their souls, do you, Bliss?"

Scott Saul of the Boston Review once referred to the book as an "ambivalent masterpiece," and I feel that's a fair way to describe this stunning, sprawling, challenging literary journey.

"In this country men can be born and live well and die without ever having to feel much of what makes their ease possible, just because so much is buried under all of this black and white mess that in their ignorance some folks accept is as a natural condition. But then again, maybe they just feel that the whole earth would blow up if even a handful of folks get to digging into it."