So much changes yet so much stays the same . . . poignant almost 70 years after published. ( )

I'm glad to have finally read this brilliant American classic, which I somehow have avoided or overlooked since I first heard of it back in high school. Chapter 1 is nothing less than an encapsulation of the entire history of the United States told as a brutal, ugly, incredibly racist "battle royale". Overall, this is the coming of age story of a young African American man, told in first person, who starts out as a naive but conflicted product of the Jim Crow south, and who has been indoctrinated with the ideas of Booker T. Washington while attending a historic Black college. From that point we follow him to Harlem where he sheds all his illusions and delusions and becomes "invisible", living underground off the grid so to speak, and surviving in some way that is hidden from us. We learn how he gets there and what might happen next. Along the way he becomes prominent in the Brotherhood (the American Communist Party, I guess) and these chapters are tense and frustrating. Run by white people, the organization blatantly and hyprocritically exploits Black people for its own ends, which are, confusing, contradictory, and incoherent. One day they adore Mr. Invisible, the next they are denouncing him internally and threatening him with...something. They are very big on being "scientific" and whitesplaining the hell out of their activities in Harlem. At any rate, when we reach the end, Mr. Invisible appears ready to emerge from underground, just in time for the civil rights movement and all that has happened since. Seventy years after its publication, this novel is still incredibly relevant. ( )

One of the great American novels of the 20th Century....

This was an excellent book. The prose was evocative in a way that reminds me of what creative writing teachers try to encourage but fail to describe. The narrative flows despite the brutal topics. I'll admit that the resolution of the story itself is not entirely clear to me; I didn't have the revelation that the main character had. Still, it is easily the best-written work of fiction that I've read in a long time. ( )

In this novel a young, black, undergraduate college student from the South moves north to live in New York City after he is expelled from college near the end of his junior year. He somehow has survived his whole life so far as a seriously naive, trusting soul who has no clue that rich White dudes might not be acting in his best interests. So, when he is handed a stack of sealed 'letters of introduction' to rich White dudes in New York City, and he's told to take a year off of college and gain some life experience up north, he takes all this at face value and heads off on a bus the very next day to enjoy this new adventure he's been granted. And, of course, the reality of his situation is a lot less rosy than he imagines.
I found this book annoying, because of the main character mostly. I know college kids can be awfully naive and dense, but it was still hard to believe that a young man growing up steeped in the heavily racist South, and attending college there, would not have developed some more survival traits in his young life prior to his New York adventure. His trusting nature seemed overly contrived. The situations he finds himself in once in New York might have happened anyway, trusting nature or not, so the story held together, but this was not the best book I have read in the US race relations vein. It was ok, though, probably worth reading, and an interesting perspective on the intersection between race activism and Communist activity during the mid-20th century. ( )