Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray
By (Author) Ralph Ellison
By (author) Albert Murray
Edited by John Callahan
Introduction by John Callahan
Preface by Albert Murray
Random House USA Inc
Vintage Books
15th June 2001
United States
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000
813.54
Physical Properties
Paperback
272
Width 133mm, Height 203mm, Spine 15mm
254g
Description
This absorbing collection of letters spans a decade in the lifelong friendship of two remarkable writers who engaged the subjects of literature, race, and identity with deep clarity and passion. The correspondence begins in 1950 when Ellison is living in New York City, hard at work on his enduring masterpiece, INVISIBLE MAN and Murray is a professor at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Mirroring a jam session in which two jazz musicians "trade twelves" - each improvising twelve bars of music around the same musical idea - their lively dialogue centers upon their respective writing, the jazz they both love so well, on travel, family, the work literary contemporaries, (including Richard Wright, James Baldwin, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway) and the challenge of racial inclusiveness that they wish to pose to America through their craft. Ralph Ellison died in 1994.
Reviews
"The greatest pleasure to be found in TRADING TWELVES is the warmth of friendship." New York Times Book Review
Author Bio
Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma in 1914. He is the author of the novel Invisible Man (1952), as well as numerous essays and short stories. He died in New York City in 1994. Random House published Juneteenth, the book-length excerpt from his unfinished second novel,posthumously in 1999.
Albert Murray was born in Alabama in 1916. A cultural critic, biographer, essayist, and novelist, he has taught at several colleges, including Colgate and Barnard, and his works include The Omni-Americans, South to a Very Old Place, Train Whistle Guitar, The Blue Devils of Nada, and The Seven League Boots.Murray lives in New York City.
John F. Callahan is Morgan S. Odell Professor of Humanities at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He is the editor of Juneteenth and the Modern Library edition of The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison. Callahan is the literary executor of Ralph Ellison's estate.
