Invisible Man
Invisible Man is the story of a young black man from the South who does not fully understand racism in the world. Filled with hope about his future, he goes to college, but gets expelled for showing one of the white benefactors the real and seamy side of black existence. He moves to Harlem and becomes an orator for the Communist party, known as the Brotherhood. In his position, he is both threatened and praised, swept up in a world he does not fully understand. As he works for the organization, he encounters many people and situations that slowly force him to face the truth about racism and his own lack of identity. As racial tensions in Harlem continue to build, he gets caught up in a riot that drives him to a manhole. In the darkness and solitude of the manhole, he begins to understand himself - his invisibility and his identity. He decides to write his story down (the body of the novel) and when he is finished, he vows to enter the world again.
Stats for nerds
10recommend
24mentions
22people
2010–2025years
46% recommend54% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume
Multiple books from both the Torah, and Old and New Testaments of various versions of the Bible
Gomorra by Roberto Saviano
- I’ll give a few.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (and the great TA I had teaching the course) got me to change my major to English as a college freshman. I was just hit with a thought like, “I’ve never read anything like this and I’ve never heard a teacher want to talk about books this deeply.”
Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell showed a voice that I’d never heard before — knowledgeable about history, indie rock, cult movies, rural living, and very funny. It was like, “This is exactly who I want to be.”
Then I spent my whole life thinking I was a disorganized person and through the power of a really good memory I was able to hold things together at work. Then I read Mindset by Carol Dweck and Everything In Its Place by Dan Charnas that convinced me that a) I was holding myself back by thinking I was a disorganized person and that b) I could become an organized person. Maybe the best professional decision I’ve ever made because it turns out that being organized is really really useful.
- I was wrong to use the word "obviously", and would change it to "in my opinion" if I could still edit that post. And definitely did not intend to minimize mens problems - I'm a man myself and have first hand experience. I've had this conversation with a friend who is a outspoken feminist who I felt erased the problems men faced.
I don't have time to show my thoughts with any objective metrics, so I'm just going to lay out how I see things, so this will be touchy-feely. This is merely my opinion and I have no problem with people disagreeing.
I think the biggest impact is in how people can function in modern society - pay gap, positions of power, tokenization - a good book is "Invisible Man" by Ralph Waldo Ellison which is about more than being black in America but about being an individual that everyone wants to put in a box or a particular group - he's invisible because people don't see the individual. It's universal, and everyone feels that to some degree, but the degree I feel it as a white male is much smaller. Basically your ability to project your will on the world is easy mode for white male (btw - me).
Anecdote alert: For example I was literally just talking to an old friend who I've worked with in the past who is a great architect but kept getting the in-the-middle-of-nowhere projects at a very well known and old NYC firm, so she started her own architecture business and is doing quite well.
But not that it makes things easy for men! Because there is also expectation to be a provider, suck up your emotions and be tough. These things, which some point to as "the problem" are harming men as well and should be addressed. And this is where it gets very messy - some of the things that are "evidence" that men are privileged are also things that harm men in non-obvious ways. And as for the "easy to project your will", there is also an expectation that you have to and you're a failure if you don't. Why can't someone live a simple life without feeling like a failure?
Ultimately I think the ideal goal should be to not push gender based expectations - both for male and female.
- 1) Chris Moriarty. Spin State - relatively-hard sci-fi with decent non sci-fi elements (i.e. characters and stuff), which I think is rare.
2) Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man. I really enjoyed the writing, among other things, and how he captures short moments and scenes with sort of a hard-to-describe quality of a visual art, almost.
3) Ilya Somin. Free To Move. To me most of the book was "duh" but I think it would be a good read for people on the fence about immigration and private vs public institutions.
4) Vaclav Smil. Energy And Civilization; possibly How the World Really Works, still reading that one. Really dense and detailed examination of energy history of mankind for the former, and infrastructure of technological civilization for the latter.
5) Pluckrose & Lindsday. Cynical Theories. Good 101 on CRT and modern woke movement.
6) Alexander. New Jim Crow. Good 101 on war on drugs, although some broader social arguments the book makes straightforwardly don't seem to follow, or are contradicted by, its factual base IMHO.
7) Stephenson. Seveneves - really good hard sci-fi imho, although felt very, very long.
8) Orwell. Down and Out in Paris and London. A good book about poverty only 70-100 years ago. Also a good perspective for modern complaints about poverty - I have some non-US background for that, so I think many US readers might benefit more.
On the fence. 1) I want to plug Seleukid Royal Economy, just for the hell of it, if you are interested in ancient economy :)
2) Galef. Scout Mindset - on the fence about this one, but it seemed like it was way too long for what it offers. Maybe I've just read a lot of the same stuff ago.
3) Okorafor. Binti - not bad as a YA book, but sci-fi aspects are remarkably bad.
A few more I'm too lazy to type out ;)
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
Read it in my first semester as a freshman Biochem major in college with a great grad student as the teacher of a class on American Lit. Really changed how I thought about books and how I approached writing.
The class was incredibly challenging. I stopped going to my chemistry classes and changed my major to English/Creative Writing.
That was 20 years ago and things have worked out OK. I’m sure I’m happier now (business management career) than I would be in a scientific field.
- Some of my favorite fiction books and short story collections in no particular order:
1) Collected Fictions by Borges
2) The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka
3) The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
4) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
5) 9 Stories by J.D. Salinger
6) 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme
7) 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8) The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
