Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

<p>"At his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison left behind several thousand pages of his unfinished second novel, which he had spent nearly four decades writing. Long awaited, it was to have been the work Ellison intended to follow his masterpiece, Invisible Man. Five years later, Random House published Juneteenth, drawn from the central narrative of Ellison's epic work in progress." "Three Days Before the Shooting ... gathers together in one volume, for the first time, all the parts of that planned opus, including three major sequences never before published. Set in the frame of a deathbed vigil, the story is a gripping multigenerational saga centered on the assassination of the controversial, race-baiting U.S. senator Adam Sunraider, who's being tended to by "Daddy" Hickman, the elderly black jazz musician turned preacher who raised the orphan Sunraider, a "little boy of indefinite race who looks white," in rural Georgia. Presented in their unexpurgated, provisional state, the narrative sequences form a deeply poetic, moving, and profoundly entertaining book, brimming with humor and tension, composed in Ellison's magical jazz-inspired prose style and marked by his incomparable ear for vernacular speech." Beyond its compelling narratives, Three Days Before the Shooting ... is perhaps most notable for its extraordinary insight into the creative process of one of this country's greatest writers. In various stages of composition and revision, its typescripts and computer files testify to Ellison's achievement and struggle with his material from the mid-1950s until his death forty years later.</p>

Author(s): Ralph Ellison  

ISBN 10: 0375759549
ISBN 13: 9780375759543
Pages: 1136
Format: Paperback
Publication: 4/26/2011