Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke focuses on the
little-known but important friendship between two canonical American writers. The story of this
fifty-year friendship, however, is more than literary biography; Bryan Crable argues that the
Burke-Ellison relationship can be interpreted as a microcosm of the American "racial divide."
Through examination of published writings and unpublished correspondence, he reconstructs the
dialogue between Burke and Ellison about race that shaped some of their most important works,
including Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives and Ellison's Invisible Man.
In addition, the book connects this dialogue to changes in American discourse about race.
Crable shows that these two men were deeply connected, intellectually and personally, but the social
division between white and black Americans produced hesitation, embarrassment, mystery, and
estrangement where Ellison and Burke might otherwise have found unity. By using Ellison's
nonfiction and Burke's rhetorical theory to articulate a new vocabulary of race, the author
concludes not with a simplistic "healing" of the divide but with a challenge to embrace
the responsibility inherent to our social order.American
Literatures Initiative