Among the many devastating lines one passage bounced back and forth in my head like a clapper:

"In going underground, I whipped it all except the mind, the mind. And the mind that has conceived a plan of living must never lose sight of the chaos against which that pattern was conceived. That goes for societies as well as for individuals. Thus, having tried to give pattern to the chaos which lives within the pattern of your certainties, I must come out, I must emerge."

There is something I can't reconcile about that passage. Something that troubles me about patterning chaos within a pattern of certainties that feels a bit like a snake eating it's own tail and yet there is a contradiction in that passage in that it rings entirely true.

There is obviously a lot to say about this incredible novel, one of the few masterpieces of American literature I have read. Masters theses and dissertations have been written about Ellison's work applying a range of critical analysis using lenses from post-colonialist thought to Jacques Lacan. It would be well beyond the scope of a review to go into any textual analysis and do it justice.

Here's what I can tell you if this novel has caught your fancy. Don't hesitate. The use of metaphor both in scene writing as well as plotting are among the best I have ever read. Where other novels are lucky if they can pull off one or two major set-piece chapters this one is saturated with them.

This is a work of art that is without question poetic, insightful, and resonant long after finishing the text.