Bryan Crable, Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke: At the Roots of the Racial Divide (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012).
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 (left) argues that the Burke-Ellison relationship can be
interpreted as a microcosm of the Ame
rican "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examination of published writings and unpublished correspondence, he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.
Penn State's Jack Selzer notes that Crable's work is "a
scholarly work of exceptional depth." "It offers considerable and
original insight into the work and careers of two of the most important
cultural figures in America during the twentieth century," Selzer writes, while it also illuminates a fundamental argument, "that the
relationship between Ellison and Burke epitomizes the larger racial
issue that lies at the heart of American culture." Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke is "Highly Recommended" by CHOICE, and John Wright from the University of Minnesota notes the book's "unique exploratio
n
Bryan Crable is Professor of Communication at Villanova
University and the Founding Director of the Waterhouse Family Institute
for the Study of Communication and Society. Crable is the only two-time winner of the Charles Kneupper Award for
best article of the year from the Rhetoric Society of America (2003,
2009), and, for his scholarly and professional contributions to the
discipline, was awarded the Kenneth Burke Society’s prestigious Lifetime
Achievement Award in 2011. His essays have appeared in leading rhetoric and communication journals, including The Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Rhetoric Review and Argumentation & Advocacy.
Book Links: University of Virginia Press site (includes a Google Preview of Ralph Ellison and Kenneth Burke)