SOURCE: "Ellison's Early Fiction," in Negro American Literature Forum, Vol. 7, No. 2, Summer, 1973, pp. 53-9.

In the following essay, Deutsch examines Ellison 's early short stories in relation to Invisible Man to show that his primary fictional themes remained constant throughout the course of his career.

Although Invisible Man is his most famous and most important work, Ralph Ellison had done a great deal of writing before the appearance of the novel. In fact, before the publication of Invisible Man, in 1952, Ellison had already earned a small reputation as a literary figure. In the spring 1942 issue of Negro Quarterly, for example, he is cited as "a short story writer as well as literary critic." In the next issue of that publication he is listed as Managing Editor, a position he retained until the demise of the shortlived Negro Quarterly one and a half years later. He contributed "Mister Toussan...