SOURCE: Eversley, Shelly. “The Lunatic's Fancy and the Work of Art.” American Literary History 13, no. 3 (fall 2001): 445-68.

In the following essay, Eversley maintains that “King of the Bingo Game” reflects Ellison's increasing interest in psychology and his support of a psychiatric clinic in Harlem.

It was as though I had entered a haunted wood wherein every detail of scene, each thought and incipient action, sprang together and became endowed with a surreal and sinister significance. Almost everything about me seemed bent upon contributing to my growing sense of the irrational disorder of life …

—Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Yes, sane men did misread reality. Just as he had once had fantasies, so now he was looking at men who were passionately arguing their own fantasies, trying to decide which fantasy was to be taken for reality.

—Richard Wright, The Outsider

When the Lafargue Psychiatric Clinic opened in Harlem in...