At his death on 16 April 1994, Ralph Ellison had come to be recognized as one of the world's most distinguished men of letters, primarily on the strength of the only novel published during his lifetime, Invisible Man (1952). For this powerful first novel Ellison received the Russwurm Award, the Certificate of Award from the Chicago Defender, and the National Book Award, whose citation from the jury of Martha Foley, Irving Howe, Howard Mumford Jones, and Alfred Kazin read: "With positive exuberance of narrative gifts, he has broken away from the conventions and patterns of the tight 'well-made' novel. Mr. Ellison has the courage to take many literary risks, and he has succeeded with them." In 1954 he won a Rockefeller Foundation Award and was selected to tour and lecture in Germany and at the Salzburg Seminar in Austria. He received Prix de Rome Fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and...