An interesting Washington Post article about Ralph Ellison's struggle to publish his second book, and its future:
It was only after Ellison's death that Fanny Ellison chose Callahan to become literary executor. This was an honor, but it soon became clear it was also a Herculean task. Manuscript pages, computer disks and scribbled notes lay helter-skelter, everywhere in his home. Ellison had not suffered from writer's block, after all. He had writer's fury. He had written and written and written. A gush of words, and chapters and notes about the chapters. There were background notes — musings on writing and America and fiction — much of it also beautifully written; notes about plot outlines and more characters, built word by word, then buried under more notes. It was a spouting gusher of artistic creation, fat manuscripts covering other fat manuscripts, almost all related to that second novel.
"Friends of Ralph's — and the critics — were talking about publication and money in commercial terms," Murray says. "But Ralph was thinking about understanding human beings, the human condition. Ralph was like a painter. He'd need to go back and look at his work over and over. Of course, doing that, it becomes hard to satisfy yourself." He goes on: "The critics have one perception of literary things, a literary life. Writers have different perceptions. Who am I to have said how many times he should or shouldn't have rewritten certain chapters? It was a matter of him having a lot to say. He was dealing with a lot of heavyweight stuff with a certain level of sophistication and profundity. Well, you have to do it the way you do it. Creativity is not manufacturing."
