Invisible Man

[terrance fitzgerald]

Wha? Watts? Lot49? 

Isn't Slothrop Ellison's Invisible Man? Sure he is. And the overt

allusions to Ellison's classic should be obvious to anyone who just 

re-read the novel. Consider that Invisible Man ends up just like Slothrop, 

in the sewer, under ground, underworld. Remember that Malcolm is there  too. 

And remember that Invisible Man works in a paint factory. Now, how many paint (dye) 

factories does Slothrop "work" run for his life in? Ain't there

some strange shit in GR about a Jewish lightninged paint factory? 

Didn't Slothrop do that old I'm Hiter the house painter bit? 

Invisible Man walks in on a Union Meeting. Just trying to get

lunch ... ends up getting a rocket to the face. Ends up being

a subject in some Pointsman's hospital-factory. And check out the cure ...

the treatment the brotha gets. Ain't that something like what

happens to Slothrop too. And when he gets out of the factory-hospital. 

that what's her name (Black woman who takes him in, he smashes

her piggy and books ... is it Mary), kinda like that doll Slothrop

 can't find and nobody, not even the reader, can find ... is G O N E. 

MMMMM, and ain't Invisible Man all doped up and messed up from the 

treatment, but that's when he, kinda like when Slothrop discovers

that he's an Invisible American trying to be invisible to 

the Americans, begins to see. He begins, and maybe this is the 

Oedipa trip, America ... in the streets, in the trash and 

memories tossed out on the street, disposessed .... 

 

anyway, I think VL is indebted to Mumbo Jumbo and GR to I M.

 

 		
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