Ralph Ellison is best known for his National Book Award winning novel, Invisible Man.  It’s my favorite book I’ve ever read.  The way Ellison presents his heart-wrenching story; the graphic details, the vivid descriptions, the perfect pacing…I love that book, and recommend it constantly at my job (I work at an indepenent bookstore).  I have acquired some of his other books, but haven’t quite gotten around to reading them yet (plan to soon!).  However, the most tragic of his books is the novel Juneteenth.  Ellison spent the remainder of his life, beginning before the publication of Invisible Man, trying to create a second novel (As early as 1951).  Alas, he was a crippling perfectionist, and the work never saw the light of day in his lifetime.  44 years…a dizzying amount of time to be so focused on one novel.  According to the Introduction of Juneteenth, Ellison had so many pages of manuscript (over 2000) that it would have been the size of three standard novels!  Juneteenth finally debuted 4 years after Ellison’s death, due in part to his literary executioner John F. Callahan pouring over heaps of notes, computer discs and left-over pages of manuscript…but in the end, Callahan felt that his initial work may not have done the story justice.  Callahan and his assistant, Adam Bradley, worked an additional eight years on the work, and their labor will be a new, more-complete version of the novel that will be arriving next year on February 2nd.  Entitled Three Days Before the Shooting, this revision will be 3 times as large as Juneteenth, and will be filled with Commentary and Supporting Notes from Callahan and Bradley.  I’m half hesitant to read Juneteenth now, as a (hopefully) improved version is due out in several months, but perhaps the endeavor would be worth my time, to see how much is different from the first draft to the second.