Editing Ralph Ellison (section)

==At Tuskegee Institute==
Ellison applied twice for admission to [[Tuskegee Institute]], the prestigious [[Historically black colleges and universities|all-black university]] in Alabama founded by [[Booker T. Washington]].<ref name="Als 2007"/> He was finally admitted in 1933 for lack of a trumpet player in its orchestra.<ref name="Als 2007"/> Ellison hopped freight trains to get to Alabama, and was soon to find out that the institution was no less class-conscious than white institutions generally were.<ref name="Als 2007"/>

Ellison's outsider position at Tuskegee "sharpened his satirical lens," critic [[Hilton Als]] believes: "Standing apart from the university's air of sanctimonious Negritude enabled him to write about it." In passages of ''Invisible Man'', "he looks back with scorn and despair on the snivelling ethos that ruled at Tuskegee."<ref name="Als 2007" />

Tuskegee's music department was perhaps the most renowned department at the school,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H9qSrfyjnyUC&pg=PA136|title=Booker T. Washington and the Art of Self-representation|last=Bieze|first=Michael|date=2008|publisher=Peter Lang |isbn=978-1433100109|language=en}}</ref> headed by composer [[William L. Dawson (composer)|William L. Dawson]]. Ellison also was guided by the department's piano instructor, [[Hazel Harrison]]. While he studied music primarily in his classes, he spent his free time in the library with modernist classics. He cited reading [[T. S. Eliot]]'s ''[[The Waste Land]]'' as a major awakening moment.<ref name= "Art of Fiction">{{Cite journal|title=''The Art of Fiction'' |journal= [[The Paris Review]] |url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5053/the-art-of-fiction-no-8-ralph-ellison| interviewer= Alfred Chester & Vilma Howard| number= 8| date=Spring 1955| access-date= April 4, 2017}}</ref> In 1934, he began to work as a desk clerk at the university library, where he read [[James Joyce]] and [[Gertrude Stein]]. Librarian Walter Bowie Williams enthusiastically let Ellison share in his knowledge.<ref name="Als 2007" />

A major influence upon Ellison was English teacher Morteza Drexel Sprague, to whom Ellison later dedicated his essay collection ''Shadow and Act''. He opened Ellison's eyes to "the possibilities of literature as a living art" and to "the glamour he would always associate with the literary life."<ref name="Als 2007" /> Through Sprague, Ellison became familiar with [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]]'s ''[[Crime and Punishment]]'' and [[Thomas Hardy]]'s ''[[Jude the Obscure]]'', identifying with the "brilliant, tortured anti-heroes" of those works.<ref name="Als 2007" />

As a child, Ellison evidenced what would become a lifelong interest in audio technology, starting by taking apart and rebuilding radios, and later moving on to constructing and customizing elaborate [[High fidelity|hi-fi]] stereo systems as an adult. He discussed this passion in a December 1955 essay, "Living With Music", in ''[[High Fidelity (magazine)|High Fidelity]]'' magazine.<ref>{{cite news|last= Ellison| first= Ralph|title=Living With Music |work=Shadow and Act|location=New York|publisher=Random House|year=1972|pages=187–93}}</ref> Ellison scholar John S. Wright contends that this deftness with the ins-and-outs of electronic devices went on to inform Ellison's approach to writing and the novel form.<ref>{{cite journal| last= Wright| first= John S. |title= 'Jack-the-Bear' Dreaming: Ellison's Spiritual Technologies| journal= Boundary 2| volume= 30| number= 2 | date=Summer 2003| page= 176| doi= 10.1215/01903659-30-2-175 | s2cid= 161979419 }}</ref> Ellison remained at Tuskegee until 1936, and decided to leave before completing the requirements for a degree.<ref name=bio/>