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"Some cord of kinship stronger and deeper than blood": An Interview with John F. Callahan, Editor of Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth - Interview
African American Review, Winter, 2000 by Christopher C. De Santis, John F. Callahan
De Santis: Saul Bellow commented in 1994 that the portions of the manuscript he had read were "easily on a level with Invisible Man." Do you agree?
Callahan: Yes, I do. It's not Invisible Man, but I think that the writing in Juneteenth shows terrific virtuosity. It is Ellison at his best, in his prime, and I think he takes some chances here. He certainly took chances in Invisible Man, but he takes other, different chances here.
De Santis: Do you see Juneteenth actually rising above the technical and thematic virtuosity of Invisible Man in any ways?
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Callahan: Well, there's a technical virtuosity here that's quite different from that in Invisible Man, and I think some of the riffs are more complex than those in Invisible Man. Now, don't get me wrong. For what it is, Invisible Man is absolutely a tour de force. Ellison hit it! We could say that Joyce did the same thing in Portrait of the Artist, and then aimed for something else in Ulysses. Just so, Ralph aimed for something else in his next novel. As he once said, every novel is also a discussion of the form, and it seems to me that Juneteenth is a discussion of the form of the novel, as well as an original enactment of that form. Here again, I think the reference point is jazz. Invisible Man was meant to be symphonic, and it played out that way in its form. In this work, he tries to use jazz and, perhaps after Ellington and Bearden, create a jazz suite that has elements of collage. In Juneteenth he uses the forms of jazz, the breaks, the choruses in service of a larger, more expansive form.
De Santis: In a powerful climax at the end of Chapter 2, Sunraider, in his unconscious reveries, hears the words, "Bliss be-eeee thee ti-ee that binds." Binds what, or whom? Is this a call of the black community asserting that Bliss holds the promise of preventing it from being torn asunder by various forces, or is it the broader call of a nation still deeply divided?
Callahan: Both. The phrase evokes the old "ties that bind"--ties of human kinship and spiritual connection. Bliss does become the tie that binds Hickman, and then binds others in the congregation; they're very much united in their love and protection of this little boy, and perhaps of the nation itself which has also neglected them. There is also a sense of ties as bonds that bind people and keep them unfree.
When the line occurs to Bliss in his riff, he associates it with Hickman's Negro tradition of blessedness, because he was blessed, but he didn't fully know it. Ignorant, too, as the saying goes, but also blessed. He couldn't remain faithful to those who love him; he left them and rejected their tradition of blessedness.
De Santis: In Chapter 3, Hickman attempts to prevent Sunraider's assassin from plunging over the balcony by calling," 'Severen, wait.' "In Ellison's notes it becomes clear that Sunraider impregnated a woman who then gives birth to Severen, a child rejected by his father who grows to be the man that assassinates the Senator.
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