manuscript pages? is it just as is? >> great question. ellison was a tinker by trade. he worked over his pages with such meticulous care and one of the things we did was not simply to identify the latest manuscript for a given period of time although we certainly did that but we go to the library of congress and there were indications on the latest version. >> your perspective and mine.

that work as well, this goes back to when he was an apprentice working his trade in the 30s and he liked to have his hands in motion, even into the 80s and 90s he followed that practice. >> that is maddening to an editor. in parts of book ii where there was an original typescript, he made in the nation's mostly in pencil on this original typescript. laboriously figured that out. as adams suggested he wrote in

great haste. >> better check the carbon on this manuscript and the worst nightmare was true. he made different changes. there was no real -- to this day i don't have a really good surmise that i trust in the slightest about which one was before the other. what i tried to do is to say we incorporate both. sometimes it had to be a choice. it was the briar patch. ellison ran away into the briar

patch and a follow-up. i wasn't born and bred in the editorial, had to inquire it. >> i know that the "invisible man" we are familiar with is heavily edited. the editor did a lot to. is there any way we could see this in the future 200 page version? does it lend itself to that? >> i am not sure with respect to "invisible man". how is it heavily edited? [talking over each other] >> when he submitted it it didn't have a lot more pages. >> there is an alternate version of "invisible man" from which

ellison and his editor cut 200 pages but make no mistake. ellison made those cuts. his forthcoming book on ellison is about that. i will leave it to you to talk about that. ellison did all of it. no one impose it on him. >> there's so much in there that actually had to write a separate book to cover this. ralph ellison in progress is coming out in may. i looked at the invisible man typescripts to see what kind of book it would be had we had these other pages. it is it will not a better book but it is a different book. for instance, "invisible man" is married at least in one of the iterations of the novel. he is married to a white woman, member of the brotherhood. ellison cut out in various stages a host of characters some

of which remain in shadow form in the published novel. we have a prologue and epilogue and scenes in between. you can always go back to that first person, the solidity of that. this is teeming with voices, black, white, young, old, all sorts of things going on. he didn't have the same place to go to keep it on the line. he had to look for other elements of his craft to bring it together. the fact that he didn't do that

is the reason he didn't have a book published last time. all the speculation we have about the psychology of ellison and what pressures he was under and other things. literary evidence shows -- more questions to answer on the matter of form and the shape of the book. it would have been of big book regardless. i don't know if it would have been this big but it would have been big. >> do you want to address the issue of the house fire? >> this is an example of history, actually of an event becoming somewhat of a myth. we have ellison's letters in the fire in november a few days

before thanksgiving in 1967. allison writes letters, two letters within ten or 12 days of the fire in which he grits his teeth and pulls up his socks and says we have had a tragedy. not only do we lose our house, our summer home but i lost a summer's worth of revisions. we know how much material he had but it was excruciating and terrible pain for ralph because he was on the case. he was hoping to finish it. there was a commitment to deliver the manuscript to random house. they kept reassuring his contact and they paid him a substantial advance, $50,000 so he was pushing to get it done so he could deliver it by the next

summer or late spring. the vision is gone. but a summer's worth of revision is a lot different from losing the entire manuscript or even the entire book. my surmise is he was hot on the trail of trying to bring book ii to a conclusion and he lost that. that is conjecture. the next thing he did publish in 69 so he would have gotten it to the editors of the magazine within seven months of the fire, something called night talk. and also juneteenth. that was to reassure himself and the world i am on it. later ralph and others talk about the fire as if it destroyed most of the book and

he had to put it together again and it was poignant in the last interview on the occasion of his birthday in 1994, he was turning a. he talked about the fire. as if it had been absolutely devastating and crippling in every way especially in terms of what he had lost but then he goes on to say i am working everyday and there will be something very soon. >> the last question, i am going to put you on the spot. this is a book filled with wonderful narratives, variations, very strong in the book what you published as

juneteenth. would ralph ellison have been well served to do that himself? is that the book that you think was waiting to be free? and secondly, do you have any second thoughts about having done it? >> let me start with the second part of the question. do i have second thoughts? sure. would i have done it again? yes. it was always a close run thing. a choice -- the best choice would have been that route lost his memory and he could go back to riverside drive, set him up and say we almost lost you and you have to do that second novel now. or the holy ghost would have come down and we go to the old

testament. i don't want to kid but humor is the best defense against grief. it was deep grief of ralph ellison that he didn't finish this book and the more i work with it, i grieve over what he had not brought to completion. i myself believe juneteenth in terms of the riding, in terms of the best allusion to history, admit to a wonderful phrase that a woman at the smithsonian brought to our discussion last night, at the center for african-american history and culture, through an african-american lens. henry louis gates called the

book of blackness. i think it ought to stand and i feel much better because it is alongside this. and if kendall doesn't take us into a new land of avatar people would still be reading books and we are all out. >> i want to say red on the radio today in talking about how this is a book that people may dip in and out and he was working on this for 40 years, a really great thing to bring to our attention not only in seeing this explicitly but having people cover that especially when you think about his

identity as a jazz musician because often people get hung up on what the final document was and it was refreshing to see the amazing intent that went into 40 years of work and even though we all grieve about it, it never came out until now. so thank you very much for doing that. my question is in the familial sense and going through his work if you could talk a little more, saying that the -- every true american is somehow black, some like the characters in this book were to oppose him racially, how would he explain that to us during a divided time or where

people are now? >> he would talk about culture. we both refer to it over and over again. blackness has to do with culture for ralph. it is jazz, the blues, the whole african-american tradition of being able to take a punch of whatever sort and may be real from it and hurt like hell but still get up and if you were knocked down put your dukes back up and carry on the struggle and keep the faith. all these things we associate -- you talk about slavery and people say how slavery had dehumanized black folks, ellison said the hell it did. the hell it did, he said. he said any people who could

experience all of what was done, all of the humiliation, the pain, subjugation and all the rest and rise out of it and create the oral tradition of the sermons, the stories, the blues, later on and hang together as a people, this is one of the heroic achievements of human history. he believed that and you know what he was trying to do? he was trying to cut us all into the deal if we would just respond and participate. one of the most profound statements of the american identity. >> it is the participatory ideal. part of the black tradition is call and response. ellison offers that call to us in his fiction, in "invisible

man" and in this long awaited second novel. it embodies the very ideal of the phrase that john mentioned from ellison's article that whatever else the true american is he is also somehow black and embodies it quite literally in a single character, son rader, a child born of indeterminate raise is ellison's phrase. ellison traded his character with that kind of significance with the significance of am bodying america and the promise of a multiracial american democracy. this is a book that belongs in the 20 first century. it belongs best in our present moment. it belongs in the era of obama and all this talk, if you want to understand the true meaning of what it means to live in a country like ours and you want

to see the complexity behind any idea, look to ellison. he offers a way into this. he offers a way through this to a better america. >> this is a great year for adam bradley. not only do we have this book from his hand but he will soon publish with yale press ellison's progress. we thank you for that. he is working on a book that doesn't quite have a title yet but look for that. she had this volume in front of us. and he is about to finish the second. [talking over each other] and i conclude this is a great

year for ellison. we thank you for making that possible. >> john callahan is the literary executor of ralph ellison's estate and a humanities professor at lewis and clark college. adam bradley is the author of the soon-to-be published ellison in progress. he is an associate english professor a the university of colorado. for more information visit randomhouse.com/modernlibrary. >> literally a man from outside. the translator in the book has difficulty pronouncing my name. i went there shortly after september 11th in november of 2001. i was working at the kansas city

star which is part of a large newspaper chain and editors needed people to go overseas and i volunteered. >> what were you writing about before -- it could be anything >> how did that decision change your life? >> i hadn't even know where afghanistan was and began a review about it. it took me across the globe outside of my 9-5 existence to see of culture radically different from my own and a country that experienced 30 years of warfare had just been devastated, the kind of devastation i had only seen in photographs of world war ii with pictures of europe after the allies --

>> did you embed? >> i did in 2003 with the 82 airborne. >> this was right after 9/11. where were you and what did you cover? >> i arrive toward the end of november 2001 and i connected with a gentleman whose name was muhammed and he would always correct me because he felt the wasn't pronouncing it correctly so i started calling him borrow. , was interviewing his uncle which was trying to clear afghanistan of all the mines from previous wars and i mentioned to him that i was looking for a translator. this is my second day and i was on my own. i had to fend for myself and he told me that his nephew could speak english and that is how it started. he was a little reluctant and suspicious of me as an outsider

but we got together and he was sort of songs show to my donkey and eddie. we fumbled our way through the country looking for stories and writing about it and trying not to get killed in the process. >> what kind of stories were you writing in 2001? >> where the country was after the taliban had left northern afghanistan. what the country was like, how people were attempting to rebuild, the efforts to create a new government. >> how many times did you return? >> i have been there seven times. pretty much every year. >> why? >> i was sucked in. it captured my imagination. i formed strong bonds with the family and have a hard time -- i didn't feel my time was done. it had such an impact and coming back to the united states i felt

discombobulated. this experience was different from anything i had known and i felt a need to learn more about the country and my own sense of balance. i feel somewhat lost having done it and coming back to a place that was so different. >> was your reporting done in the kansas city star? >> done primarily for the kansas city star which 32 other newspapers, then i started freelancing and working for some smaller magazines like the virginia quarterly review or missouri review and personal essays which -- about my personal experience, my thoughts about people that don't normally go into a daily story because i am being more reflective. >> give an example. >> there's one story in the book

about war orphaned children. ice spoke about the process of taking them for lunch every day, and rolling them at school and problems when i left. and how to continue that. i created some expectations that i felt obligated to attempt to fulfill. >> who is funding all of this? >> some are funded out of pocket. many of them were funded by knight rider newspaper. >> this book, a chronicle of friendship and war in cobble, does it cover all seven trips? >> it does. >> walk us through it. >> the initial chapters are just my emerging into the country in 2001 and my reaction to that. and a return in 2002 which was the beginning of the hamid karzai government.

the process involved where he was assuming the leadership of the country and in future years i did and in bed and followed up when the country started to devolve into the violence we are seeing now and most recently, this is and in the book i covered the election in august. >> where did you stay when you were there? >> we stayed in a house that was rented by the newspaper chain and after that i began staying in a hotel. >> what was it like? >> it used to be a place where you could exchange money and the hotel owner recognized that he could make more money turning it into a hotel. all rooms were glass so in winter you froze because there is no central heating and nothing but glass between you and your sleeping bag and it was a very eclectic group. all sorts of people from lost

souls to journalists to people working in eight organizations. >> when did you get a book contract? >> that was in september of 2008. it was serendipity. i had written a lot of these chapters as individual essays suggested to me to put them into a book and i began sending them out through an agent. >> a lot of books on afghanistan and people's experience, what makes your different? >> a very personal book. i don't get into talking to the leadership of the country. not saying that is a bad thing but i approached afghanistan from a very grassroots perspective. i come from a social work background. i talked to these boys and tried to talk to mainstream afghans,

how they all feel is happening to the country. >> what does he do in his daily life? >> he is working for bangladesh or eight organizations. we stay in touch for e-mail. does he go to an internet cafe? >> the goes to an internet cafe. >> he lives in a large house with his family and wife and children. >> is he a wealthy man? >> i would not say he is a wealthy man. >> the income is radically different. that is a good salary.

the cost of living, wish we had an easy time but the comparison is radically different. >> how did you get around? >> he drove. usually it was a toyota van is the best way i can describe it. it was pretty beaten up and battered. driving in afghanistan is like bumper pool. is not like the united states. there are a lot of cars. i always felt we were about to have an accident because everybody starts shipping around to get through. >> how often were you personally afraid? >> often times i was afraid after the fact. there was a time we were out after curfew early on and we were so frantic to get back into cobble so we could get past the check points. i didn't have time to be afraid. when we finally got through the mess we had to get through, we

had some close calls. >> who is on the front of this? >> that is a picture of an afghan man on a motorcycle on his way to the air base. whether he is actually going to the bathroom or not i don't know. a colleague of mine took the photo from the car. >> how large is the u.s. military presence all-around afghanistan? do you see it constantly? >> you see a lot of vehicles. you see some soldiers on the street but you see a constant stream of military vehicles. you are always aware there is a military presence. you see a constant stream of security personnel from the afghan forces so you're constantly aware even if there's no fighting going on that the city is under siege. >> where do you live now and

what are you doing? >> just outside chicago and i am a freelance journalist. >> the kansas city star? you have left kansas city? do you miss it? >> not so far. i recently moved. this is a new adventure. >> the plan on being back soon? >> hopefully this summer. and continue following the american surge as -- on little more looking into women's issues. >> mountain garcia, is chronicle of friendship and the war in cobble. >> the atlantic monthly contributing editor myers takes a look at north korean society and the domestic propaganda of to which its citizens are