One of the funniest and saddest and strangest books I've read is Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. This book should be read for a million reasons, but if you write speculative fiction in any form, it’s one of the best examples of how to tell the truth but tell it slant. These truths are from the closed-off part of the heart where the lights and music are turned up as high as they can go, but you live there all alone.
I read this back when I was a teenager. I'm sure a lot was lost on me at the time and I'm due for a re-read. I only recently found out that Ellison was an Okie and graduated from Frederick A. Douglass High, a segregated school. it's been remodeled in the past 5 years into luxury apartments. They even use the auditorium for hipster music concerts. But there's no statue of Ellison around. There should be.
I still remember a very specific line from the book after a sort of riot (maybe?) occurs and a character describes a scene of somebody riding past on a horse "looking like death eating a sandwich." Google tells me this:
"To look or to feel like “death eating a cracker” is not to look or to feel well at all. Death always looks like death, despite eating a cracker, a cookie, a sandwich, or anything else. The expression “like death eating a cracker” means the same as “like death on toast” and “like death warmed over.”
“Like death eating a cracker” has been cited in print since at least 1949. Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man (1952) included the food variant “looking like death eating a sandwich.” The author Rita Mae Brown has used “like death eating a cracker” in several of her novels. “Like death eating a cracker” has been reported to be a Southern expression, especially in Kentucky."
I read this back when I was a teenager. I'm sure a lot was lost on me at the time and I'm due for a re-read. I only recently found out that Ellison was an Okie and graduated from Frederick A. Douglass High, a segregated school. it's been remodeled in the past 5 years into luxury apartments. They even use the auditorium for hipster music concerts. But there's no statue of Ellison around. There should be.
I still remember a very specific line from the book after a sort of riot (maybe?) occurs and a character describes a scene of somebody riding past on a horse "looking like death eating a sandwich." Google tells me this:
"To look or to feel like “death eating a cracker” is not to look or to feel well at all. Death always looks like death, despite eating a cracker, a cookie, a sandwich, or anything else. The expression “like death eating a cracker” means the same as “like death on toast” and “like death warmed over.”
“Like death eating a cracker” has been cited in print since at least 1949. Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man (1952) included the food variant “looking like death eating a sandwich.” The author Rita Mae Brown has used “like death eating a cracker” in several of her novels. “Like death eating a cracker” has been reported to be a Southern expression, especially in Kentucky."
I somehow never got assigned this in high school, sounds like yet another gap in my reading I need to fill!