In some ways, Ralph Ellison's protagonist in Invisible Man emblematizes what might be called the 'presentist simplicity' of the novel's endorsement of industrial, imperialist, xenophobic American myth-making. Layer upon layer of Line allusion mark its chapters, which in combination with the novel's Homeric (5) ambitiousness, serve finally to obscure rather than to prophesy the actual, engaged, advanced-guard, public sphere effectiveness of American blacks already at work modernizing the United States. Simply stated, Ellison believed morality, equality, and responsibility were affirmative 'notions', but blacks, at the very moment of Invisible Man's glorious reception, were transforming (10) 'notions' into decisively affirmative actions, by courageously putting body and soul on the line and constructing a sphere of American ethical publicity undreamed by the novelist. Ellison thus remained silent on the possibilities of an altogether 'unexceptional' America-a post-industrial, radically black public sphere conditioned America. The author is primarily concerned with