(Continued from Page 5)

some of the unsung heroes. Like some of our natives. Amsonia hubrictii is drought-tolerant, no pests, no diseases, beautiful through the season, with foliage that looks like a feather boa; you just want to touch it. In the fall, the whole thing turns golden yellow. Then it all dies back, you take a rake over it, and that’s the maintenance — for the year. My kind of plant. And then I’ll throw in the wild and wacky plants. Like Solanum quitoense — nickname: “the spiny bastard.” Every part of this plant is spined. And I’m not talking little tiny things; these are thorns that’ll make a rose thorn look like a wuss. Sometimes you need a

shocking plant like that, because the teenage kids’ll be drug in, and they’ll be like, “Uh, I don’t want to be here. I want to be down at Air and Space.” Then they see this, and they’re all over it. They’re daring each other to touch it — yes, it will draw blood — and they’re asking questions. They’ve forgotten about Air and Space, and they’re interested in a plant. A petunia is not going to get that reaction. I always try to fi nd

something new and cool and different. People from Yugoslavia might visit only once in their lifetimes, but certain people are in this garden every day. I can tell what time it is by when Dave’s on that bench. Yeah, Dave has a Pepsi and a bag of popcorn every day at 11:15. This is their little oasis. All these marches can be going on out there, people everywhere, but this is a fabulous little intimate space. You can come into the garden, and it’s peaceful.

ANSWER George

Washington University President Emeritus Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

6 THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE | APRIL 11, 2010

Whatever Happened To

BY WIL HAYGOOD

The Ellison scholars

editing process for such a huge, complicated manuscript also caused delays, he said. Callahan, a professor at

Above:

Novelist Ralph Ellison in 1973. Inset: Ellison’s literary executor, John Callahan, left, and Adam Bradley.

LITERARY HONOR

1953

The year

Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” won

the National Book Award

for fi ction over 10 fi nalists, including Ernest

Hemingway for “The Old Man and the Sea” and John Steinbeck for “East of Eden”

SOURCE: THE NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION

They were two

scholars hard at work on a book project that had already taken them more than 13 years. They were trying to get inside the psyche of a great novelist who had left behind four decades of work on an unfi nished book when he died in 1994. The novelist was Ralph

Ellison, whose titanic literary work, “Invisible Man,” published in 1952, seemed to have a profound effect upon the citizenry when it came to talking about race. The scholars, John Callahan and Adam Bradley, had taken on the mammoth process of piecing together thousands of pages of Ellison’s words to complete his long-anticipated second novel. When they were featured in a Washington Post Magazine story Aug. 19, 2007, they imagined they were a year or so from publication. The men would labor

another 2½ years. In January, “Three Days Before the Shooting,” a voluminous work of 1,136 pages, was published by the Modern Library imprint. Bradley said it took longer than expected to examine additional Ellison documents. The copy

Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., said he thinks that “Three Days” will show readers that Ellison’s writing life was full and gratifying, despite his lack of output. Bradley said the book’s non- linear structure demonstrates Ellison’s literary mind in motion. “I think this book will bring about

a profound shift in the study of Ellison,” he said. The story centers on a black

minister who raises a boy of uncertain race who turns away from his black upbringing and becomes a race-baiting Southern senator. As Ellison’s literary executor, Callahan was charged with fashioning his friend’s massive archives into something readable: in fact, the hoped-for follow-up to the epic “Invisible Man.” In 1994, Callahan summoned Bradley, then one of his students, to help. They sifted through thousands of typed pages, boxes of scribbled notes and 80 computer disks, all containing half-fi nished scenes and chapters. In 1999, they published “Juneteenth,” an abridged version of the new book. Callahan, now on sabbatical,

is working to complete a novel of his own. Bradley is a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His “Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop” was published last year, and his “Ralph Ellison in Progress” will be published in May.

For the original story, go to washingtonpost.com/magazine.

ELLISON PHOTOGRAPH BY NANCY MORAN; 2007 CALLAHAN PHOTOGRAPH BY HELAYNE SEIDMAN; 2003 BRADLEY PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SUBJECT Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184