Reviews reinforces that claim), but this volume suggests that David Jones’s ‘attempts’ mark him as one of the most ambitious literary figures of the twentieth century. B U D H Ralph Ellison, Temporal Technologist. By M G. New York: Oxford University Press. . xv+ pp. $; £.. ISBN ––––. Michael Germana’s monograph constitutes a highly ambitious, richly intellectual approach to the entire body of work and thought of Ralph Ellison. Germana brings a complex understanding of the ways in which Ellison is himself a philosopher of history, as well as a writer who is deeply troubled by and fascinated with the problems of time, of causation, of existence and meaning, and of how we understand history in multiple, oen conflicting ways. Germana also brings a deep and at times idiosyncratic knowledge of other theorists of history and temporality, who offer fascinating connections with Ellison’s thought and writing. e book focuses on Ellison’s virtual obsession with what Germana calls ‘technologies of temporality’ (p. ). Such technologies are analogous to and yet different from Ellison’s efforts to call into question the accepted constructions of ‘Newtonian time’ (p. ). Germana covers the entire scope of Ellison’s work: the early (–) short stories, the triumphant novel Invisible Man, Ellison’s o-cited yet rarely analysed music criticism, his remarkable collection of photography, and of course his great, unfinished second novel, posthumously published as ree Days before the Shooting . . . in . Germana focuses on the ways in which Ellison routinely turns to visual and sonic technologies—from ‘visual media like moving or “peristrephic ” panoramas and Polaroid photographs to musico-theoretical concepts like polyrhythms and metric modulation’ (p. )—in order to call into question the dominant concept of time that emerges from the Enlightenment and is maintained by global capitalism. Germana argues that Ellison’s engagement with the ‘technologies of temporality’ ultimately calls into question the easy subjectivity enforced by both universalizing ideas of time and historiography. Further, he shows how Ellison in his many writings constructs an alternative ‘polytemporal framework’ in which individuality and democracy are revealed to be similar to ‘emergent temporal moments ’ (p. )—that is, opportunities for becoming, not being, always immanent and always implicated in other moments of becoming. As Germana puts it more pithily early on, he shows how Ellison uses the temporal to interrogate the historical by way of the technological. e major theorists Germana relies upon include Deleuze and Guattari, Bergson, Eliade, Bakhtin, and Nietzsche—richly suggestive figures to put into conversation with Ellison. e comparison of Deleuze’s concept of the ‘rhizome’ to Ellison’s own idea of American democracy is fascinating, and Germana shows how Ellison is perhaps the most sophisticated philosopher of existence, history, and politics in the American canon. A major strength of the book is its use of Ellison’s own library, in the Ellison Reading Room in the Library of Congress, to show his sympathy with MLR, ., and understanding of the theorists with whom Germana puts him in conversation. (e extended discussion of how Ellison was so influenced by Northrop Frye’s book e Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy in itself makes the book worth reading.) e major chapters focus on, in order: Invisible Man and the historical/temporal concepts of Nietzsche and Bergson; Invisible Man and the historical figure of Henry Box Brown (as far as I am aware, this correspondence has never been remarked in Ellison scholarship); Ellison’s extensive collection of Polaroid pictures and his unfinished second novel; Ellison’s ‘polyrhythmic and metric techniques’ (p. ) both in his short fiction and in ree Days before the Shooting . . .; and finally Ellison’s substantial body of music criticism and musicology and how that work interweaves with his fiction writing throughout his career. e close readings and textual discussions are suggestive and learned. Although certain terms and concepts are at times confusing or perhaps overdone, the dense philosophical web of allusions and concepts does yield new readings of Ellison’s primary writings. e results are indeed profound, as Germana concludes that Ellison’s ‘commitment to reclaiming the protean within the persistent, the chaos within certainty’ is precisely what ‘makes his work not merely relevant, but...