Ellison's longtime friend and literary executor, biographer and critic John F. Callahan, created the novel.

[2] Part of the original manuscript of Juneteenth was destroyed by a fire in 1967, and Ellison claimed to be devastated by the loss.

But biographer Arnold Rampersad later speculated that the loss of the crucial, irrecoverable sections of his manuscript appears to have been something Ellison concocted after the fact to justify his lack of progress.

The Guardian said that although the work was published with the subtitle "a novel," it "is decidedly not a novel: it lacks a novel's shape, rationale, and self-justifying propulsion.

"[8] Publishers Weekly acknowledged Callahan's "difficulties" in putting the novel together from Ellison's incomplete manuscript, but concluded "this volume is a visionary tour de force, a lyrical, necessary contribution to America's perennial racial dialogue, and a novel powerfully reinforcing Ellison's place in literary history.