Monday, October 19, 2009
Uncategorized Colson Whitehead sees things in noir and white
Posted by Wyatt Williams @wyatt_williams on Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 5:54 PM
Somewhere near the end of Colson Whitehead’s first novel, The Intuitionist, the first black female inspector of elevators sits on a stakeout in an unnamed city in the not-so-distant but indistinct past. It’s one of the book's many metafictional moments, where the tropes of pulpy crime fiction are used to express larger themes of race and racism. As she holds watch and notes the noir-ish sight of a man in a red cap leaning against a lamppost, a stick-ball game breaks out in the middle of the street. It’s as if the Pynchonesque machinations of allegory and genre-bending are no match for “Ten screaming kids, half a broom, a stained canvas ball.” The kids are a quick reminder that Whitehead’s story takes place in a real world where the childish taunts of “You’re mama’s so black she, you throw like a girl, nuh-uh he didn’t tag me I got there first” can't be drowned out, and “The stickball game disappears as fast as it came.”
It’s been a full 10 years since Whitehead published his debut, and the intervening decade has been full of successes. His second novel, John Henry Days, was shortlisted for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize. The following year he received the MacArthur Foundation's Genius Grant at the age of 33. His fifth novel, Sag Harbor, was published earlier this year to mostly glowing reviews, despite being a major departure from his style and approach.
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(Photo Courtesy Doubleday)
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