Colson Whitehead

[Dave Monroe]

Even in bright limelight, writer toils on
Colson Whitehead won a 'genius grant,' but he is
focused on his work

Matt Ehlers, Staff Writer

Let's say that strangers dropped $500,000 on your lap
because they thought you were good at your job.

Would you quit working? Would the money amp up the
pressure to the point where work was impossible?

For author Colson Whitehead, neither was true. He took
the money -- in the form of a "genius grant" from The
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation --
bought a new desk and chair, paid some bills and got
right back to work.

"It was just very calming," said Whitehead, 36, on the
phone from his Brooklyn apartment. With the extra
money, "I became less anxious about what my next move
was. I think it gave me breathing room to try and
figure out 'Apex' more."

"Apex Hides the Hurt" is his latest novel, the story
of a "nomenclature consultant" tasked with renaming a
small town. Whitehead, author of "The Intuitionist"
and "John Henry Days," will be in Durham on Wednesday
for a reading at The Regulator Bookshop.

He learned he won the grant in the fall of 2002, when
he received a call from the foundation. The no-strings
fellowships are designed to be a surprise and
Whitehead didn't even know he was nominated. It took a
little convincing on the part of the caller, but he
eventually came around to accepting his good fortune.

"It was great to have people believe in you and give
you money to do different things," said the author,
who some believe is creating stories that are among
the greatest examples of fiction today.

"He's in the vanguard of young African-American
writers, maybe at the pinnacle," said Randall Kenan,
an associate professor of creative writing at
UNC-Chapel Hill. "You have to go back to Thomas
Pynchon or Saul Bellow to come close to what he's
creating."

In "Apex," what Whitehead created is a protagonist
whose sole job is to name products. "Apex" refers to
one of his career highlights, the brand name of an
adhesive bandage that comes in a variety of shades to
better match the skin color of its wearer. The book
comments on everything from the emphasis on marketing
in contemporary culture to class and race, both in the
19th century and today.

"Wild and weird things happen in his books," Kenan
said. "His imagination is unprecedented."

While many black writers concentrate on social
realism, Whitehead heads in a different direction,
writing about worlds in which elevator repairmen can
step into a car and decide what's wrong with it simply
by intuition.

"I don't feel like I have to conform to some idea of
what black literature is," Whitehead said. "I think of
my ideas and I try to execute them well."

He realizes that what he's doing is different. He's
reminded of it when he tries to explain what he's
working on. "Whenever I have a new idea and I tell
somebody, they're like, 'Huh?'

"So I would say, 'It's about two warring groups of
elevator inspectors. ...' "

As his work has become better known, it has become
easier to talk about. But in the beginning, "it was
sort of hard to explain what I was spending all of my
time doing."

Whitehead spends some of that time writing about race,
although it is not the entire focus. In "Apex," the
main character is African-American, although his skin
color is rarely addressed.

"It's something I write about. It's obviously
something I'm interested in, trying to situate the
changing concepts of race in America," Whitehead said.
"It's not the whole megillah."

He has already begun his next book. Instead of
concentrating on a weird occupation, Whitehead is
writing about growing up in the '80s. It's more
autobiographical than his previous work, but Whitehead
didn't want to say too much more. He didn't want to
jinx it.

With the kind of roll he's on, it would take a lot
more than a few words to derail a work-in-progress. In
addition to the fellowship, Whitehead has won the
Young Lions Fiction Award and has been a finalist for
both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the
Pulitzer Prize.

"I feel like I write my strange little books, and I'm
fortunate that some people like them. Some don't," he
said, laughing. "But some do."

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