Colson Whitehead

[James Kyllo]

Interesting... is the new novel published now over there?  I liked the
Intuitionist a lot, but didn't think John Henry Days ever rose much
above OK.

On 4/10/06, Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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."
>
> http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/425037.html
>
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