From New York Magazine: “Colson Whitehead, author of John Henry Days, The Colossus of New York, and Apex Hides the Hurt, is currently holed up in the bistros of his neighborhood, Fort Greene, at work on his next novel, which is about a teenager who subsists on TV dinners and toils at an ice-cream parlor (the novelist’s traumatic summers in a Hamptons scoop shop are documented in his New York Times essay ‘Eat Memory, I Scream’).”
Now this seems a bit suspicious to me. First off, a novelist shouldn’t be in the business of describing an unfinished work. And when pressed by an interviewer, the novelist should probably just say, “Yeah, I’m working on something. Next question.”
But in this instance, Whitehead has offered an answer. And it isn’t “a teenager overcoming a personal obstacle” or “a teenager who comes of age.” No, the great human angle on this story is “a teenager who subsists on TV dinners and toils at an ice-cream parlor,” suggesting that cultural reference comes before character development or that Whitehead is riding the great food crutch that many writers dwell on during a gestation period.Of course, it’s probably unfair of me to read so closely into an answer like this. Nevertheless, after the lackluster Apex Hides the Hurt (a passable novel, but lackluster in comparison to his two previous books), I worry about Whitehead’s ability to deliver.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
After his second book, the elevator one, can’t recall the title, sorry–I read an interview with him in Poets and Writers where he said he could write (The Intuitionist! That’s it!) anywhere, anytime. That large parts of his first novel were written at his mother’s kitchen table with the radio blaring. So maybe he just likes the stimulus of bistros?
I haven’t read “John Henry Days” yet — I know that’s your favorite — but I think “Apex” is as good as “The Intuitionist.”