At Ploughshares, Neil Serven looks back on Colson Whitehead‘s debut novel, The Intuitionist, which follows Lila Mae Watson, an elevator inspector in an unnamed city full of skyscrapers in need of vertical transportation. “The world of The Intuitionist is similarly one of darkness and corruption, and the anonymity within manages to turn it darker and Lila Mae’s journey lonelier. […] Lila Mae’s way of speaking is wary, compressed with impatience, as though not wanting to give anything away to the personalities she must navigate. This is survival. Over twenty years after its initial publication, The Intuitionist’s message remains relevant: it’s a wise critique of ambition and ‘progress’ and the dark spaces that exist in the in-between.”
The Vertical Legacy of Colson Whitehead’s ‘The Intuitionist’
Links for Literary Aspirations
If you have aspirations of the literary sort, I strongly recommend Dan Wickett’s interview with “founders, editors and managing editors of 8 Literary Journals of varying age and size.” And you should also look at the latest posts at Mad Max Perkins’ Book Angst in which hears from editors and publishing industry types about “the true meaning of midlist.”
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The World Outside
Recommended Reading: Jesse Barron on Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head.
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On “Unpacking My Library”
There’s a lot of (justified) talk about the power of reading, but simply owning a book can be meaningful. Mabel Rosenheck considers Walter Benjamin‘s perspective on book ownership – “[it] is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.” – and her own experiences with book collecting in San Francisco in an essay for The Toast. Pair with Anne Fadiman‘s essay on relationships, books, and relationships with books, “Marrying Libraries.”
Which Wilder?
We’ve written about the newly published Laura Ingalls Wilder memoir several times, but a new review in the LA Times calls attention to one of the most interesting questions raised by the work: how much influence did Wilder’s daughter Rose Wilder Lane, an accomplished author in her own right, have on the final Little House books?
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Sarah Kasbeer on Writing About Trauma
Sarah Kasbeer on her debut essay collection, A Woman, a Plan, an Outline of a Man, and how much of a role writing plays in processing trauma.
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A Not so Steamy First Time
Jesse Bering on his incredibly inelegant first time writing about sex. Cf. his most recent adventures of writing about sex, his new book Why is the Penis Shaped Like That?.
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The Fantastic Flying Books
Have you watched “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” yet? You should. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
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The book first appeared a publishing off-season. Which in a way helped me spot it, buy and read it. It is brilliant, unique. I was in a small Southern town visiting in-laws at Christmas time, and I was going a bit nutty. Small house, little privacy, TV going from waking until bedtime, loudly. Ever seen Turtleman on the History Station? Every episode. Movies from 10 yrs ago that in any other context I’d have no interest in, but here…riveting. So my wife and I escaped to the only big-box bookstore in town, uh, region. But it had a cafe and magazines and The Intuitionist, hardcover, maybe 2 copies. Sort of like the early Richard Powers books that would role out in the summer. I’d welcome another novel from Whitehead in that register…imaginative, counter-factual but not sci-fi, not remotely.