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’
Birnbaum and Brooks
Robert Birnbaum sits down with Pulitzer-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks to discuss Australian literature, Harvard’s (neglected) charter to educate American Indians, and those residents of Martha’s Vineyard who say no to Chardonnay.
Sunday Thoughts and Links
I really dug this write up of a visit by Edward P. Jones to a Seattle high school, where he talked to some kids about being a writer. I’m fascinated by Jones’ persona. He’s not a hermit, but neither is he a part of the more public contemporary literary crowd, all of whom seem to be associated with the same causes and who enjoy this sort of literary pseudo-fame while at the same time making a bit of a show about shying away from it. Of course I’m overgeneralizing here, but I’m sure you can think of some writers who might fit that description. I suppose my larger point is Jones seems to me to be a writer who, in an earlier time, would have only achieved fame late in his career or even posthumously, and I’m just really glad that he has gotten the acclaim that he deserves.I saw the movie Fever Pitch last night and enjoyed the way last year’s baseball season was woven into the story so well. It also made me very curious to read Nick Hornby’s novel by the same name, in which the protagonist is a rabid soccer fan. I’m not a big Hornby fan, but I’m very curious to see if they managed to swap out the sport at the center of the story while keeping the same overall feeling. Quite a feat if they managed to do a good job of it. One thing is clear though, trying to slap a movie tie-in cover on Hornby’s book wouldn’t have worked very well.Rodger Jacobs has set up a blog to track entries in his “Fitzgerald in Hollywood Short Fiction Contest.”Chicagoist looks at books “with local ties.” I’ve read All This Heavenly Glory and Gods in Alabama, but the third book The Week You Weren’t Here by Charles Blackstone sounds interesting.
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Love Advice from Chaucer
“Ich am Geoffrey Chaucer, and my litel poeme the Parliament of Foweles was the first to combyne the peanut buttir of Februarye the XIVth wyth the milk chocolate of wooing. And so Ich feel responsible to helpe wyth sum advyce on thys daye.” Love advice from Chaucer, via NPR.
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Late American Novel Fans
Word is there have been sightings of the book I co-edited The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books in the wild, though it’s officially due in March. You can keep up on all the news about the book, including events and links to excerpts on the book’s new Facebook page.
The Magnificent
“In a concession to our unsubtle political age, the cliff is doing a good impression of Abraham Lincoln in profile with a vicious orange fulmination exploding from his head.” Looks like Wells Tower had an interesting time in Hawaii.
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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.