Colson Whitehead Talks About Embracing Change, Pulling Off A Heist, And Finding A Good Coffee Table

"The city was question and answer in one," Colson Whitehead writes early on in https://bookshop.org/p/books/cool-machine-a-novel-colson-whitehead/a6627cfe98351ce3?ean=9798217510207&next=t&next=t&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=dsa_nonbrand&utm_content=%7Badgroupname%7D&utm_term=aud-1721779758455:dsa-19959388920&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=12440232635&gbraid=0AAAAACfld40UcAwrK8saIefzuLbVoHWqt&gclid=CjwKCAjwpefSBhBvEiwAzyEtZ5lCpANjGXw5Wgbs0oh5ijRx0HnZ2emiM6_frgwgFR9uIGY_PBHEtRoCNY8QAvD_BwE">Cool Machine, the final novel of his Harlem Trilogy. "Cause and effect and everything else, too." You can forgive the lifelong New Yorker for being a little romantic about his hometown, which is both the setting and central metaphor across the tales of Harlem furniture salesman-cum-not-so-reluctant-crook Ray Carney, whose misadventures come to a conclusion with Machine.

Carney's capers, inspired by heist movies, are presented as discrete novellas, with each book—Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto are the first two—consisting of three parts.

Collectively, they span both a whole array of thieving and schemes as well as nearly three decades of New York history. 

These vivid, pulpy, compulsively readable novels allow the two-time Pulitzer-winner to have a lot of fun, while providing readers with an informed perspective on the city through the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, plus a healthy dose of structural critique (New York, of course, is built on thievery and deception just like most places).

It goes down easy thanks to Whitehead's superlative ability to weave deep research with rich narrative: Carney, his partner Pepper, and all their other motley associates are so vibrant and winning that it's easy to understand why the author wanted to stick with them through three books.

For those who only know Whitehead through The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys—gutting, inventive, and understandably acclaimed works on slavery and juvenile incarceration, respectively—a juicy genre series might seem out of character.

But he's reiterated https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/colson-whitehead-interview-nickel-boys-novel/">over and https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/nov/27/colson-whitehead-interview-five-minutes">over that horror and other genre fiction is his comfort zone; readers familiar with his other work know Whitehead is a remarkable humorist.

If I may here plug John Henry Days, which a quarter-century later stands as a remarkably prescient media satire among many other things, right down to the indictment of "content" ...

Whitehead, for the uninitiated, got his start at the Village Voice.

He's even on https://bsky.app/profile/colsonwhitehead.com">Bluesky, reposting memes in keeping with his persona as your friendly, self-deprecating Gen X literary genius next door. Cool Machine is a portrait of his New York, spotlighting the downtown arts and music scenes of the ’80s through the bewildered, middle-aged eyes of Carney and Pepper (for comedic effect, of course).