Tag: Colson Whitehead

Writer’s Desk: Get into Character

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

When trying to get into the spirit of the characters from his new novel Crook Manifesto (incredible, by the way), recurring Writer’s Desk source Colson Whitehead decided he needed to learn as much as he could about the setting of Harlem in the early 1970s.

Since his main character, Ray Carney (also the star of the preceding novel, Harlem Shuffle), was a furniture salesman who also fenced stolen goods out the back door, Whitehead told the New Yorker‘s David Remnick he learned what he could about both professions, first:

From primary sources, memoirs of gangsters, Bumpy Johnson he was a Harlem gangster in the ’50s. His wife wrote a memoir … She broke down how numbers operation works. Numbers operation is an unofficial lottery in different neighborhoods. She broke out how the numbers runner works and the bank and how they transfer the money and where else do you go but to the source. A lot of it is slang. I love getting authentic nouns and verbs, whether it was from slave narratives for Underground Railroad or for this, William Burroughs’ first book Junkie is about being a hustler in Harlem, Upper West Side, and downtown in the ’50s…

Then:

[Finding a ] Sears catalog. It’s just great language that I steal the same way I steal language from a memoir … Champagne finishes on the arms of couches and chairs…

Lest you think this involved a lot of delving through dusty archives, Whitehead reassures Remnick that he never leaves the house:

I never leave the house. Too many people outside. Yes, whatever your interest is, someone has put it on Pinterest…

TV Room: ‘The Underground Railroad’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Adaptations, Books, streamingLeave a comment

In Barry Jenkins’ 10-part adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad, the famed abolitionist rescue network is made into an actual railroad that spirits enslaved people out of the South.

The Underground Railroad will be streaming on Amazon Prime starting May 14. My review is at PopMatters:

Jenkins is generally more experiential than plot-driven, and so the show ripples with the kind of silently evocative and luxuriantly filmed moments that gave Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Speak much of their power. But still, even though the series also has its share of sinking-gut horror and hairbreadth escapes, Jenkins ultimately delivers a subtler and yet grander impact by telling the story as a unified whole rather than a string of attention-grabbing peaks and valleys to jolt viewers out of pandemic streaming torpor…

Here’s the trailer:

Reader’s Corner: Another Prize for Colson Whitehead

On By chrisbarsantiIn BooksLeave a comment

This must be some kind of record. But after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Orwell award, Colson Whitehead (The Nickel Boys) was just awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In a statement, Whitehead said:

I hope that right now there’s a young kid who looks like me, who sees the Library of Congress recognize Black artists and feels encouraged to pursue their own vision and find their own sacred spaces of inspiration…

In related Whitehead news, Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of his alternate historical novel The Underground Railroad is supposedly still set to air at some point on Amazon.

Reader’s Corner: Indies Support Authors

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, UncategorizedLeave a comment

The Nickel Boys

Colson Whitehead is touring around now to read from his latest novel, The Nickel Boys. While he’ll be going to some chains, he’s a big supporter of indie bookstores. Why? He told Shelf Awareness:

My first book was about elevator inspectors, and who is going to support a debut novel by some weird black guy about elevator inspectors? And the answer is independent bookstores. They’ve always been supportive of my books no matter how oddball they sounded…

Writer’s Desk: Give Yourself a Chance

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

According to a talk Colson Whitehead gave in Amsterdam in 2018, as a young boy he thought that writing would be a pretty cool gig because “you didn’t have to wear clothes or talk to people and could spend all day making stuff up.”

While that remains true, especially the not always having to talk to people thing, it turned out to be a little more complicated. So here are some of the hints for new writers that Whitehead provided:

  • Give yourself a chance to learn: “Write a crappy story and then the next one will be better.”
  • Write what scares you, but find a way to make it fun.
  • Learn how to deal with rejection: “It didn’t matter if no one liked what I was doing, I had no choice so I got back to work and it got better.”

Writer’s Desk: Whistle While You Work

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

daydreamnation

Do you need absolute, deafening quiet when you work?

Maybe you’re one of those people that likes to work in a loud cafe.

Or are you the type that writes at home but with music on? And if so, what’s your album(s) of choice? Do you prefer background noise so that the lyrics don’t interrupt your train of thought?

undergroundrailroadIn the acknowledgments to his newest novel, the Oprah-picked The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead has some very specific notes along these lines:

The first hundred pages were fueled by early Misfits … and Blanck Mass. David Bowie is in every book, and I always put on Purple Rain and Daydream Nation when I write the final pages; so thanks to him and Prince and Sonic Youth.

That’s a fantastic range of music, but sterling selections all. Speaking from experience, this writer can attest to the imagination-fueling powers of repeatedly playing Daydream Nation, though be warned it works best if you’re writing in a minor science-fiction key.

Dept. of Endgames

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Nota BeneLeave a comment

Good enough that Colson Whitehead is covering the Olympics (somewhat post-facto) for Grantland. (His conversations with the W.G. Sebald app beat most of what NBC had to say.)

But even better that once his first piece actually takes him to London itself, Whitehead’s thoughts immediately turn towards the apocalypse:

…I started scoring events in terms of what they’d offer in a human-annihilation-type scenario. Offensewise, archery skills seemed like an obvious asset at first. But the archers’ high-tech bows wouldn’t survive a day of jumping off roofs, tromping through sewers, and escaping cannibal hordes. The bows were items of cruel but fragile beauty, with their carbon limbs and polyethylene strings, their V-bar extenders and side-rod stabilizer doohickeys. Great for the marksman’s art, but no good in a volume-kill scenario. You’d be better off with a simple machete. The qualifying heats made it clear that swimming is a good life skill or whatever, but only marathon-distance swimming was going to help you make it to the island after a squabble over rations or sex resulted in your tiny escape vessel overturning. Triathlon, I decided, with its endurance super-combo of swimming, biking, and running, solved multiple problem areas. I made a note to see it in person.

Whitehead published his own take on the zombie apocalypse last year, Zone One. Not so much archery in it, sadly enough—he left that to Suzanne Collins.