Colson Whitehead, Again and for the First Time

 [This was written after I had read several of Colson Whitehead's other novels and so it will be the first published of my notes but not the first written.]

Yesterday, I finished Colson Whitehead's Apex Hides the Hurt (2006; Anchor Books, 2007). Not as realistic as The Nickel Boys - Apex being more of a parody or allegory rather an historical indictment of racism-  nor as surreal as The Underground Railroad - there could be nomenclature experts -  nor is it as openly fantastical as The Intuitionist or Zone One - no zombies, no alternate histories - and it does feel a bit tamer compared what else I have read of Whitehead's. 

Whitehead opens with:

He came up with the names. They were good times. He came up with names and like any good parent he knocked them around to teach them life lessons.  He bent them to se if they'd break, he dragged them behind cars by heavy metal chains, he exposed them to high temperatures for extended periods of time. Sometimes consonants broke off and left angry vowels on the laboratory tables. How else was he to know of they were ready for what the world had in store for them.

Could be he is talking about writing. This paragraph does what I think all opening paragraphs should: make you want to read further.

We get what I read as a critique of consumer culture:

Riverboat Charlie's had neglected so many branding opportunities that he wasn't sure whether to blame a lack of imagination or to applaud that quality, so rare these days, of understatement. As he waited for the mayor, he rhapsodized over what might have been menus and signage employing colorful argot of wharf rats and gambles, a décor artificially wizened to simulate exposure to dark and churning water, a mascot-spokesman in the form of a cartoon character or elderly gentleman of stylized appearance. Under his attention, the humble establishment became a vacuum, and all the outside marketing world rushed into fill every inch and corner, wherever a jubilant little branding molecule might find some elbow room. He was the outside world come to bully about.

p. 110

To be continued... 

sch

2/16/20