Colson Whitehead is a transitional figure in literary history, one of the literati of the post-Toni Morrison era, trained at elite schools (Trinity School, Harvard), highly attuned to nuances of race and gender bias. He is gifted with a wild imagination and a maverick impulse to be free to use any form for any particular project. He’s a Gen Xer schooled in video games, early Marvel comics, horror movies, D&D, punk, funk, electronic and hip-hop, attuned to the radical political, tech and mechanical changes reshaping the culture. He has a skeptical, ironic postmodern sensibility (sharpened in part as a cultural critic for the Village Voice), and has mastered a wide range of styles—satire, parody, noir, awkwardly adolescent, deadly serious business, all underscored by a continuous throbbing beat. (Check out his playlists, especially “Music for the First 100 Pages of Writing a Book.”)Article continues after advertisement
Above it all, he’s a chronicler of New York City, crafting rhapsodies to that near magical machine that chugs and churns along despite everything, through a mire of impossibility. “They were completely hopeless out there, and unstoppable,” he writes in his newest novel, Cool Machine. “Broke-ass, chasing jackpots, cooking schemes, pushing through. The nameless heroes of an asphalt romance.”
