Day 747, Quasi-Quarantine: Gritty "Harlem Shuffle" A Departure And A Revelation For Whitehead

"Good old American know-how on display: We do marvels, we do injustice, and our hands were always busy."

 

Possessing a seductive noir feel, "Harlem Shuffle" offers a different look and feel than the traditional Colson Whitehead novel. Yet in the end, compelling story and irresistible prose carry the day, delivering yet another stellar book.

Depicting Harlem in the late 1950s and early 1960s, "Harlem Shuffle" tracks the exploits of a furniture salesman as he navigates the neighborhood's hoods and power brokers in search of moving his family up the ladder. Along the way, Ray Carney tries to discern good from bad -- and just where he sits on the often-sliding scale.

"If you believed in the holy circulation of envelopes, everything that went down happened because a man took an envelope and didn't do his job. An envelope is an envelope. Disrespect the order and the whole system breaks down."

"You could never know what was going on with other people, but their private selves were never far away. The city was one teeming, miserable tenement and the wall between you and everybody else was thin enough to punch through."

Whitehead is at his best exploring Carney's double life, weaving in the concept of dorvay, breaking the day up into awake and sleeping segments. As most of the city sleeps, the protagonist charts his next moves to provide for his family. As the city is alive and teeming, Carney chases the recharge needed to recover from the duality that dominates his personal and professional lives.

"The stoops bustled with men in undershirts drinking beer and jiving over the noise from transistor radios, the DJs piping up between songs like friends with bad advice."

" ... The city behind him as if it didn't exist. That rustling, keening thing of people and concrete. Or the city did exist but he stood with it heaving against him, Carney holding it all back by sheer force of character. He could take it."

The trademark Whitehead elements are there as he dissects racism and corruption, but he refuses to sermonize, allowing the pacing and rhythm of the book to dominate. More than anything, the impression that the author had a blast writing "Harlem Shuffle" is evident -- and that joy bleeds through to the reader, creating yet one more intense and thought-provoking Whitehead work.

" ... Pissed-off rich who were as bent as gangsters but didn't have to hide. They did it out in the open, notarized their misdeeds or engraved them into bronze plates for building facades."