Harlem Shuffle

 I wasn't surprised to see that [a:Colson Whitehead|10029|Colson Whitehead|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1561996933p2/10029.jpg] got a MacArthur Fellowship. Those used to be called "genius grants" and it's clear after reading [b:Harlem Shuffle|54626223|Harlem Shuffle|Colson Whitehead|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1612449660l/54626223.SY75.jpg|85227984] that he is that. But don't let that put you off: Whitehead may be the kind of genius who can write deep things that put people like me to sleep in a paragraph, but Harlem Shuffle, one of the ten novels Whitehead has written, isn't that. His genius is his ability to tell a story so well.
 His characters are an interesting and wide variety of people in Harlem from 1959 to 1964. The story ends five years before Whitehead was born, but the tone is perfect for the era and if they're are any anachronisms, I didn't catch them. The story has to do with unsavory types, but you end up having great sympathy for them. Somehow, Whitehead injects humor into the story and the characters in it without condescending to them, making them look like hapless buffoons. That requires great balance, and how he does it so well would be worth studying by anyone who wants to write fiction.
 Harlem Shuffle goes down smooth but you do learn from it. Some history that is sadly relevant today and, curiously, about a kind of Medieval segmented sleeping regimen called dorveille.
Excerpt:

 This first hot spell of the year was a rehearsal for the summer to come. Everyone a bit rusty but it was coming back, their parts in the symphony and assigned solos. On the corner, two white cops recapped the fire hydrant, cursing. Kids had been running in and out of the spray for days. Threadbare blankets lined fire escapes. 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. Anything to delay the return to sweltering rooms, the busted sinks and clotted flypaper, the accumulated reminders of your place in the order. Unseen on the rooftops, the denizens of tar beaches pointed to the lights of bridges and night planes.

I read this because my book club recommended it. Even though it's not my genre, I thought it might be a good opportunity to stretch myself, to get myself out of my usual reading habits. I thought it might be a bit like The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - enjoyable because it's impressively well written.

But, this book felt formulaic. It felt like it was steady work for the author, rather than art. Like a paper that'd you'd write for school rather than an essay you're dying to publish.

There wasn't much interesting dialogue or plot. We know hardly anything about Carney's wife, apart from where she works. What would it be like to married to someone on the edge of crime? What kind of fears would you have? How would you know your husband was still alive, day after day? What if you couldn't reach him? Now that would be interesting.

I did really like the details of the neighborhood and the people who lived there. The author must have done a tremendous amount of research. But, the details couldn't really make up for the lack of plot and thin characters.

Edit: I wonder if telling this in the first person might have really improved things. The info dumps of research would have to go, because Carney doesn't seem like someone focused on history. Also, Carney as an unreliable narrator might have created more interest (is Freddie a bum or a victim? Is Carney being fair to him?). The kind of thing I'm looking for is detailed scenes from his perspective: "when I said I was going to be headed out for a bit, Elizabeth set down her glass very slowly, but didn't say anything." Something that indicates there's tension, without directly saying "if my wife finds out about this, she's going to leave me". The book actually does say this directly :(

This is a historical fiction novel which is part family saga, part gangster story, taking place in the early 1960s. The protagonist is Ray Carney, a man who is smart in every sense of the word. He's got common sense, street smarts, and a business degree. He's a man who is struggling to make a life for himself and for his family, and does not want to follow in his father's footsteps. Big Mike, as they called him, was part of Harlem's criminal underworld. And yet, this world has its hooks in Ray. He pays both a cop and a gangster protection money, and this is a dance that many step to, and keeps a part of the city's hierarchy intact.

Sure, Ray Carney is a bit crooked. He was raised on ill-gotten money and goods, and the seed money for his furniture business came from his father. And he does some fencing, as in not checking the provenance of certain items that he sells. But, he's keeping a low profile, just staying on the outskirts of all the craziness. Until, that is, his cousin Freddie gets in on a dangerous scheme, and drops Ray's name. Whether Ray likes it or not, he's involved in a certain heist.

As children, Freddie and Ray were very close, growing up like brothers, and Freddie always had a knack for getting them both in trouble. Unfortunately, he's at it again, but this time, it's serious, life-threatening trouble.

Part of the historical backdrop of this story was the Harlem race riots of 1964, when a black teenager was senselessly shot and killed by an off-duty police officer. The adults in Ray Carney's world are older, and have different viewpoints and attitudes about what is going on around them. The protesting is mostly younger people, believing in and fighting for change. During these years, a lot of change takes place in Ray's life and in the city's life, too.

The different sides of New York City in this novel were intriguing. One person's Harlem is not another person's, like one of those optical illusion pictures that can be viewed as different objects, depending on how one looks. Also, the characters that populate these different worlds are colorful and interesting. There was also the humor! Even when Ray is in a deadly situation, he might have home furnishings on his mind, for example, noticing that these crooks are standing on a certain brand of carpet that will prevent stains. Convenient.

I thoroughly enjoyed this latest novel by Colson Whitehead, and many thanks to Netgalley and Doubleday books for this wonderful opportunity.