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.