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The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
Feb. 23rd, 2012 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorotheanI finished this book over a week ago, but I had to process it for a while before I knew what to say about it. My review also appears here on Goodreads.
I had trouble deciding what to make of this book. I think that's my fault for reading very few recently published novels that aren't genre fiction!
I had trouble reading it, too. I considered stopping, at first, but I wanted to find out what was going on. I read the last third or so quickly, but before then, as I was getting used to it, I kept pausing -- to thaw, in a way.
This is a book about a woman who has very, very good reasons for being cold. And the way the narrator describes the world she lives in, who would want to think warmly of it? It's a world that magnifies the trivial, that's full of corruption and self-deception; a world in which the secure are sordid and the insecure fight one another. The narrator is not interested in pointing out the goodness or genuineness of humanity.
This is our world -- New York City (never named) when the Civil Rights Movement (referred to most obliquely) has begun to make itself felt (slightly).
The protagonist Lila Mae Watson has, through gruelling work, self-denial, and singlemindedness, managed to become the first black woman in the Department where she works. (There is also one black man there, whom she despises for his obsequiousness.) Lila Mae, we are told, is not given to self-reflection, and she is surrounded as much by unanswered questions as by chill. Is she cold because institutional and personal racism demanded it of her ambition? Or did her innate coldness simply give her an advantage? Is she a pawn or the center of the conspiracy -- or is she involved completely by accident, then assuming her significance? Is her accuracy rate really 100%, and if not, where do her perceptions intersect with reality?
The adventures of Lila Mae are played out on the stage of an incredible invention -- the elevator industry. In the book's world, which is otherwise exactly like our own at a certain place and time, elevators are important. Lila Mae's Department is the Department of Elevator Inspection, and she is the first black female Elevator Inspector, and was the only black student at the Institute for Vertical Transport. Elevators have a history, two competing schools of thought, their own politics. They provide material for jokes and philosophical metaphor.
This entire schema is ridiculous, of course, but carefully so: it is not so ridiculous, so implausible, that it doesn't invite comparison with other institutions, obsessions, Departments, calling into question their own sincerity and worth. No reader could believe that the Department of Elevator Inspection is worth all of the intrigue that surrounds it, nor that Lila Mae has found a worthy object for her ambition; but Lila Mae makes sense, and all of the other patronizing, power-greedy, cowardly, cliquish, and/or corrupt characters are perfectly recognizable.
The Intuitionist is tightly focused on its elevator story, but its very reticence and remoteness invite thought about more expansive subjects: human contact, cities, and (the one inescapable pun) racial uplift.
I had trouble deciding what to make of this book. I think that's my fault for reading very few recently published novels that aren't genre fiction!
I had trouble reading it, too. I considered stopping, at first, but I wanted to find out what was going on. I read the last third or so quickly, but before then, as I was getting used to it, I kept pausing -- to thaw, in a way.
This is a book about a woman who has very, very good reasons for being cold. And the way the narrator describes the world she lives in, who would want to think warmly of it? It's a world that magnifies the trivial, that's full of corruption and self-deception; a world in which the secure are sordid and the insecure fight one another. The narrator is not interested in pointing out the goodness or genuineness of humanity.
This is our world -- New York City (never named) when the Civil Rights Movement (referred to most obliquely) has begun to make itself felt (slightly).
The protagonist Lila Mae Watson has, through gruelling work, self-denial, and singlemindedness, managed to become the first black woman in the Department where she works. (There is also one black man there, whom she despises for his obsequiousness.) Lila Mae, we are told, is not given to self-reflection, and she is surrounded as much by unanswered questions as by chill. Is she cold because institutional and personal racism demanded it of her ambition? Or did her innate coldness simply give her an advantage? Is she a pawn or the center of the conspiracy -- or is she involved completely by accident, then assuming her significance? Is her accuracy rate really 100%, and if not, where do her perceptions intersect with reality?
The adventures of Lila Mae are played out on the stage of an incredible invention -- the elevator industry. In the book's world, which is otherwise exactly like our own at a certain place and time, elevators are important. Lila Mae's Department is the Department of Elevator Inspection, and she is the first black female Elevator Inspector, and was the only black student at the Institute for Vertical Transport. Elevators have a history, two competing schools of thought, their own politics. They provide material for jokes and philosophical metaphor.
This entire schema is ridiculous, of course, but carefully so: it is not so ridiculous, so implausible, that it doesn't invite comparison with other institutions, obsessions, Departments, calling into question their own sincerity and worth. No reader could believe that the Department of Elevator Inspection is worth all of the intrigue that surrounds it, nor that Lila Mae has found a worthy object for her ambition; but Lila Mae makes sense, and all of the other patronizing, power-greedy, cowardly, cliquish, and/or corrupt characters are perfectly recognizable.
The Intuitionist is tightly focused on its elevator story, but its very reticence and remoteness invite thought about more expansive subjects: human contact, cities, and (the one inescapable pun) racial uplift.
