The Intuitionist: A Novel | Colson Whitehead

The Intuitionist: A Novel | Colson Whitehead | An audacious first novel by a genius author

books:

The Intuitionist: ...

	The Intuitionist: A Novel Colson Whitehead Anchor, 2000 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 79 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist wowed critics and readers everywhere and marked the debut of an important American writer. This marvellously inventive, genre-bending, noir-inflected novel, set in the curious world of elevator inspection, portrays a universe parallel to our own, where matters of morality, politics, and race reveal unexpected ironies.

You make the call

What we want here is a good clean fight, protect yourself at all times, no head butts, no hitting below the belt, break clenches when I tell you, after a knockdown go to the nearest neutral corner and wait until signaled, no limit on knockdowns in a round and you will not be saved by the bell. Shake hands and come out fighting. Colsen Whitehead could very well have been the third man in the ring of any fight, but this book is an exhibition bout, with no titles at risk.

The rudimentary level of stratification here is empiricists/intuitionists however, dependent on the reader's proclivities and breadth of knowledge, the story may equally as comfortably lend itself to a wide range of allegorical representations including feminism/ sexism, intolerance/inclusiveness, traditionalism/innovation, realists/post-modernists and in all likelihood a multitude of other contrasting viewpoints I have forgotten over the years since I read the novel.

The protagonist, Lila Mae Watson is an Intuitionist, an elevator inspector employing perception and insight as her primary tools for determination of an elevator's compliance with city code, as opposed to the Empiricists, the group of inspectors who value the service record (past experience), and documentable evidence (physical inspection of components) above all else. When an elevator Lila Mae has recently approved fails just as the mayor was about to dedicate the building, Lila Mae is placed in the position of scapegoat and undertakes to clear her name, restore her credibility and find out who or what was actually responsible for the mishap. Along the way, influenced to a great extent by a wide range of encounters with a mosaic of characters all possessing hidden personal agendas, Lila Mae arrives at a juncture where she has very little in common with the woman we met at the outset.

The Intuitionist is a novel of erudite conceptualization, elegant syntax and enticing mystery. It is suffused with sub-text and texture; it is surreal and timeless; but first and foremost, it is a book that should not be overlooked.

for more information click here

An audacious first novel by a genius author

How to describe Colson Whitehead's debut novel, The Intuitionist, a parable of race relations through the lens of competing factions of elevator inspectors in a fictional pre-civil rights American city? Check the thesaurus for synonyms for audacious - bold, works, as does brash. Now a writer of no small renowned, with a catalogue of excellent works and awards to his name, one can only wonder at the venturesome spirit that led to this deep complex novel which brings nothing so much to mind as the word sprawling.

The novel's protagonist, Lila Mae, is many times an outcast from her community of elevator inspectors. To begin with she's an African American. And she's a woman. And she has a perfect inspection record. And she's an "Intuitionist," a member of a school that uses an insurgent inspection philosophy based on the feel of the machine as opposed to the careful measurements taken by the majority "Empiricist" school. If perhaps she sounds perfect, quite the opposite is true, as she is not only deeply flawed, but often not quite likeable.

The plot of the work involves an elevator accident at a building Mae inspected, which she knows was no accident, and her search for the truth - which involves the war between the competing schools in the upcoming elevator inspector's guild elections, the lost plans for the next generation elevator designed by the late great design genius Fulton, and Fulton's secret which none want to see come to light. If these stakes seem not all that interesting, than know that Whitehead's novel is really a meditation on BIG themes - race, class, technology, capitalism, urbanism, the human condition. Through it all, he maintains a sly wit and thoughtful rendering of this world which is at once strange yet wholly believable.

While at less than 300 pages the Intuitionist is not a long work, it sprawls over a huge landscape of issues and character. At times one feels Whitehead struggling to hold all of the threads together, and even if he does not always succeed, the almost entirely successful attempt in this most original novel is nothing short of audacious.

for more information click here

Dazzling genre busting mystery - a compulsive page turner.

The Intuitionist starts with some stream of consciousness effects - disorienting moments of being dropped into a narrative abruptly. But then the narrative rapidly turns into a murder mystery with a fabulous unfolding of layers of corruption and self referencing detail that build upon further details in grand fashion. (p.s. the murder victim is an elevator). This is a mystery novel - with lots of mid-century Dashel Hammet style detailing - but it's also science fiction because this isn't our world. This parallel universe looks like 1950s New York, sort of. The mix of social realities and technologies cuts across eras and addresses the post-war American cultural landscape in a mad totality. This story is also a powerful analysis of race, like Invisible Man. The central plot element turns around racial identity and its implications. I'm not going to give spoilers so I'll leave it at that.

The central trope - elevators - metaphoric of transcendence and change is good stuff. Whitehead treads the rope ladder of metaphor very gently and it never overwhelms. It sure made me notice elevators more in personal life, though.

Why not five stars? There are are moments where I see Whitehead's trying too hard - like seeing the wires at a puppet show. Never enough to derail me from turning the page and quickly becoming engrossed again. This is a great first novel, but I can see where Mr. Whitehead has room to mature. I'm looking forward to reading his subsequent works. Mr. Whitehead knows how to write dialog and he knows how to plot and pace the narrative - and he understands the most important aspect of keeping it interesting: how to twist it. Trust me - you'll never see what's coming. The way he wraps this up is brilliant and surprising and very thought provoking. This book is worth reading on a lot of levels.

for more information click here