{"id":297847,"date":"2026-07-16T17:44:48","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T17:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/297847\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T17:44:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T17:44:48","slug":"how-colson-whiteheads-harlem-trilogy-helped-him-make-sense-of-a-changing-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/297847\/","title":{"rendered":"How Colson Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy helped him make sense of a changing city"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 7 was a refreshingly cool day for summer in New York City. Morning showers made way for a partly cloudy afternoon, the ideal weather for walking among skyscrapers and marveling at such a remarkable metropolis. Only, your reverence was disrupted by talk of that terrifying building. A Midtown high-rise was on the verge of collapsing<\/a> amid renovations \u2014 a stark reminder that even the greatest of ambitions can be felled by a buckling beam.<\/p>\n

Author Colson Whitehead hopped on a video call with Gothamist a day after news broke of the tower\u2019s structural instability. He agreed it was a concerning development. But as a lifelong New Yorker, Whitehead is always ready for the unexpected to occur.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited about the mayor. I\u2019m excited the Knicks won. That feels great,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t know, the city has these ups and downs.\u201d<\/p>\n

While celebrated for his Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction, Whitehead remains quite the realist. Woven into his books, such as \u201cThe Underground Railroad\u201d and \u201cNickel Boys,\u201d is an unvarnished understanding of how American history informs modern life. Whitehead\u2019s Harlem crime trilogy adopts a lighter tone, thanks to its narrator\u2019s wry sense of humor. But the thrillers are still saturated with bittersweet reflections on what it can be like to try making it in an ever-changing city.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Whitehead will release \u201cCool Machine,\u201d the final installment in a series that also consists of 2021\u2019s \u201cHarlem Shuffle\u201d and 2023\u2019s \u201cCrook Manifesto.\u201d The third book\u2019s narrative picks up in the 1980s and continues to follow the misadventures of furniture salesman Ray Carney, who has padded his respectable income with shady business dealings ever since getting roped into an elaborate jewelry heist back in 1959.<\/p>\n

\u201cWriting about the \u201980s, we\u2019re coming out of the city\u2019s bankruptcy and Wall Street is roaring again. There are new buildings going up,\u201d Whitehead said of the novel\u2019s setting. \u201cBut at the end of the decade, there\u2019s the height of the AIDS crisis and the crack epidemic. As a lifer, I know that whenever you\u2019re going up, the roller-coaster has to come down eventually.\u201d<\/p>\n

Living in the city shaped Whitehead\u2019s early understanding of success. His entrepreneur parents and their four kids moved around the Upper West Side a fair bit during his childhood, often with the goal of ending up in a nicer home. In his younger days, not unlike Carney in \u201cHarlem Shuffle,\u201d Whitehead thought finding a place with decent square footage and good sunlight would solve all of his problems. (In that book, Carney aspires to own property on Strivers\u2019 Row, a coveted destination among well-off Black American families.)<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then of course, you move and you\u2019re still the same person,\u201d Whitehead said, laughing at himself. \u201cIt took me probably 15 moves to realize this horrible truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 1981 when we catch up to Carney in \u201cCool Machine.\u201d Like Whitehead, who is 56 years old, Carney is now middle-aged. He and his wife, Elizabeth, are empty nesters in the Strivers\u2019 Row home they were eventually able to afford. Carney knows he should be happy but can\u2019t seem to shake his \u201ccrooked\u201d past, as Whitehead\u2019s narrator puts it.<\/p>\n

He returns to unsavory behavior, helping pull off a heist at the Waldorf Astoria. In 1983, we follow his friend Pepper, an older man with an extensive history of criminal dealings, as he chases a thief through the East Village club scene. In 1986, the two men team up for one last outing.<\/p>\n

The 1980s were formative years for Whitehead, who remembers visiting East Village nightclubs as a teenager. (The fictional avant-garde club Shoot the Hostages in the book is based on the World, which closed in 1991 after the owner was found dead<\/a> inside.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember walking to Avenue B, Avenue C and being scared out of my wits,\u201d Whitehead recalled, adding that now, \u201cit\u2019s a whole new world. There\u2019s so much development. So many people have moved in that it\u2019s unrecognizable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the book is preserving those last moments,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd also, accepting change.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1983, Pepper briefly ducks into Downtown Beirut, an East Village dive bar that closed in the early \u201890s. That same year, Pepper debates the merits of Kiev versus Veselka, two Ukrainian restaurants in the area; today, only Veselka remains. Whitehead felt obligated to weigh in, noting that he was \u201cmore of a Kiev guy back in the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the Harlem trilogy, Whitehead marks the passage of time by tracking progress on the construction of the Twin Towers, sky-high symbols of prosperity.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, we have this different perspective 1784223888 on the changing city and what will happen to those two buildings,\u201d Whitehead said. When construction is done, Carney and Elizabeth dine at Windows on the World, the restaurant once located on the 106th and 107th floors of the World Trade Center.<\/p>\n

The change seems to be happening more rapidly these days. Whitehead found himself in Harlem recently and noticed that several of the average-sized buildings that existed just seven years ago, when he was location-scouting for \u201cHarlem Shuffle,\u201d had been replaced with high-rises.<\/p>\n

Whitehead recognizes that change can be difficult, especially when it affects the livelihoods of loved ones and communities you cherish, but at the same time, he remains rather matter-of-fact about the circle of New York City life. Stuff happens. Things evolve. It\u2019s the people who make a place, even if it can feel like the city has a formidable agenda of its own.<\/p>\n

\u201cCarney\u2019s question that keeps coming up is, \u2018Escape from New York? Where would you go? You\u2019re deluding yourself,\u2019\u201d Whitehead said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that\u2019s Carney,\u201d he continued, differentiating himself from the character. Whitehead plans to stay in the city for the time being, he said, given that his younger child is about to enter the seventh grade. But once his son goes to college? It\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe I\u2019ve done my time. We\u2019ll see. I mean, I love New York, and it\u2019s obviously a great influence and a great inspiration. But there are other places, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"July 7 was a refreshingly cool day for summer in New York City. Morning showers made way for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-297847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}