Customer Reviews

The Intuitionist: A Novel

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Weird, deadpan-funny, deadly serious, spooky and, in the person of its protagonist Lila Mae Watson, achingly human and real. This book dissolves the borders between several genres - speculative fiction, noir mystery, satire - in a manner I found reminiscent of the work of Jonathan Lethem. But Whitehead creates an original world here (think 1940s New York shifted slightly into a parallel universe) and illuminates it with his dazzling prose. Some magazine reviews have over-emphasized the book's racial content. Don't be misled; this book is relevant to anyone who has lived (or spent any time in!) a major city, or experienced alienation, or pondered the schism between the physical and the metaphysical. It's also a LOT of fun. I'll be waiting anxiously to see what Whitehead does next.

You ought not to throw the "genius" label around too much. I guess. So I'll circle around it, limiting myself to this: This is a work of exquisite originality that dazzles in every way. The language. The conception. The story. Most stunning of all, of course, is the way Whitehead has crafted an ingenious new form for a meditation on the most pressing problem of U.S. society: racism. What a deep contribution this book is. What a shame, though not at all surprising, that it is not being read by the whole country.

A screaming comes across the sky: a book, a snapped elevator cable...it's Colson Whitehead! How did this guy get so incredibly good, so young? His meticulously-crafted, ashy-grey midcentury metropolis looms up like something out of Hopper by way of Pynchon; the central metaphor of upward mobility - which could be so godawful mawkish - is never handled any less than deftly; the protagonist wears the weight of her overdetermination proudly, despite every conceivable undermining. I leave the details to the intrepid reader, but I've simply got to sing the praises of those stretches - where Whitehead's characters contemplate "the second elevation" that will transfigure the cities and the citizens of the day after tomorrow - whose sweep and pellucid elegance rival anything in the best science fiction for sending chills ricocheting up & down my spine. If race (understood narrowly as the black/white dichotomy) is still & always the central American dilermma, maximum kudos to Whitehead for finding a new metaphor with which to approach it. Buy it, read it, pass it on to those two or three of your friends you can always trust to really *get* stuff: this is where 21st century American Literature starts. (And they better be teaching this book as such, dammit, not ghettoize it to Ethnic Studies.)

I'm glad to see some laudatory four-star reviews here. Too many folks resort to five stars to make writing a review worth their while, and seem to regard three stars as an indication of failure by an author when it ought to signal a good, readable effort. I award The Intuitionist four stars for a fine first novel with a controlled voice and interesting approach. Whitehead manages to build tension and suspense in a story where the reader has no idea what the heroine intends to do or even should do. It's a mystery where no one dies. There are lots of curious events and clues, seemingly pregnant with meaning, that turn out to mean something very different than what one thought, or nothing at all. I liked this book very much. Don't go in expecting either belly laughs or Pynchon; it's not that kind of novel. But a very fine one in its own right.

The central analogy of Colson Whitehead's "The Intuitionist" is quite simple: the elevator, an important device in the skyward expansion of metropolitan areas, can also serve to lift blacks into an equal position with whites. It's simple, but it's also, at first thought, quite clumsy. I know that was my reaction upon beginning this book. Just like the advancement of modern engineering principles and the development of newer, stronger materials helped further develop the concrete jungle, so to must other factors assist the racial problem. But Whitehead, an eminently skilled writer, has thought of this too. And he knows something you don't know: it won't end the way you think it will end. Armed with this knowledge, he is able to freely create his world.

And what a world it is. Set in an unnamed metropolis, characterized by "magnificent elevated trains, five daily newspapers, [and] two baseball stadiums" that leaves some of its residents "too afraid to leave the house", Whitehead has created a hermetically sealed society. He never flinches in his portrayal, offering up detail after detail of his little world that are at once believable and credible. The centrepiece of this society, the raison d'etre, is that it takes elevator culture very seriously. A weekly magazine, dedicated to said culture, is called "Lift". Visionaries, such as Elisha Graves Otis and the recently deceased James Fulton, are revered much in the same that Plato or Aristotle are in our world. And the Department of Elevator Inspectors serves as a neat little microcosm of the whole, not to mention a terribly desirable place of employment. This is where the title character, Lila Mae Watson, works. That is until the Number 11 cab at the Fanny Briggs building went into a free fall a day after her inspection ("Verticality is such a risky enterprise"). This is the cataclysmic event off of which the story unfolds.

Lila Mae is a strange creation. She is cynical, headstrong, and fiercely intelligent (Case in point: she "does not expect human beings to conduct themselves in any other way but how they truly are. Which is weak"). She's had a perfect record as an Intuitionist inspector in a world dominated by Empiricists. But she's also learned to live in a racist world where she is the only female elevator inspector. Watch her bite her tongue when a pushy salesman espouses the virtues of skin-lighteners and hair-straighteners. Or see her reaction when, at a yearly banquet thrown by the Department, she's confronted by the antics of Hambone and Mr. Grizzard, a minstrel show eaten up by her white colleagues. Lila Mae must keep her head, for in her search for the truth about the accident she is confronted by a series of shady characters, none of whom she can really trust. Or can she?

It is this part of the book, within the detective story narrative, where Whitehead really shines. He mixes into his dystopia nightmare a healthy amount of neo-film noir elements. People are always sizing each other up, doing things to gauge reactions. A security guard asks to see Lila Mae's badge, but he never really looks at it. "He just asked for effect," comments Whitehead's spare narrator. Later, a scene is set inside a hotel room, where "the red neon of the liquor store sign across the street flashes... off and on." You almost expect Humphrey Bogart to emerge from such scenes. Which makes for a fine contrast when you once again realize that you're reading Lila Mae's story. There is nothing Bogart about her.

Up until the final act, I wasn't sure if I bought into all of Whitehead's ideas. However, in that final act, he brings things together so smoothly and so efficiently, I couldn't help but see the light that he was shining right into my face. His elevator analogy congeals nicely. It ably pulls back society's veil to reveal that, as the fictional Mr. Fulton once wrote, "There is another world beyond this one." Pay attention throughout, be patient at the beginning, and trust that what Whitehead has for you at the end will make the whole enterprise worthwhile. Follow this recipe, and you'll be impressed by "The Intuitionist" as much as I was.

Elevators? A mystery about _elevators_? Only Colson Whitehead could pull it off -- this stunningly complex novel raises questions that aren't easily answered, even after the central mystery is uncovered. _The Intuitionist_ is the story of two rival ideologies in the elevator inspecting world: Empiricism, which draws conclusions based on observable evidence, and Intuitionism, which seeks to comprehend the essence of an elevator to diagnose its problems. When Elevator Number 11 in the city's Fannie Briggs Building crashes in a catastrophic accident, Intuitionist inspector Lila Mae Watson is incriminated for negligence, but suspects that she has been framed in an attempt to aid the Empiricist candidate in the upcoming Guild elections. Lila Mae's quest to clear her name, as well as proving herself as the first black female elevator inspector in history, becomes an exploration into the heart of the political and ideological machinery of the city.

_The Intuitionist_, on the outside, is a meticulously composed noir detective story, with a Gotham-like city of glass and steel and characters with names bordering on the stereotypical (Johnny Shush the mobster, for example). But Whitehead only employs that structure as a foundation for a much more intricate postmodern work that deals with alienation, loneliness, and the failure of meaningful communication in the face of looming technology. Lila Mae finds herself embroiled in a search for the mythical "black box," the perfect elevator that will lift civilization to a new vision of the city, conceived by the father of Intuitionism, James Fulton. In her pursuit of answers to the black box and the Fannie Briggs Building accident, however, Lila Mae uncovers the most earth-shattering secret of all.

In a masterfully crafted, cleverly constructed novel that fully rewards second and third readings, Colson Whitehead deconstructs the concepts of race, human communication, and dominance and servanthood. Whitehead succeeds in drawing the reader into the cutthroat world of, yes, elevator inspecting, then turning that world upside down. Playing delicately with the reader's preconceptions, _The Intuitionist_ proposes a future for humanity that transcends the existing social order.

Read it, and you will never look at elevators the same way again.

There's a lot more going on here than one would think. This thoroughly original novel is not so easy to classify either. I don't think that Whitehead meant us to see the Empiricist/Intuitionist division as entirely black and white issue. Whitehead uses the period term "colored" throughout the book as well and it is not just a historical word choice, in my opinion. After all, not all the Intuitionists are black. Gould - the escalator expert - is a redheaded Irish American and chooses to side with the Intuitionist camp. And even the role of characters like Marie Claire Rogers (the black mistress/domestic of Fulton) is being overlooked by other readers/reviewers. Marie Claire clearly does not like what Lila Mae stands for and accuses her of playing a role, wearing a uniform that makes her someone other than who she should be in Marie's eyes. And Lila Mae continues to put on other uniforms and play other roles throughout the novel in a kind of search for her place in this anonymous metropolis populated with schemers and plotters. What I like most about this book is it's menacing atmosphere, a subtly sinister air that colors each incident, each meeting, each exchange between characters in shades of deceit, mistrust and duplicity. This is like a literary marriage between Dashiell Hammett and Ralph Ellison. However, I fail to find anything riotously funny here. Whitehead's style is witty and biting at times, but there is nothing knee-slapping, howlingly funny here. Those who do find this some kind of ha-ha comedy are most likely the people Whitehead is warning us about.

This really is a wonderful book. Like one of the media reviews (NYT?) it has too many metaphors going on at once and that results in a bit of a grapeshot effect. I didn't start reading another novel for about two weeks after finishing this one because I was trying to sort them all out. I still couldn't and I gave up. I still don't understand how the Empiricists embody the white world and how Intutitionists embody the minority world. There's about a hundred other things I don't get and probably never will. I wish I knew of a book group near me that was reading this because there's a lot I want to be able to understand. It's that kind of book: frustrating but enjoyable.

Whitehead shoots for the stars but barely clears the clouds. His prose ranges wildly from the enjoyably seamy to the (unintentionally) absurdly pseudo-poetic and his characterizations remain largely simple-minded and very, very male. This, despite the fact that our heroine is, well, a heroine. The more the book attempts to draw parallels between racial harmony and mechanical (or other) elevation, the less beleivable he becomes. And his depction of the duelling philosophies of Intuition and Empiriciam winds up smacking of the starkest and cheapest (reverse) racism. There is some choice writing here, but increasingly one just wants Whitehead to stop posturing and get on with the story. If he had had something interesting to say about race and an interesting way of putting it, I'm sure I would have felt otherwise.

I thought this was a good book mainly for its scope and ambition. The author created a remarkable world and the rendering of that world in all its minutiae was my favorite aspect of the novel. However, the book did run into platitude city at times, which I think is attributable to the confines of the detective novel form. There are also very typical characters that you would expect in a crime story in here and they even talk like the staple 1930's gansters. I only wished the author had not relied so much on the conventions of the crime/detective genre and instead tried to get a little more creative with what could have been done with the plot. But this is a great first novel that had many passages of dazzling prose that really demonstrated the author's love of language. It's detective meets sci-fi and it's an interesting and ambitious experiment but it probably isn't for everyone.