A Review of Colson Whitehead’s “Harlem Shuffle”
Does Crime Pay?
I’ve always found Colson Whitehead to be a cerebral writer, for good and for ill. It’s good to know that there’s a smart African American man out there writing works of fiction that make you think, but at least one book of his that I read seemed to be kind of nebulous. That book was his debut 1999 novel, The Intuitionist. I picked that one up in a bargain bin at a chain bookstore in 2005 when I was visiting Montreal for work, and I have to say that I didn’t get it. Maybe I was too young for it and hadn’t read my share of difficult novels to appreciate it. It is what it is, though. Better was his 2011 zombie novel, Zone One, but I felt that book was marred by too much of a downbeat ending. Now, after winning two Pulitzer Prizes for other novels since then, Whitehead is back with a book that is both a family saga and a volume of hard-nosed crime entitled Harlem Shuffle. The novel is easy to understand but is still a bit of a hard read because its tone is a smidge pessimistic.
Set against the titular Harlem backdrop of the late 1950s and early ’60s, the book concerns a Black furniture salesman named Ray Carney. He leads a double life: few people know that he was raised by crooks and is a bit of a crook himself. While he does sell new furniture to a Black clientele, we meet him as he’s fencing stolen goods, some of which are procured by his cousin, Freddie. When Freddie accidentally brings Ray in on a big jewel heist on a wealthy Black Manhattan establishment, Ray finds himself dealing with more and more various lowlifes and corrupt policemen. Can Ray keep his identities split enough to protect his young family as well as his cousin? Will Ray be able to afford an apartment on the ritzy Riverside Drive on the straight and narrow or will he be mired in his plight and turn full-time to a life of crime just to rise above? The answers are in the novel.
While Harlem Shuffle is a book about how white people screw over Blacks through gentrification, it is just as much a book about how Blacks don’t help their “brothers” out, or at least the only way they can help is through bringing them in on criminal activities. There’s a subplot that involves Ray trying to get into a Black country club that his father-in-law is a member of but is stymied in his attempts by being “too Black.” Harlem Shuffle is preoccupied with the notion that you can only legitimately make it as a person of colour only if you have light skin, and the rest of the Black community must hustle in the underworld if they want to make it rich. That’s what makes the book so hard to read: the unvarnished truth of the situation. Ray finds himself deeper and deeper into crime as his stock rises, and it is clear that he would rather be legit to serve the needs of his family. In the end, Ray finds out where his true place lies to be of any service to the Black community. But getting there is quite the struggle.
Still, if you can get past the grimy plot, Harlem Shuffle can be a fun read. Whitehead has researched his subject matter, so there’s a lot of intricacies here, too. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to be a Black businessman in the late ’50s, and a furniture salesman to boot, you’ll enjoy this read. The crime aspect of the book is enjoyably hard-boiled, and Whitehead proves yet again that he can sprint across genres as he has for much of his career and not be pigeonholed to one style of writing. You’ll never be sure which way the plot is going to turn next, and you will be kept on your toes for much of it. However, it’s the nuances about Black life that make the book instructive — and, I hope, to as much of a white audience as possible. You know, I’ve generally never really liked rap music much for its glorification of gangster culture, but Harlem Shuffle pinpoints why Black culture must be that way. It seems that the only way to “make it” is to run the streets. Legit opportunities are limited and, when they’re not, they could be limiting.
In the end, Harlem Shuffle feels like an important work. Whether or not it’ll win Whitehead a third Pulitzer is to be determined, but it is a tour-de-force of what it is like to live in a Black person’s shoes and be faced with the choices and opportunities that they have, particularly when it comes to servicing the needs of their community. You’ll read this book and understand why there’s a drug epidemic among Black people — they need some sort of escapism when they seemingly just can’t get ahead because of the roadblocks of their race. And not just roadblocks put up by whites, but of other Blacks to some extent as well. In the end, Harlem Shuffle is a thoughtful, provoking read. It has a tough, yet crucial, pill to swallow, and the subtext of this book makes it hard to shake. You might find that this is a book that you’ll want to put down after reading only a few chapters because it’s so heady, but you’ll wind up rooting for the characters and hope that they pull through and come to live better lives. This is an eye-opener of a novel and should be read to come to some understandings and better truths about what faces the Black community — and that, even though this book is set roughly 60 years ago, very little has changed in some ways for them. Harlem Shuffle is commanding. There’s no better way to put it than that, other than this one is worth a look if you want to know what Black people face and have faced, both today and yesterday.
Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle will be published by Doubleday / Bond Street Books on September 14, 2021.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
