I decided to read or listen to Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys because the two books that I am supposed to be reading right now are Alasdair Gray’s Lanark and Bana’s Kadambari, neither of which have audiobooks that I can find. I pulled up Whitehead’s text because it is the final entry in the previous project that I started many, many years ago with my friend Drew Moody to read all of the books that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I needed something to listen to and found that The Nickel Boys was less than 7 hours and I thought I could do that in a day as I am outside painting. I didn’t finish it in one day but had a little bit left over for the start of the next day.
I loved this book. I loved The Underground Railroad which I read in grad school. Both of these books have similar interacts with reality which I love. I love their tense moments that deliver on the stark realities faced by the characters but that he does not linger too long on the traumas experienced by the characters. The name of the shed where they took the boys, the Ice Cream factory is one of these perfectly distressing moments expertly selected by a skillful author.
There is some conversation about Whitehead's use of history in his novels. In The Underground Railroad, Whitehead brings in this element of the Tuskegee experiments into a novel set during slavery. Historically speaking, the South Carolina scene from the first pulitzer winner is probably more likely set some time after slavery ended, but slamming these two things together in that novel brings together the entire experience of slavery in contact with Reconstruction and Jim Crow history as well and broadens the conversation in a way that I find fascinating. One of the ways that Whitehead sort of reconstructs his own histories similar to his usage of historical facts in Underground Railroad, was the name of the school and the name of the book. The issue of renaming the school from Dozier to Nickel and then having the Nickel name be a part of the logic and themes of the story. One moment in particular felt like Shawshank Redemption especially when they are painting out in the town vs when the guys are drinking beer on the roof.
I don't know the term for this, but I am enchanted by this idea that Whitehead saves the reader from having to experience some of the deeper traumas of the characters experience. Often times, the suspense of a moment is leading to an excruciating experience for one of the characters. Whitehead locates the reader's experience directly in the shoes of Elwood like getting into the car with the person suspected of having stolen the vehicle. We are opening the door, suspiciously, peering in and seeing what seems to be a friendly face. Other moments, the tension is leading us into the White House and Whitehead closes the door for us just before we get into that room for some protracted traumatic scene. I thought of these as little mercies a skillful author selecting his scenes masterfully.
Another element in Whitehead's writing that he uses to maximal effort in The Nickel Boys that was present in The Underground Railroad is the use of identity. The clear example is the use of Elwood's character as an avatar or all-encompassing person that Turner adopts after leaving Nickel. A smaller example of this is Griff in his fight against the white boy in the boxing match. Griff is supposed to lose on purpose in the race fight where those in power are orchestrating the conflict of those both imprisoned. The white elite want there to be a show of a fight but the want the show of the white boy winning over the black youth though everyone there knows that the Griff should win easily. This is all very good symbolism but there is a double turn here. If that is all that there was a moment in the text, a short text, that this fight would happen and all these elements are true to form, fairly straight forward almost allegory the scene would be successful. The double turn is that the characters in the drama are aware of it, at least Elwood and Turner are aware of what is meaning to happen here and are still locked in the fate of what happens. It seems as if this moment were a set of movie goers are aware just before the fatal car accident that the car accident is going to happen, you predict the twist and it is enjoyable to see it come to pass even if it is difficult. The double turn that Whitehead is doing here though is that the movie goers are actually the ones in the car accident themselves and are impacted by the trauma. This simultaneous awareness and powerlessness is a truly fascinating example of capturing something essential about this experience.
The slight mercy the Whitehead exhibits for Spencer having grown up poor and abused himself was a delightful mercy. I am fascinated by this moment because Whitehead does not need to give us this back story, and doing so only seeks to complicate the issues really. It is easier to hate Spenser without feeling the hunger and forlorn condition of his upbringing. There is a way that this contends with history that I think is honest and clear eyed and confusing and something to be thought through in a very careful way. I really enjoyed this book, just beat for beat, a pretty text well executed, well told, well imagined, fully realized, and wonderful. There were a few moments that sort of ring false to me which were the very first few pages and the ending scene at the hotel, just slight moments.
I don’t want to belabor these points because I think they are minor missteps in an otherwise powerful told tale of race, slavery, and oppression that does all of the work of keeping alive the cycle of trauma started with something like the 1619 project and carrying it way further forward than I think people think is possible. It is not hard to see how the Nickel experience mirrors almost exactly that of slavery, and that as recently as the setting of the early 60s in the US the lived black experience resembled slavery in all but name alone. Juxtaposing the simultaneity of Martin Luther King’s speech with Elwood’s lived experience is a fascinating and powerful move. It isn’t that Martin Luther King is stating these things into a vacuum but that the exact type of oppression he is fighting against is happening, not just as a reaction to his agitation but that a place like Nickel existed, though MLK may not have been aware of that exact place, but the locus of these imaginings and strivings would be Fun Town was perfectly chosen and slight stab every time it came up.
Whitehead does a masterful job telling this story, and is fulling deserving of winning the Pulitzer prize twice, especially for this second text.
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