Colson Whitehead, 53, is the author of 11 books, including a poker memoir, The Noble Hustle, and the Pulitzer-winning novels The Underground Railroad, which was televised in 2021, and The Nickel Boys, about an abusive reform school in the Jim Crow era. His new novel, Crook Manifesto, takes place in the 1970s and rejoins furniture salesman and stolen-goods dealer Ray Carney, first seen in Harlem Shuffle, a crime caper “subversively using the genre against itself” (the Atlantic magazine). Whitehead, born and raised in New York, spoke from his home in Long Island.
Did you always know Harlem Shuffle would be the first in a trilogy?
I started off wanting to do a heist novel but I kept coming up with more adventures for Carney. Halfway through writing it, I decided there would be two books – and if you do two, you might as well do three! But when Harlem Shuffle came out I didn’t say it was the first in a trilogy, because what if I got bored? I wanted to give myself an out. I didn’t want it in my obituary: “He never finished his trilogy”.
Is that why you’ve seldom previously written the same type of book twice – because you get bored?
Yeah, usually, when I’m done with a book, I’m really done with that style and genre; I like to follow a big book with a smaller book, something that’s funny with something more serious. This is the first time I’ve had a world I want to explore so deeply over time. I’m giving the story room to go in different directions; it’s Carney’s book, but it’s OK if he doesn’t appear for 100 pages in the middle.
What led you to make him a furniture salesman?
A lot of real-life fences have a storefront business where they do their illegal stuff in their back. I picked furniture randomly, but it pays off metaphorically and in terms of plot because it’s about family and middle-class aspiration. He could have been a robber or a wheel man but fences in heist stories seemed underutilised to me; they always appear, you know, giving the protagonist 10 cents on the dollar for this million-dollar necklace. I thought, who is that guy? It’s open territory; there’s not a lot of fence novels I know of.
