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.
Violence in these books happens suddenly and you never write about it as a spectacle, only how it feels for those affected. Why?
There’s definitely a place for luxuriating [in violence] – I did that in Zone One [his 2011 zombie novel], but that’s not the point here. I’m not trying to sell it to the reader. It’s just part of the characters’ lives and it is quick and sudden. Partly, I was trying to evoke the randomness of city life, the way a city summons you into its weird drama; growing up in New York in the 70s and 80s, you never knew what was going to happen on the subway or when you turned the corner.
Are you more relaxed in these novels than in your previous books?
Some books are more fraught. When I started The Underground Railroad, I was like, I’d better get this right, slavery isn’t some abstract thing I’m playing with; am I competent enough to write about it in a way where I’m not failing the people – my ancestors – who went through it? With The Nickel Boys, too, I felt that duty; it was based on a true story. With Carney, the International Fence Union isn’t going to write angry letters if I take liberties.
What have you been reading lately?
A really great microhistory by David Hajdu: Positively 4th Street, about the early folk scene in Greenwich Village with Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. It’s not even the kind of music I like, necessarily – I like later Dylan maybe, but not that period – but the book is great at evoking the cultural energies that are coming together at that time. I’ve also been reading Hajdu’s Lush Life, about Billy Strayhorn, who wrote a lot of Duke Ellington’s songs and worked with Ellington’s bands, and is sort of unsung. I always like a biography of a tortured artist who is vaguely unhappy but manages to produce!
Name a book that inspired you to write.
Until I got to college, I wanted to write horror fiction. My mom would buy the new Stephen King every year and when I was 12 I read Carrie. Obviously, it’s a story about a teenager with psychokinetic powers, but the structure is really interesting. The story jumps forward in time and is interspersed with congressional reports about the incident in the town two years later, and newspaper reports detailing the disaster that happens 100 years in the future of the book. I thought, oh, this is cool – I’d love to write, like, a vampire or werewolf story that’s kind of messed up and has a weird chronology and plays with perspective.
Do you get much time for poker these days?
I had a monthly game for 20-something years and, as we got older, it became quarterly; now it’s twice a year. The pandemic really killed it. I have a hard time now sitting elbow to elbow touching a bunch of weirdos! Also, when I write about something, I unfortunately lose all appetite for it; I loved writing The Noble Hustle and I love cards but thinking about it so much sort of killed the joy. It’s sad. I wrote an essay about fried chicken, which I used to make a couple of times a month, and now I don’t make it at all and I kind of miss it. There’s a thing I want to write about barbecue but I know that, once it’s done, it won’t be the same. But in terms of cholesterol, maybe I should cut back on barbecue – so, in this case, it might be a positive thing.
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead is published by Fleet (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
