Harlem Shuffle
By Colson Whitehead
The central character of Whitehead's latest novel is Ray Carney, and the book tracks his travails over two
decades as he "shuffles" -- maybe hustles is a better world -- between two worlds to make something of himself in 1950s and 1960s Harlem. The most visible, above-board part of this striving is a furniture store. But even that is tainted by the crooked part of his life; Carney opened the store with seed money from his father, a small-time crook who never broke the surface of straight life. Carney's work in New York's illegal life is as a fence, someone who takes stolen goods, mainly jewels, and turns them into cash for himself and the thief. Carney seeks a balance between these two worlds, but it is continually upset by his cousin-cum-brother, Freddie, who thoughtlessly brings Carney in deeper than he wants by connecting him to gangsters and, even worse, straight-seeming gangsters in the form of the powerful Van Wyck -- pronounced Wike, not Wick -- family.
The book is, in part, an examination of exactly what it means to be crooked. In this version of Harlem in this book (and I have no idea how realistic it is), no one is clean. Not the neighborhood cops, who take money to leave criminal enterprises alone. Not the black elite members of the Dumas Club, the leader of which embezzles money from fellow members. And certainly not the wealthy white families who run the city, whose operations appear more like the mafia than a business.
It is also a story of the city itself and how it changed over time. The years '59, '61, and '64 are very specific, and align with key moments in the city's development. '64 is particularly poignant. It is the year of the World's Fair, of rioting in Harlem, of the growth of the World Trade Center building. From Carney's point of view, it's all a "shuffle", a shell game in which the rich, white elite move the cups in a way that makes you think you're winning, but who always end up adding to their piles of wealth and privilege.
Whitehead is an incredible author. I don't know how he manages to take on a new voice, a new style with each of his books. This was one of those that made the world he imagined (even if much of it is real) alive for me. I felt like I knew Carney, and am a little sad our stories have now diverged.
