AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Ray Carney is a furniture salesman in Harlem with a long-running side hustle - acting as a fence.
COLSON WHITEHEAD: A fence is someone who deals in stolen goods, takes them from the illegal world and launders them for the straight world.
RASCOE: That's Colson Whitehead, who won Pulitzer Prizes for his books "The Underground Railroad" and "The Nickel Boys." Whitehead's just finished his "Harlem" trilogy, following Ray Carney's descent into crime across decades in a rapidly changing New York City. His latest and last in the trilogy is "Cool Machine," set in the 1980s as yuppies take over. And Colson Whitehead joins us now from New York. Thank you for being here.
WHITEHEAD: Hey. Howdy.
RASCOE: Ray Carney - he often reflects on why he's drawn to a life of occasional crime. Why do you think he keeps returning to that dark side?
WHITEHEAD: He's a divided soul. You know, he grew up poor and has these dreams of being solidly middle class, being a good family man, having a nice home, having a legit business. But there's a voice in the back of his head that's always saying, let's do some crimes. And so over the trilogy, he embraces, he runs away from that voice. And in the third book, the final book, he's, you know, trying to integrate these two different halves of himself.
RASCOE: And these criminals have codes. They have ways of doing things. And do you think there's, like, some sort of religion for criminals, like - or is there really no honor among thieves?
WHITEHEAD: I don't know about honor, but there's a code. You know, the second book is called "Crook Manifesto."
RASCOE: Yeah.
WHITEHEAD: And, you know, one character muses that you have a certain kind of rules, things you will do, what you won't do, align. And part of the book is exploring, you know, how bad is it being a fence when so many people are committing other bigger crimes?
RASCOE: This novel spans the 1980s, and a big theme is gentrification, both of New York City in general and of these Black neighborhoods in Harlem. The characters in your book, call it churn. What interested you about this period of change in New York?
WHITEHEAD: Churn is an ever-present force in the city. Populations are moving in, entering the middle class, you know, flunking out. And if you think about the history of Harlem, there are townhouses that are still standing, going back to the 1870s and 1880s, and they were the first homes for German, Irish, Jewish immigrants. They left. Black migrants came from the South and the Caribbean. And there was this constant movement of people in and out of the city, transforming it for themselves, being transformed.
And I think one of the cool things about that phenomenon - and it is gentrification - is that the great-great-grandkids of those original immigrants - the Germans who came here in the 19th century - their great-grandkids are moving to Harlem now in the same - they're living in the same buildings. And that replenishment, I think, is really fascinating and lovely about the city.
RASCOE: But some of the characters in the book, obviously, are unmoored by it. Pepper, in particular, is Ray's relative. He's, like, muscle, and he is really taken aback when his bar that's supposed to be the bar for, you know, kind of the criminals, the underworld, becomes, you know, gentrified with kind of white patrons - yuppies, I think he calls them.
WHITEHEAD: Yeah, it's the early '80s, so it's...
RASCOE: Yeah.
WHITEHEAD: ...The rise of the yuppie.
RASCOE: Yeah.
WHITEHEAD: And they're seeing these new people come to their spots and wondering, why is that guy reading in New York Times? That's where the pimp sits.
RASCOE: Yeah. Yeah.
WHITEHEAD: So Pepper - you know, he's a friendly sociopath. He's older than Ray, doesn't really get people in bell bottoms in the 70s or blaxploitation movies. And he definitely doesn't get Basquiat-type painters and post-punk and the downtown scene he's embroiled in. So he's always fun to set loose on a scene, whether it's a violent moment of crime or just the yuppies are taking your favorite spot the bar.
RASCOE: Do you see Pepper as tragic? - running out of time, but also getting out of time in that time is kind of maybe leaving him behind?
WHITEHEAD: Yeah, you know, I'm following these characters over 30 years, and they're getting older, and I have to dramatize that. So he's 65. He doesn't, you know, take a beating as well as he used to. He's always swilling his Pepto-Bismol to make sure he can get through the day. And, you know, there's no pension plan for a safe cracker. He doesn't have, like, a - an IRA or 401(k). What's next for him?
RASCOE: Yeah. And this time in New York in the '80s, you remember this time. Like, is - were there things that you really wanted to include from your experience of that time?
WHITEHEAD: I was a young teenager. It was a great time to be in New York City and soak up the culture. I had a really cool older sister who introduced me to - it was Run-DMC and also Liquid Liquid, ESG, these downtown bands. And so I get to salute that period. And it was great to just be able to bring in some of my New York into Ray's New York.
RASCOE: You've written this trilogy. It's rollicking and fun, even as it deals with, obviously, you know, real-world issues - racism, police violence. What can this genre still tell us about our world?
WHITEHEAD: Definitely, if you're someone who likes to make jokes, like me, you know, you're going to have an ironic relationship to the genre. So having fun with the supporting cast, some of the tropes and rhetoric is - there's a lot of opportunities for humor. "The Underground Railroad" and "The Nickel Boys" were very sober books, but part of my project is pointing out the absurdity of life, and I get to do that in this trilogy. I get to have fun. I get to tell jokes and have a hero who's not as determined by his social circumstances as, say, the characters in "Underground" or "Nickel Boys."
RASCOE: That's Colson Whitehead. His latest book is "Cool Machine." Thank you so much for being with us.
WHITEHEAD: It was a lot of fun, thanks.
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