Apex Hides the Hurt
Colson Whitehead
Doubleday, 208 pages, $22.95
Much like the humble elevator in his well-received debut “The Intuitionist,” Colson Whitehead's newest framing metaphor is as plain-faced and lowly as his intentions are lofty. In the far-reaching and funny “Apex Hides the Hurt,” the author examines that fleshy problem we call racism by way of the common manufactured bandage – those peachy adhesive strips designed to mimic the color of human skin. But whose skin might that be? And can the truly ugly be covered up so easily? Is it the bandage on the box that's the wrong shade, or the skin itself?
The fictional American town of Winthrop is the setting for Whitehead's story, which centers on a standoff between the three members of the town council: Regina Goode, the African-American mayor; Lucky Aberdeen, the Caucasian CEO of a local software firm; and Albie Winthrop, an aging white aristocrat described as “privilege gone soft in its own juices.” Lucky has proposed that the town change its name to New Prospera, a name he feels better reflects the town's postmodern brand of innovation, which has led a crop of shiny new businesses to spring up like weeds and forced the Winthrop name and history deep underground.
Complicating things is the mayor, who at first sides with the fast-talking Lucky but later recants her support, insisting that Winthrop revert to its former incarnation, “Freedom,” the name her ancestors came up with following a lifetime of enslavement. This triangle of desires plays out like the three competing ids of our national conscience, where old-school tradition vies for domination over historical grievance, and where yuppie trappings threaten to cancel them both out.
Cue our protagonist, a nomenclature expert (who ironically, remains unnamed) hired by the council to choose a name for the town. To hear him tell it, nomenclature is a vocation on par with that of statesmen and kings. Consider the glory of product names, the way they identify us, the overwhelming comfort they bring. “In European hotels,” Whitehead writes, “he could get five countries' programming in five different languages but it felt like home because he understood the names.” In a world where tradition and history are compressed by the great garbage truck of progress, “to have a name imprinted on the bottom of a Styrofoam container: This was immortality.”
Then again, “the name you gave ... allowed you to draw a bead, take aim, shoot.” It is upon this idea that the significance of the story rests – and significant it is. “Every couple of years,” Whitehead writes, reflecting on the ever-changing names for African-Americans, “someone came up with something that got us an inch closer to the truth. Bit by bit we crept along. As if that thing we believed to be approaching actually existed.”
Slowly, the protagonist begins to understand that names are like street signage. “Tear the old signs down, put up new ones in their place – it didn't change the character of the place, did it? It didn't cover up history.” Ultimately, the name he decides upon is perfect in its import, one that manages to encompass all the disparate elements of the town while acknowledging that history, tradition and progress are like arrows on a unhelpful guidepost, all pointing in the same direction.
Lenny Bruce Is Dead
Jonathan Goldstein
Coach House, 155 pages, $17.95
Fans of National Public Radio will recognize Jonathan Goldstein as a contributing editor and producer of “This American Life,” a weekly dose of music-soaked storytelling that, despite its focus on the commonplace, often verges on the extraordinary. It's a paradox that has seeped into Goldstein's poetic, poignant and very funny debut, which comes across not so much as a novel as a smattering of disjointed and bizarre observations on sex, religion and mortality. Like being dealt a hand of cards, we watch as the pieces of Goldstein's book fall into place, only to know what we're working with when all is said and done.
Josh, Goldstein's protagonist, wants nothing more than to get laid and to understand God, but the death of his mother and the ineptitude of his father leave him confused, couch-bound and helpless, even into adulthood. He bobs between career choices, ricochets off of one girl after another and gets mixed up with a Hasidic Jew who promises redemption, all the while reflecting, in snippets, on the impermanence of life. However strong he feels he must be in the face of his father's shortcomings, Josh is one antihero not afraid to break down entirely: “He was crying on the floor,” Goldstein writes with characteristic understatement, “pulling toilet paper off the spool with both hands like he was climbing a rope.”
Goldstein is a former fixture of the Montreal spoken-word scene and his book often reads like a monologue, albeit one constantly interrupted by deviations of the heart and mind. Perhaps predictably, the book is also reminiscent of an installment of “This American Life,” wherein random thoughts and vignettes intersect to create a gestalt, a wholeness of being, rendering the protagonist – and the story – infinitely more interesting than a straightforward novel would allow.
Tiffany Lee-Youngren is a freelance writer.
