Interviews October 17, 2011

Colson Whitehead Colson Whitehead is not a difficult writer in the way that a Thomas Pynchon is. His syntax is standard, and his sentences make sense on first inspection. Nonetheless, beginning with his brilliant first book, The Intuitionist, which followed the travails of an elevator repairwoman, Whitehead has consistently invoked complex alternative realities, infusing his settings with a subtle, Buñuel-like surrealism. The main character of his latest novel, Zone One, is named Mark Spitz, a mediocre young man who has always pulled a B at best. In the book, Spitz is assigned to a cleanup detail in lower Manhattan,