"Perhaps they’d crossed each other in the darkness, like they used to do in the old days of the living city. Happened all the time that someone you loved moved through the avenues, half a block over, one block over from you as they navigated their day, unaware how close you were. You just missed each other."
from Zone One by Colson Whitehead
Saturday, January 7th 2012 12:07pm
"Nothing had been boarded up, there were no firefight traces or other signs of mayhem, and a finicky wind had kicked all the litter around the corner. From time to time Mark Spitz happened on these places in Zone One, where he strolled down a movie set, earning scale as an extra in a period piece about the dead world."
from Zone One by Colson Whitehead
(Source: colsonwhitehead.com)
Tuesday, November 22nd 2011 11:42am
"They went way back, to college, the late ’50s, when they were part of a handful of young black men infiltrating the big-time Northeast schools. Brothers from Brooklyn, Harlem, huddling together as the Massachusetts winters, the New Hampshire winters, took a bite out of their assess. What were they doing getting Ivy League educations? They weren’t supposed to be there. They hung tight with the five or six black guys in their school, drank beer with the five or six black guys the next school over. Date the five or six black ladies at the genteel women’s college the next town over, and the other schools on the black network, road-tripping to the big dance that weekend at B.U. or Smith, or up to Montreal, where from all accounts some crazy racial utopia existed, integration of the sort that’d get you lynched in half of the South. My father met my mother during that time, on the New England black-college circuit. So that’s where all this begins, maybe…"
from the novel Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
Thursday, February 4th 2010 10:29pm
"To people like you and me, a briquette is a briquette. Not to him. He seemed to analyze each coal individually, taking measure of its strengths, deficits, secret potential. The diamond in the darkness. He knew where they needed to go, recognizing the uniqueness of each cube and determining where it fit with the rest of the team. He assembled the pyramid meticulously, perceiving the invisible—the crooked corridors of ventilation between the briquettes, the heat traps and inevitable vectors of released energy, any potential irregularity that might undermine the project. The sublime interconnectedness of it all. He asserted his order. Built his fire."
from the novel Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
Thursday, February 4th 2010 9:44pm
"The Highlight of the summer was the U.T.F.O.-Lisa Lisa concert at Bayside. Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam headlined, thanks to their crossover hit “I Wonder if I Take You Home,” but U.T.F.O. was the real draw in our neck of the woods. They ruled the winter with “Roxanne, Roxanne,” a lamentation about a fly girl who wouldn’t give them the time of day. In the tradition of the Village People, they employed theme personalities. The Educated Rapper boasted of his capacious intellect (“She needs a guy like me, with a High IQ”), Doctor Ice wooed her with his knowledge of the medical world (“Dermatology is treatment of the skin… There’s anesthesiology, ophthalmology, internal medicine and plastic surgery, orthopedic surgery and path-o-logy”), while the Kangol Kid put his faith to… his Kangol, though frankly one should never underestimate the power of the accessories to help one stand out in the crowd. Mix Master Ice, their DJ, kept silent, preferring “to speak with is hands,” as they said in his millieu."
from the novel Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
Thursday, February 4th 2010 9:32pm
"Clive had always been the leader of our group. He was just cool, no joke. I pitied Marcus for his victimhood; I pitied Clive because he had to hang out with us. He was just that rare thing among us: halfway normal, socialized and capable and charismatic. Like—he did sports. Basketball and track, captain of one of the teams at his school, I can’t remember which, he was good at both of them. Sometimes he tried to get a basketball game together, two-on-two, but after a while we just started playing three against him, and he still won, leaving us a sorry sight at the side of the court, bent over and dizzy, palms on our knees and reaching for imaginary asthma inhalers. Imaginary asthma inhalers created a placebo effect, which was better than nothing."
from Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
Thursday, December 10th 2009 1:14pm
Just started reading Colson Whitehead’s latest novel after tackling a difficult and, in my opinion, pompous sci-fi novel. Needless to say, I’m already finding Sag Harbor enjoyable.
Wednesday, November 18th 2009 3:12pm
