Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead, our greatest living novelist, returns to Harlem in his final novel in the trilogy featuring Ray Carney, a furniture store owner and part-time fence for stolen goods. Cool Machine dazzles, both in the wordplay we expect from Whitehead and in the energetic thrum imbued in his writing. To fully appreciate this novel, readers are advised to start with the two previous books in the series, Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto. But Whitehead has talent to burn, so a reader can simply pick up the latest book, and—just like that—join Carney et al. in 1980s New York City.
Cool Machine constitutes three novellas that take us across the 1980s. Readers of the two previous Harlem Trilogy books have been with Carney since the 1950s. Now, Carney is in his 50s and his two grown kids have “spun off like rockets.” So, what is Carney to do? He tends to his store, sure. But knowing his kids want no part of it, there’s a certain spark missing from the narrative that is Carney’s life. When some white bankers deny his wife a business loan to start her own travel agency, Carney is compelled to return to the crooked world. In other words, Carney is alive again.
As with all of the Harlem novels, heists abound. What’s unique in this circumstance is the series of events that lead Carney to join a crew in a heist’s inception and execution, rather than just off-loading stolen goods. And if you’re a sucker for heist tales, reading about how and why the crew boosts Jesse Owens’ Olympic gold medal from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel is about as entertaining as it gets.
Because Carney has never lived anywhere but Harlem, he’s continually coming across visual reminders of his hardscrabble upbringing, most notably memories of his late cousin Freddie. Deceased for decades, Freddie is still a source of moral ambiguity for Carney. They were both born into a criminal world. But while Carney sought no small amount of normalcy, Freddie sank deeper into the underworld. How much Carney could have saved Freddie is a working question, brought to the fore once again when Freddie’s son, Robert, is in trouble with both the law and the Italian mafia.
Robert is an enigma to Carney, for while he’s helped out his nephew over the years, including employment at his store, he feels as though Robert merely tolerates him: “Politely tolerated, like when you take a perfunctory bite of your host’s cake.” Carney concludes that Robert is not cut out for New York City, even though he has never lived anywhere else. “A New Yorker was kidnapper and hostage in one, setting the impossible ransom for their own deliverance.”
And ultimately this is a novel about New York City. Whitehead manages to bring the city’s life to the page. As you read, you feel the city’s nonstop bass. A native New Yorker, Whitehead creates a protagonist who can only exist in New York City. To Carney, living in NYC is the only option, because it’s the only city that makes sense to him. Manhattan Island is a metaphor for life because—in the end—it’s on its own. “The underlying melody of death and rebirth in blocks and avenues. You wake up to discover that the city has unveiled another version when you weren’t looking.” It can be harsh, grinding down those who can’t join its unyielding churn. But to Carney, that churn is a foundation, the one thing he knows to be true. “That was the rule. That was the system: constant, turbulent change.”
Review by Jason Sullivan
