{"id":1382,"date":"2026-07-17T16:17:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1382"},"modified":"2026-07-17T16:17:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:17:16","slug":"a-pulitzer-winner-who-keeps-pushing-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1382","title":{"rendered":"A Pulitzer Winner Who Keeps Pushing Himself"},"content":{"rendered":"<section>\n<div>\n<p><small><em>This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors\u2019 weekly guide to the best in books. <\/em><i>Sign up for it here.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1380\">The Researchers Who Want Dads-to-Be to Stop Drinking<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Many novelists\u2014including some great ones\u2014circle one subject and style for much of their career. Colson Whitehead isn\u2019t among them. He has written a zombie novel, a fantastical escape-from-slavery narrative, a supernatural elevator-inspector thriller, and, most recently, a trilogy of heist capers that concludes with <em>Cool Machine<\/em>, which comes out on Tuesday. The critic David Hajdu, in a new <em>Atlantic <\/em>article, describes the book as \u201ccrime fiction without apology\u201d that entertains \u201cfor the sake of a moral imperative.\u201d Don\u2019t mistake Whitehead\u2019s restlessness for aimlessness; his knack for pinballing among genres has marked out an instructive path for adventurous authors\u2014he\u2019s taken a joyously circuitous journey toward literary mastery.<\/p>\n<p>First, here are four new stories from <em>The Atlantic<\/em>\u2019s Books section:<\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>A free-speech meltdown<\/li>\n<li>Punctuation: a generational divide<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe Scrubbed and Simple Moon,\u201d a poem by Carol Frost<\/li>\n<li><em>The Odyssey <\/em>was never about the gods<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>This mastery took decades to achieve. Whitehead\u2019s first three novels earned him a reputation as a deft satirist of the transactional cultural ecosystem of the aughts\u2014but one who could fall into the glibness he was sending up. His second novel, <em>John Henry Days<\/em>, features a modern-day version of the titular folk hero\u2014intent on breaking a record not for the sledgehammering of steel but for consecutive days attending PR events. The critic James Wood thought that it was a work lacking introspection, \u201cfull of noise and irrelevant intensity.\u201d Whitehead responded, characteristically, with a parody in <em>Harper\u2019s<\/em> of a Wood review. But over time, he developed a more sophisticated response: He made his work deeper.<\/p>\n<p>In 2009\u2019s <em>Sag Harbor<\/em>, Whitehead fictionalized his happy but precarious summers in a Black middle-class enclave on Eastern Long Island. After another genre detour\u2014the 2011 zombie-apocalypse novel <em>Zone One<\/em>\u2014he wrote two books about America\u2019s brutal, racist history. <em>The Underground Railroad<\/em> made that 19th-century route to freedom literal, transforming it into a train track that brought fugitives through a series of alternate realities; <em>The Nickel Boys<\/em> turned the true story of an abusive Southern reform school into a painful coming-of-age adventure. Both novels won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.<\/p>\n<p>Moving from such heavy topics to a crime-fiction series might seem to represent another diversion. But every turn back to genre tropes has brought out new depths from the author. Whitehead has (thank goodness) a lot of nostalgic fun with the capers of the semi-criminal furniture salesman Ray Carney\u2014who else would name Part II of an entire book after New York City\u2019s beloved local-news anchor Sue Simmons? But, as Hajdu points out, Whitehead\u2019s treatment of his native city has evolved over the years. In an essay from 2003\u2019s <em>The Colossus of New York<\/em>, Whitehead sneers at hipsters praying to \u201cOur Lady of Perpetual Subculture\u201d; in his latest book, he is more sympathetic, imagining a New York newcomer staring into \u201cthe scabby face of a future self\u201d on the street. The \u201csnarl\u201d of the early reference is replaced, Hajdu writes, with the \u201cricher, more sordid majesty\u201d of the latter.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Harlem Trilogy<\/em>, Hajdu writes, has \u201clittle interest in irony or distancing effects.\u201d The author of the series bears the same curiosity, quick wit, and linguistic dexterity as the younger man who wrote <em>Zone One <\/em>and 2006\u2019s messy farce, <em>Apex Hides the Hurt<\/em>. But Whitehead has the maturity that comes from, say, building the astonishing world of <em>The Underground Railroad<\/em>; he\u2019s been around the block a few more times, and become a more complex and more intriguing future self.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1378\">Atlantic Trivia: Shakespeareology<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Unapologetic Crime Fiction of Colson Whitehead<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><i>By David Hajdu<\/i><\/p>\n<p>The <em>Harlem Trilogy<\/em> concludes with big questions about the moral universe.<\/p>\n<p>Read the full article.<\/p>\n<h4><b>What to Read<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><strong><em>The Age of Phillis<\/em><\/strong><strong>, by Honor\u00e9e Fanonne Jeffers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Although this book was longlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry, it could easily have been categorized as biography. As both a work of life-writing and a book about the <em>challenges <\/em>of writing, it may have no equal. Focusing on the groundbreaking 18th-century poet Phillis Wheatley, the collection reimagines her childhood in West Africa, her existence with her white American enslavers, her friendships and her marriage to John Peters, and, in the volume\u2019s haunting final poem, her death at roughly the age of 31. The volume concludes with a learned essay reflecting on the possibilities and the perils of biographical writing: Jeffers questions, for example, the historical account of a 19th-century white woman who claims to be related to Wheatley\u2019s enslaver, as well as racist accounts of Wheatley\u2019s husband in early biographies. By moving through and beyond several genres, this book joins a rich new tradition of what the scholar Saidiya Hartman calls \u201ccritical fabulation,\u201d a mode of imaginative writing that fills in gaps of African American history, correcting misrepresentations along the way.<\/p>\n<p>From our list: Eights of the most fascinating biographies to read<\/p>\n<h4><b>Out Next Week<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><em>\ud83d\udcda <\/em><em>Yellow Pine<\/em>, by Claire Vaye Watkins<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em>\ud83d\udcda <\/em><em>Country of Lords<\/em>, by Kim Phillips-Fein<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><em>\ud83d\udcda <\/em><em>Livia: Mother of Rome<\/em>, by Caitlin C. Gillespie<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h4><strong>Your Weekend Read<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><strong>Reading a 3,000-Year-Old Poem to a 3-Year-Old Boy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><i>By Chris Moody<\/i><\/p>\n<p><em>The Odyssey <\/em>is not, strictly speaking, a children\u2019s book. The poem\u2019s structure can confound even an adult reader. It does not open with \u201cOnce upon a time,\u201d but rather <em>in medias res<\/em>, as a committee of gods discusses a war that the author expects you to know about already. By the time the story gets to Odysseus\u2019s plight\u2014Homer assumes you\u2019ve heard of him, too\u2014his journey unravels like a Quentin Tarantino film: It starts near the end and then shifts back and forth in time. Some parts of the plot are also not especially kid-appropriate. Characters trip on drugs. A giant\u2019s eye gets poked out with a red-hot stake. Odysseus is unfaithful to his wife. <em>Goodnight Moon<\/em> this is not.<\/p>\n<p>Read the full article.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><small><em>When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic<em>.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><small><i>Sign up for The Wonder Reader,<\/i><i> a Saturday newsletter in which our editors recommend stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1376\">Trump Dooms His Own Party<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><small><i>Explore <\/i><i>all of our newsletters.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colson Whitehead\u2019s career shows the power of restlessness in writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-briefing"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - 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