Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead review: 'funny, incisive and wise'
The final part of the trilogy that began in 2021 with Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine has sass, smarts and heart, writes Stuart Kelly
There is a scene at the opening of the final third of Cool Machine, the final part of Colson Whitehead’s trilogy that began with Harlem Shuffle and continued through Crook Manifesto, that encapsulates for me his suave complexity and sophisticated simplicity. The year in 1986, and Ray Carney, successful furniture store owner and “master fence” is going for dinner with his wife at the Windows On The World. “Everybody gushed about the place. Da food, da ambience. Say it like a native New Yorker, braying like a gap-toothed donkey: ‘I love da OMM-BEE-ONTS.’ The top of the World Trade Center was a one-of-a-kind location to be sure, but Carney had been in no rush. It wasn’t going anywhere. Now he saw what the fuss was about. ‘They gave us a white person table,’ he chuckled after they were seated.”
This crams a lot in. Although it would be an exceptionally obtuse reader who hadn’t clocked Carney and Elizabeth are black, it’s still a subtle indicator of difference. The satire on the Noo Yawk accent is done in a way only someone who loves it could accomplish, and there’s maybe even a sliver of commentary on it being a donkey, the traditional Democrat animal. But it is the stereoscope that is so accomplished, the point where the reader’s knowledge and the character’s knowledge are out of alignment. We know the fate of the Towers; Carney does not. Something similar happens in the first third of the book with an advert that says “Taste the Umph in Triumph” and the modern reader’s eye will see a ghostly indicator of the 45th and 47th President, who in the timeframe of the novel is working on the infamous tower. There is also a walk-on part for Rudi Guiliani, then a federal prosecutor taking on the Mafia. Younger readers might mistake this for counterfactual alternate history: he was once one of the good guys?
As with the two previous books, there are three narratives set across the span of the decade. With this being the conclusion, it would be better to have read the others first, though Whitehead is adroit at giving pencil silhouettes rather than oil paintings for the necessary backstories. Together they comprise an askance social history, extremely enjoyable genre fiction and a sense there is no such thing as alternate, only ignored.
The first two stories, in different ways, deal with an evolving black consciousness of the 1980s. In the previous novels Whitehead had confronted the Harlem Riots and the Jackson Five with equal curiosity; here the significances are shifting. The first story is an old fashioned heist caper which has Carney team up with a legendary criminal, Uncle Rich, who it appears had faked his own death. “I like a well-rounded crook”, he says, “They’re undervalued in today’s flashy. ‘look at me’ culture”. There is no way I will spoil what it is they are going to steal, but I choked laughing at the audacity. Uncle Rich also gets to sound the book’s central question: “what did I ever steal that was worth stealing?”
The second story involves the New York art scene and in particular the rising interest in indigenous and looted African art. This features Pepper, the only-slightly-psychopathic friend of Carney’s family, last seen in Crook Manifesto doing protection on a blaxploitation movie. Aging is across this part, and there is a very cool conceit of Pepper having been given “Mr Professor Word-a-Day Calendar”. On the opening day, it’s “DILAPIDATED”. “That was him all right, a heap of creaky floorboards and busted windows. Aches and agonies squatted in him, unwanted tenants in his extremities and joints”. Although the story does take an interest in the questions of cultural appropriation and repatriation, what made it more striking for me is the antagonist, a sinister figure called The Melancholy Hitman. Parts of his internal monologue are like a premonition of the apogee of 80s capitalism who emerged in 1991: Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.
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The final story has the son of Carney’s cousin – who died in the first novel – going missing, after his lawyer is shot. It has a “get the gang together for one last mission” vibe, and pulls it off. Carney thinks that saving Robert will atone for Freddy’s death. It brings the whole trilogy full circle in an immensely satisfying way.
Whitehead just fizzes with ideas, from the role of looted hi-fi gear in the emergence of rap to the evolution of crime itself. Uncle Rich steals a lot of coaxial cabling and his fellow crooks can’t understand. But he has envisaged a new New York that requires connectedness of televisions, phones, fax machines, printers – gelignite and bank vaults, or pimping and protection money are going to change. Little did he foresee the obsolescence of the cable: that crime would be contactless. I wonder how many people remember that WiFi was an abbreviation of “wireless fidelity”.
I doubt any of our young tartan noir blades could write anything as intelligent, emotional, stylish, funny, incisive, wise and – dammit – cool as Cool Machine. This has sass, smarts and heart. A reader could not wish for more.
Cool Machine, by Colson Whitehead, Fleet, £22
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