Book Review: Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

What do you get out of reading? It's a question I ask myself sometimes. There's a lot of ingredients you can mix into that answer - more knowledge, different ways of thinking, vistas to different places and different times - they're all true. But for me, the primary ingredient - the dough in my reading pizza - is to transport me to a different story.

If you've read a bunch of these reviews...well, I feel sorry for you, but BEYOND that, you might have noticed me mentioning that while I'm reading a book - any book - I'm playing the movie of it in my head. That's why a book like Alan Moore's Jerusalem - a book where a premiere comic book author was intentionally writing a story that couldn't be visualized - was so frustrating for me to read. I like to imagine everything happening on the big screen, where I can just sit and watch.

(Now that I've said that...does that make me a less interesting reader? Like, we're you imagining me wearing my spectacles and smoking a pipe while nodding along to what I'm reading in a leather-bound tome? "Yes...yes...very interesting...."?)

So that brings us to Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto. Let's set the table: Colson Whitehead could very well be our greatest living author. If you only read one piece of fiction since the turn of the century, it has to be Underground Railroad, which should be required reading everywhere (even in Florida). But don't just read one of his books - read them all. While I think Underground Railroad is the best (although I haven't read Nickel Boys), John Henry Days is my favorite.

In fact, let's talk about my absolute favorite part of John Henry Days. Note: This is not a spoiler - this happens early in the book - the fact that it sounds like the ending is the point.

You're following a group of people who have assembled for a weekend party to commemorate the unveiling of a postal stamp of John Henry, the folk tale figure who with a simple hammer beat a pneumatic machine at a railroad-building contest. It's a Friday night, guests have assembled, you've met a couple of them and already have some thoughts about some of them, and then the main character gets a piece of roast beef, swallows too much of it, and starts choking.

Next chapter: It's Monday, and all of the characters we've met (including the main character) are assembled at the unveiling of the stamp. All of a sudden, someone takes out an automatic weapon and starts spraying fire at everyone, killing every person we've met.

Next chapter: The Friday night story resumes!

How brilliant is that! Early on, Whitehead is setting up that there will be no lessons learned here, there will be no characters changing their ways or getting their comeuppance - everyone is going to die the next business day. The story only matters for the sake of the story.

I think Crook Manifesto fits right into this, because I will tell you I don't understand what exactly the theme of this book was, or what it was trying to say. Now, I'm pretty sure that's on me - Whitehead won two Pulitzers and a Genius grant - but I couldn't make heads or tails of what the point of it was.

So does that mean it was a bad book? Hell no! The story only matters for the sake of the story, and the story was great! The book takes place in Harlem, and takes place in three parts - the first in 1970 (where a fencer is trapped riding along through the streets with a crooked cop - reminded me of that Tom Cruise/Jamie Foxx movie), the second in 1973 (where a filmmaker who really reminded me of Prince is filming a blaxploitation film and loses his star, and sends a former hitman out to find her - I was imagining Cedric the Entertainer playing completely against type), and the third in 1976 (where the fencer and the hitman try to find who burned a building and sent a kid to the hospital). The only thing that really ties these stories together are the fires in each of them burning down the old Harlem.

The characters here are great - I loved how Carney, the fencer, would at inopportune moments start thinking about how to rearrange his furniture store, and how Pepper, the stolid hitman, was given so much inner monologue and thoughtfulness that he became fully fleshed out despite outwardly being a one-note character. I also have to say that stories about 70s New York are a sweet spot for me, and this book does it well - with only the edges of the city crumbling in the 1970 story, going to the entire city being a cesspool by the time you get to 1976. Frankly, I was surprised there wasn't a 1978 story here so Whitehead could work in the Summer of Sam and the blackout (friendly reminder - make sure to read Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning).

So, while I'm not swift enough understand what exactly the point of Crook Manifesto was, I absolutely loved reading it, and got to see a great movie in my head! Eight out of ten hot dogs!