The Intuitionist

The Intuitionist

3.72 of 5 stars 3.72  ·  rating details  ·  3,046 ratings  ·  385 reviews
Verticality, architectural and social, is the lofty idea at the heart of Colson Whitehead's odd, sly, and ultimately irresistible first novel. The setting is an unnamed though obviously New Yorkish high-rise city, the time less convincingly future than deliciously other, as it combines 21st-century engineering feats with 19th-century pork-barrel politics and smoky working-...more
Paperback, 255 pages
Published January 4th 2000 by Anchor (first published December 29th 1998)
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Maryellen Allen
This book was recommended to me off a list. I read some reviews before I dove in. Some said "it's about elevators" others said "it's all about race". Well...they're both kind of right, but I think they've missed the point.

This is an excellent book. It's an old fashioned murder mystery wrapped in a philosophical discussion wrapped in a metaphor. Colson Whitehead has created a wonderful "film noir" urban landscape completely centered around the world of elevator inspectors. This world of elevator...more
Julia
All of the typical noir elements are here - the big, industrial city, menacing boss(es) playing dirty politics, muckraking reporter, servant with a trick up his sleeve, small-town girl in the big city. But nothing, not even a single description, is cliche. The main character is principled and smart, but she's so reserved that even the reader has to make some guesses at her emotional life. The plot is unpredictable - whimsical, jarring and scary, abstract for a while, mundane.

I'm not sure the pa...more
A.C.
I am reading this for a class that I am taking on black postmodern fiction. The hallmarks of the postmodern style are there. It is clear that Whitehead read a fair amount of Pynchon and Barth due to the extensive presence of half-thoughts, sentence fragments, and commentary from the narrator. So, with regards to the class, I understand why it was assigned. On a personal level, I haven't been this bored reading a book in a while. I don't particularly like any of the characters. Lila Mae is rather...more
Christy
In an interview with Salon.com following the publication of his 1999 debut novel The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead discusses the freedom he has as an African American writer of the late 20th century. He says, "decades ago, there was the protest novel, and then there was 'tell the untold story, find our unerased history.' Then there's the militant novel of insurrection from the '60s. There were two rigid camps in the '60s: the Black Arts movement, denouncing James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison for b...more
Shepherd
This isn't just an allegory of race, as the many glowing reviews in the prefatory pages state. It's an allegory of everything. "Elevators" and "intuitionism" variously represent upward social mobility and its limits, the threatened gains of the civil rights movement, the anxiety of a post-rational worldview, challenges to good-old-boy cronyism, the enabling factor of the modern urban center and the possibility of its transcendence ... the list goes on. In the interest of thematic expansiveness,...more
Dree
Maybe more like a 4.5, but this book deserves to be rounded up, not down. Fabulous writing and wordplay, fabulous creation of a fascinating world that was almost real.

This novel takes place in a past that didn't exist--where the Elevator Inspectors are revered, in a great city that has achieved verticality (and seems to be c1930 New York, or even 1950). Lila Mae Watson is the first colored woman (author's terminology) to achieve her badge as an elevator inspector--and she is in Intuitionist, wit...more
Randall
I'd have to spend some time and energy to truly explain what's so genius about this book, and that assumes I'm not missing a whole bunch of it's true brilliance.

The plot summary would likely have most shaking their head, thinking, "What the fish?" It sounds absurd. In some ways, it's really absurd.

Lots of room for interpretation here, but Whitehead is clearly tackling some major social topics and doing it with humor and a perceptive eye.

If your interest isn't piqued by the thought that elevat...more
Matthew
I was, sadly, underwhelmed by this book. Based on all the bookjacket praise, the trajectory of Whitehead's career, and the clever subject matter, I expected to love it. Instead, I found it plodding, and wanly written, and not nearly as smart, allegorical, insightful as it pretended to be.

I'd love for a fan of this book to explain to me what's great about it, because I really did want to like it; until then, "meh."
Gpickle
In an email to a friend I said that reading this book was like eating tasty oatmeal. That is really the best I can come up with. For me eating oatmeal is work. And I like oatmeal,especially when it is tasty, I just spend a lot of time chewing it up and getting it down. And that was how this book went for me. Pretty lame as a review, I suppose, but there are many others out there that can tell you all about symbolism and pacing and craft and sentence structure and what not..
Larou
Feb 19, 2012 Larou added it
Shelves: 2012-01, general, fiction
If asked to give a list of exciting professions, most people would likely think of things like spy, model or personal assistant to Jason Momoa or Scarlet Johansson; it seems unlikely that elevator safety inspector would make many lists, with the possible exception of the occasional elevator safety inspector who really love their job – and readers of Colson Whitehead’s debut novel The Intuitionist.[return][return]The novel’s protagonist is Lila Mae Watson, the first coloured female inspector to e...more
Laura
I just finished Colson Whitehead's book "The Intuitionist", which is a hard book describe, but it is kind of like a murder mystery combined with a conspiracy theory novel about warring factions of elevator inspectors. Seriously.

Below is an excerpt from one of the theoretical debates the characters have about the meaning of elevator-ness. I thought the writing here was fascinating, partly for the content but more that the writer has so aptly captured the cadence of speech in a theory-heavy academ...more
Nathan Alderman
Jul 25, 2007 Nathan Alderman rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: detective and sci-fi fans, lovers of Ralph Ellison
This sleek, stylish, one-of-a-kind novel reads like a pulp sci-fi mystery, filtered through the searing racial consciousness of Ralph Ellison. An African-American woman in an alternate 1950s, where elevators and their inspection have bizarrely become the driving force in the national culture, must battle prejudice and bureaucracy to solve the mysterious failure of a seemingly unbreakable elevator. It's an uneasy, haunted book, beautifully written and crisply imagined, and a whole lot of fun.
Matt Mustarde
I was recommended this book by my Cultural Studies teacher to read over the break, and I can definitely say I enjoyed it! At first I was a bit lost about what the theme was really supposed to be: “Elevators?” but upon getting into the book, and understanding the underlying message, I started to truly become enthralled in the world that Whitehead had envisioned.

The concept of elevators in this book proved to be a sort of filter, initially drawing a lot of my focus. I kept trying to imagine what s...more
Onefinemess
This wasn’t quite what I expected. Yes, I know it is somewhat strange to expected an alternate history look at the world, if everything were driven by the elevator world… but that’s what I was sold on! Kind of. Not that I was let down, just deflected a little.

I mean, the overly analytical, genre-fiction side of me (which is, admittedly, most of me) goes nuts trying to figure out how the internals of Whitehead’s world cohere. People are this obsessed with elevators, yet the Intuitionist headquart...more
Nick
http://idearefinery.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/holiday-reading-four-reviews.html

The Intuitionist is about Lila Mae Watson, the first black female elevator inspector. Though it is never named, the setting is obviously meant to be New York (or perhaps some alternate-world version of New York?), late in the 19th century. Lila Mae is an Intuitionist; she inspects elevators by riding them, and getting a sense of how well they are operating. The opposite (dominant) school is the Empiricists, who inspect...more
Carl
Jun 18, 2012 Carl added it
The book jacket (thanks to Walter Kirn) unhelpfully plumps this ambitious novel as "The freshest racial allegory since Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." Hmm, I wonder, what other racial allegories can I think of since Ellison and Morrison? My answer being "None," I find myself underwhelmed by Kirn's analysis, which strikes me as being akin to "The most profound novel about a sperm whale since Moby Dick."

Hyperbolic review pushed to the side, this novel reveals its...more
Brent Legault
I don't think that Whitehead trusts me, the reader, or you, the reader (if you've already read it), to figure things out on my, or your, own. He likes to have his characters tell us what they're going to do, then tell us what they're doing, and then when we are good and exhausted and ready to move on (to another book, for example), he likes to tell us what they, his characters, have done. Granted, some of the telling is told well, but the redundancy doesn't read as artistic, just sloppy.

And the...more
Nyra
¿Les ha pasado alguna vez, que comienzan un libro con la esperanza creada por la sinopsis de que este sea bueno para devorarlo a toda velocidad y al final resulta ser un viaje en carreta? Tortuoso, lento y nada agradable. Bueno, este libro fue para mi, uno de esos casos. Seré cruda y totalmente sincera con esta crítica, sin ofender a otros es mi opinion personal y si alguien no esta de acuerdo o no le parece me reservo la replica. Este libro no me pareció en absoluto entretenido, fue una lectura...more
jordan
How to describe Colson Whitehead's debut novel, The Intuitionist, a parable of race relations through the lens of competing factions of elevator inspectors in a fictional pre-civil rights American city? Check the thesaurus for synonyms for audacious - bold, works, as does brash. Now a writer of no small renowned, with a catalogue of excellent works and awards to his name, one can only wonder at the venturesome spirit that led to this deep complex novel which brings nothing so much to mind as the...more
Alan
Apr 19, 2009 Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: Those who suspect a hidden mechanism behind it all
Whitehead's first novel is about a fraternal conflict between rival philosophies of elevator inspection (!), and if that doesn't make you want to pick it up, I don't know what on earth would. It's a secret history (who would've thought elevator inspectors even had factions?), one of those crypto-historical narratives that could have happened while everyone else was looking the other way. Its backdrop is a great city, never named, that nevertheless could only be New York City in the mid-20th Cent...more
Brent Stansfield
It's one part The Fountainhead, one part The Invisible Man, one part pulpy gumshoe noir novel. There's a mystery and the mob and an upcoming election marred by corruption. The polemical social commentary takes over in the final chapters but it's a decent enough ending to an intriguing yarn about who controls the power to rise in the modern urban world. Where "modern" means early 1950s (I think) and "rise" literally means "go up"---because the book is about elevators, elevator companies and eleva...more
Rob
I'll need to concoct a real review at some point to put it all into worth-reading words. In the meantime:

* Whitehead has a stunning command of the language (and is also one hell of a story-writer (no, not everyone is both))
* Lila Mae is one of the best, most fully realized characters I've read in a long time
* as best I can figure out, the major theme: transgression? and/or transcendence?
* an anti-example of "racism as a function of provincialism"?
Trixie Fontaine
I loved the atmosphere and tone of the book. I enjoy reading about characters who are socially isolated and/or solitary by choice. I also enjoy reading about the lives of machines especially when they're described with a touch of mysticism so The Intuitionist scored with me on that level, too. All of the characters were meaty without detracting from the protagonist, pacing or plot.

I don't know how I felt about the ending; I'm not the kind of person who criticizes books for having "unsatisfying"...more
Stefani
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
zxvasdf
Intuitionism and Empiricism reflects the quintessential struggles of two distinct schools of thought - the most notable that comes to mind is the classical and quantum interpretations of physics. One is old school, dependent on the physical perusal of the objects themselves, solid and true. The other is metaphysics distilled into a mystic philosophy of the true nature of elevators. Problem is... one or another, they both work.

Race relations are different today, but Whitehead writes that sometime...more
Scott
Colson Whitehead's first novel which, among other honors, won the QPB New Voices/Joe Savago award (did I remember that correctly?) when it was first published in 1998. Anyway, the conceit here is clever and surprisingly exciting: the setting is a city, sort of New York, sort of in the 1950s, in which elevator inspectors are as respected, feared, fraternal, ruthless, powerful, and corrupt as the cops of a thousand hard-boiled detective novels. Whitehead sets this whole thing up beautifully, and h...more
Dorothea
I had trouble deciding what to make of this book. I think that's my fault for reading very few recently published novels that aren't genre fiction!

I had trouble reading it, too. I considered stopping, at first, but I wanted to find out what was going on. I read the last third or so quickly, but before then, as I was getting used to it, I kept pausing -- to thaw, in a way.

This is a book about a woman who has very, very good reasons for being cold. And the way the narrator describes the world she...more
Jennifer (aka EM)
Mar 29, 2011 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 2 of 5 stars
Recommended to Jennifer (aka EM) by: Dave Russell
I'll hold off rating this one until I think about it a bit... there is a lot to like about it; but a lot I just didn't understand. My elevator sometimes doesn't go all the way to the top.

_____________

Here's the thing: at another time and place, I would probably rate this a 4. However, in this current time and place, the complexity of the structure, an allegory that I never really "got" and the flat affect of the central character all kept me at arm's length when what I wanted, most, was to be im...more
Erik Evenson
There are many things to like about Colson Whitehead’s first novel, The Institutionist: the prospect of reading about elevator inspectors (a subject, I’m pretty sure, no one has ever written about in fiction), the idealogical split between institutionist and empiricist inspectors (one group inspects elevators by observation and scrutiny, the other by ‘feel’. I’ll let you guess who does what), and elevators being a metaphor for almost everything important in life—“They go up, they go down. You ju...more
Matt Chic
I thought this was just okay. Maybe. I dunno...

Whitehead's got a "lyrical" or "poetic" style of writing, which is fine --I just couldn't find the rhythm to it and that sucks.

The whole alt-reality NYC universe was pretty solid, complete with it's quirky, noir-ish, and elevator-mythology-obsessed cast of characters. Unfortunately, the narrative just got in the way of me enjoying the book more.

Sometimes there were these really long sentences, with lots of commas and parentheses. And it's not that...more
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Colson Whitehead was born in 1969, and was raised in Manhattan. After graduating from Harvard College, he started working at the Village Voice, where he wrote reviews of television, books, and music.

His first novel, The Intuitionist, concerned intrigue in the Department of Elevator Inspectors, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway and a winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voices Awa...more
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