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A review by pattricejones
Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead
5.0
The night after I finished this book, I dreamed: shuttlebus, shuttlebus, shuttlebus.
For those who haven't yet read it, and thus won't catch that reference, let me say:
Colson Whitehead has written a profound book about superficiality. It's at once about the modern problem of the branding of America and the abiding questions (with which philosophers have wrestled for centuries) about the relationship of language to reality. With regard to the latter, it probes the potentially corrosive effects of naming and (in my view, although even Whitehead might not have intended this bit) of our tendency to turn processes into things, perceiving people and places as nouns rather than verbs.
What's especially beautiful about the book is that all of this is done within an engaging and enjoyable narrative. I could easily imagine assigning it to college students, letting them have fun with the story, and then pressing them to discover how much deeper it goes.
For those who haven't yet read it, and thus won't catch that reference, let me say:
Colson Whitehead has written a profound book about superficiality. It's at once about the modern problem of the branding of America and the abiding questions (with which philosophers have wrestled for centuries) about the relationship of language to reality. With regard to the latter, it probes the potentially corrosive effects of naming and (in my view, although even Whitehead might not have intended this bit) of our tendency to turn processes into things, perceiving people and places as nouns rather than verbs.
What's especially beautiful about the book is that all of this is done within an engaging and enjoyable narrative. I could easily imagine assigning it to college students, letting them have fun with the story, and then pressing them to discover how much deeper it goes.