Iven Hale reviews Colson Whitehead's 1999 novel, "The Intuitionist." Set in a big city during a period of racial integration,Whitehead and Iven both explore the racial implications of the elevator as a metaphor for "social-uplift", the black female protagonist who is the first non-white male elevator inspector in the city, and the dueling methods for testing the functioning of the elevators that so deeply structure society: intuitionism and empiracism. Hale thinks Whitehead bites off more than he can adequately chew, but compares the novel to Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" and remarks positively on how Whitehead treats blindness caused by privilege.
She first became interested in the book through an interview by David Naimon with Colson Whitehead on KBOO, and refers to one of the many superb essays the novel has generated in response.
- KBOO