“Harlem Shuffle”, by Colson Whitehead, translated from the American by Charles Recoursé, Albin Michel, “Terres d’Amérique”, 432 p., €22.90, digital €15.
You can count them on the fingers of one hand, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning writers. After Booth Tarkington (1869-1946), William Faulkner (1897-1962) and John Updike (1932-2009), Colson Whitehead recently joined this American micro-brotherhood. Distinguished in 2017 – for Underground Railroad (Albin Michel), his sixth novel, retracing the escape, in the 1850s, of a young slave through the Southern States – he was once more in 2020 for Nickel Boys (Albin Michel), the story of a young black victim of a miscarriage of justice and sent to Florida in a “school” notorious for its methods of humiliation.
Canapes on the 125e Rue
It takes talent to pull off such a double. You also need an amazing ability to renew yourself. This is what strikes in Harlem Shuffle, this creative energy which, far from running out of steam, reinvents itself once once more around its privileged themes: race, power, history. With a joyful brilliance, Whitehead transposes them here in this true-false thriller, a parody of gangster novel of an irresistible earthiness.
We are in Harlem in the 1960s. Ray Carney, son of a local thug, received a special education. “When he was a kid, he and his dad had a game of guessing little Ray whether or not he had a gun hidden in his trouser leg. » It also happened that the father asked: “Do you want to keep the little one? I have to go kick some guy’s legs. » Growing up, Ray promised himself to get out of the middle. He now sells sofas on the 125e Rue and his wife are expecting their second child. Is it “clean”? The answer lies in a small sentence conveniently slipped at the top of the book: “Carney was not a thug, just a bit of a trickster…” It is on this ” just a little bit ” how the story will play out.
The tone, the tempo are given from the outset. Furious and staccato. From the first pages appears Freddie, the crooked cousin, the tempting winder, champion of tricks and very bad plans. When Freddie confides in Carney: “There’s a guy…I’ve told you regarding him once or twice…Miami Joe?” », Carney resists…at first. But the other continues to make him the article. Miami Joe is preparing a big blow, he needs them. “You don’t know what you’re capable of Ray-Ray” ; “There will be cash and a bundle of stones to take…”
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