Great writer, Colson Whitehead. Original, incisive. Clear and clean. Necessary.
bookofjoe says, “He’s that pure and gifted a writer. The first couple paragraphs of his debut novel, “The Intuitionist,” grabbed me and didn’t ever let go until I’d finished the book. It was so strangely different from whatever else is out there masquerading as original fiction. Whitehead is the real deal.
‘Apex Hides The Hurt’ is the story of a nomenclature consultant, a man whose rare talent is finding just the name to set a product soaring into the stratospheric heights of the economy and the collective needful unconscious.
“He loved supermarkets. In supermarkets, all the names were crammed into their little seats, on top of each other, awaiting their final destinations.
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“Isn’t it great when you’re a kid and the whole world is full of anonymous things? Everything is bright and mysterious until you know what it is called and then all the light goes out of it. All those flying gliding things are just birds. Once we knew the name of it, how could we ever come to love it? He told himself: What he had given to all those things had been the right name, but never the true name. For things had true natures, and they hid behind false names, beneath the skin we gave them.
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“A name that got to the heart of the thing — that would be miraculous. But he never got to the heart of the thing. What is the word, he asked himself, for that elusive thing? It was on the tip of his tongue. What is the name for that which is always beyond our grasp? What do you call that which escapes?
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“He adjusted quickly to the recluse lifestyle, which was much more complicated than it appeared to outsiders, who enjoyed their invigorating jaunts outdoors and frequent social interaction without considering the underlying structures holding everything together. Keeping away from people, that was easy. Neglecting one’s physical appearance, that wasn’t too difficult either. The hard part was accepting that the world did not miss you.”