Colson Whitehead on His Harlem Trilogy

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2026

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The only living novelist with two Pulitzer Prizes talks about the crooked protagonist of his series—and how David Bowie influenced his approach to fiction.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's David Remnick. Please join us for a live taping of the New Yorker radio hour at the 25th anniversary of the Tribeca Festival.
0:09.1	I'll be there with the former Obama speech writer and co-host of Pod Save America, John Lovett.
0:14.7	We'll talk about the state of the nation and the state of podcasting and much more.
0:17.9	The show is Wednesday, June 10th, and tickets are available at
0:21.5	Tribecafilm.com.com slash audio.
0:24.5	Tribecafilm.com slash audio. See you there.
0:32.6	The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker.
0:42.1	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:45.7	Coulson Whitehead's character, Ray Carney, is one of the great crooks in recent fiction.
0:51.1	Ray isn't big time. He's not even a kingpinning. He's not even a particularly bad guy.
0:55.7	He's a furniture salesman in Harlem. He sells Barka loungers in the store, and out the back
1:01.5	door, he fences stolen goods. He's looking to pay his bills and get by. But life tends to get
1:08.4	complicated, especially in a novel by Coulson Whitehead.
1:12.2	Ray first appeared in Harlem Shuffle and returned in the sequel Crook Manifesto.
1:17.5	The third book of Colson Whitehead's Harlem trilogy comes out this summer, and it's called Cool
1:22.7	Machine. Whitehead is one of only four novelists ever to win the Pulitzer Prize twice.
1:28.3	We spoke in 2023 when Crook Manifesto had just come out.
1:36.3	How did you envision it in the beginning? You started with some journalism,
1:40.3	and awfully good journalism, too.
1:50.8	Was it difficult to make that leap into imaginative literature, into writing fiction?
1:57.9	I always wanted to write fiction, so I love the Village Voice growing up, and it was my dream job to start off there.
1:59.2	I worked in the book section.
	...

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