The Intuitionist

Last updated
The Intuitionist
ColinWhitehead TheIntuitionist.jpg
First edition cover
Author Colson Whitehead
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre Speculative fiction
Publisher Anchor Books
Publication date
January 1999
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages272 (hardback edition)
ISBN 0-385-49299-5 (hardback edition) & ISBN   0-385-49300-2 (paperback edition)
OCLC 38853819
813/.54 21
LC Class PS3573.H4768 I58 1999

The Intuitionist is a 1999 speculative fiction novel by American writer Colson Whitehead.

Contents

The Intuitionist takes place in a city (implicitly, New York) full of skyscrapers and other buildings requiring vertical transportation in the form of elevators. The time, never identified explicitly, is one when black people are called "colored" and integration is a current topic. The protagonist is Lila Mae Watson, an elevator inspector of the "Intuitionist" school. The Intuitionists practice an inspecting method by which they ride in an elevator and intuit the state of the elevator and its related systems. The competing school, the "Empiricists", insists upon traditional instrument-based verification of the condition of the elevator. Watson is the second black inspector and the first black female inspector in the city.

Plot summary

The story begins with the catastrophic failure of an elevator which Watson had inspected just days before, leading to suspicion cast upon both herself and the Intuitionist school as a whole. To cope with the inspectorate, the corporate elevator establishment, and other looming elements, she must return to her intellectual roots, the texts (both known and lost) of the founder of the school, to try to reconstruct what is happening around her.

In the course of her search, she discovers the central idea of the founder of Intuitionism – that of the "black box", the perfect elevator, which will deliver the people to the city of the future.

Characters

Critical reception

A Newsweek review wrote, "255 pages of the most engaging literary sleuthing you'll read this year," and "What makes the novel so extraordinary is the ways in which Whitehead plays with notions of race." [1] Walter Kirn, writing in Time , called it "The freshest racial allegory since Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye ." [2]

Gary Krist, writing in The New York Times , said it was an "ingenious and starkly original first novel." [3]

A review in the San Francisco Chronicle compared it to Catch-22 , and Thomas Pynchon's V. and The Crying of Lot 49 . [4]

Honors

Related Research Articles

In logic, the law of excluded middle states that for every proposition, either this proposition or its negation is true. It is one of the so-called three laws of thought, along with the law of noncontradiction, and the law of identity. However, no system of logic is built on just these laws, and none of these laws provides inference rules, such as modus ponens or De Morgan's laws.

In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification", often in contrast to other possible sources of knowledge such as faith, tradition, or sensory experience. More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Newman</span> English novelist (born 1959)

Kim James Newman is an English journalist, film critic and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternative fictional versions of history. He has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the BSFA award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Ford</span> American author

Richard Ford is an American novelist and short story writer, best known for his novels featuring Frank Bascombe.

<i>A Study in Scarlet</i> 1887 detective novel by Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become the most famous detective duo in literature. The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his "study in scarlet": "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ofsted</span> Department of the government of the United Kingdom

The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) is a non-ministerial department of His Majesty's government, reporting to Parliament. Ofsted's role is to make sure that organisations providing education, training and childcare services in England do so to a high standard for children and students. Ofsted is responsible for inspecting a range of educational institutions, including state schools and some independent schools. It also inspects childcare, adoption and fostering agencies and initial teacher training, and regulates early years childcare facilities and children's social care services.

<i>A Wrinkle in Time</i> 1962 science fantasy novel by Madeleine LEngle

A Wrinkle in Time is a young adult science fantasy novel written by American author Madeleine L'Engle. First published in 1962, the book won the Newbery Medal, the Sequoyah Book Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. The main characters – Meg Murry, Charles Wallace Murry, and Calvin O'Keefe – embark on a journey through space and time, from galaxy to galaxy, as they endeavor to rescue the Murrys' father and fight back The Black Thing that has intruded into several worlds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colson Whitehead</span> American novelist (born 1969)

Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead is an American novelist. He is the author of eight novels, including his 1999 debut work The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and The Nickel Boys, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020. He has also published two books of non-fiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Genius Grant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noir fiction</span> Subgenre of crime fiction

Noir fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Ridley</span> American writer and director

John Ridley IV is an American screenwriter, television director, novelist, and showrunner, known for 12 Years a Slave, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He is also the creator and showrunner of the anthology series American Crime. In 2017 he directed the documentary film Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982–1992.

<i>Inspector Rebus</i> Series of detective novels by Ian Rankin

The Inspector Rebus books are a series of detective novels by the Scottish author Sir Ian Rankin. The novels, centred on Detective Inspector John Rebus, are mostly based in and around Edinburgh. They are considered an important contribution to 'Tartan Noir'.

Sherlock Holmes has long been a popular character for pastiche, Holmes-related work by authors and creators other than Arthur Conan Doyle. Their works can be grouped into four broad categories:

Richard Price is an American novelist and screenwriter, known for the books The Wanderers (1974), Clockers (1992) and Lush Life (2008). Price's novels explore late-20th-century urban America in a gritty, realistic manner that has brought him considerable literary acclaim. Several of his novels are set in a fictional northern New Jersey city called Dempsy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ZZ Packer</span> American writer

Zuwena "ZZ" Packer is an American writer. She is primarily known for her works of short fiction.

Mathematics has no generally accepted definition. Different schools of thought, particularly in philosophy, have put forth radically different definitions. All proposed definitions are controversial in their own ways.

This article describes minor characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and from non-canonical derived works. The list excludes the titular character as well as Dr. Watson, Professor Moriarty, Inspector Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, Irene Adler, Colonel Moran, the Baker Street Irregulars, and characters not significant enough to mention.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara M. Watson</span> American diplomat

Barbara Mae Watson was a lawyer, United States diplomat, Ambassador to Malaysia, and the first Black person and the first woman to serve as an Assistant Secretary of State.

The Neapolitan Novels, also known as the Neapolitan Quartet, are a four-part series of fiction by the pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante, published originally by Edizioni e/o, translated into English by Ann Goldstein, and published by Europa Editions. The English-language titles of the novels are My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child (2015). In the original Italian edition, the whole series bears the title of the first novel L'amica geniale. The series has been characterized as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story. In an interview in Harper's Magazine, Elena Ferrante has stated that she considers the four books to be "a single novel" published serially for reasons of length and duration. The series has sold over 10 million copies in 40 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Justina Ireland</span> American science-fiction writer

Justina Ireland is an American science-fiction and fantasy author of young adult fiction and former editor-in-chief of the FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. She received the 2018 World Fantasy Award for Non-Professional Work. Her novel Dread Nation won the 2019 Locus Award, and was nominated for the Andre Norton, Bram Stoker, and Lodestar Awards.

American author Clarissa Watson (1918–2012) was an art connoisseur and socialite as well as the writer of the popular Persis Willum mystery series. Known as the “doyenne of art” on Long Island, she was a co-founder of The Country Art Gallery in Nassau County, NY and was a prominent figure in upper class New York and Long Island society for most of the twentieth century.

References

  1. EST, Veronica Chambers On 1/10/99 at 7:00 PM (1999-01-10). "Love At First Sight". Newsweek. Retrieved 2019-08-08.
  2. Kirn, Walter (1999-01-25). "The Promise of Verticality". Time. ISSN   0040-781X . Retrieved 2019-08-08.
  3. "The Ascent of Man". movies2.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2019-08-08.
  4. Roe, rew; Chronicle, Special to The (1999-02-21). "Through the Roof / The elevator is the reigning metaphor in a first novel that hits all the right buttons". SFGate. Retrieved 2019-08-08.