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The Intuitionist
Answers from the Grave
Disremembering Eddie
Sick Ape
Scent of Crime
Removing Edith Mary
Vanished
The Daughters of Cain: An Inspector Morse Story [AUDIOBOOK]
Death Is Now My Neighbour: An Inspector Morse Story [AUDIOBOOK]
The Debt to Pleasure [AUDIOBOOK]
The Echo [AUDIOBOOK]
Morse's Greatest Mystery and Other Stories [AUDIOBOOK]
A Dark Devotion [AUDIOBOOK]
Death of a Good Woman (Macmillan Crime)
The Ice House
The End of Science Fiction
The Wench Is Dead [AUDIOBOOK]
The Breaker [AUDIOBOOK]
Four to Score [AUDIOBOOK]
Donkey Serenade
High Five [AUDIOBOOK]
One for the Money (USA Maps S.) [AUDIOBOOK]
O Is for Outlaw
Hot Six [AUDIOBOOK]
Cold Shoulder [AUDIOBOOK]

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Powerful Surrealism in a First Novel
Reasonable Read
A New Take on the Racial Allegory
Noirish Read
Elevating The Art

The Intuitionist: A Novel
Colson Whitehead
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Colossus of New York

ASIN: 0385493002
Release Date: 2000-01-04

Amazon.com

Verticality, architectural and social, is the lofty idea at the heart of Colson Whitehead's odd, sly, and ultimately irresistible first novel. The setting is an unnamed though obviously New Yorkish high-rise city, the time less convincingly future than deliciously other, as it combines 21st-century engineering feats with 19th-century pork-barrel politics and smoky working-class pubs. Elevators are the technological expression of the vertical idea, and Lila Mae Watson, the city's first black female elevator inspector, is its embattled token of upward mobility.

Lila Mae's good ol' boy colleagues in the Department of Elevator Inspectors are understandably jealous of the flawless record that her natural intelligence and diligence have earned, and understandably delighted when Number Eleven in the newly completed Fanny Briggs Memorial Building goes into deadly free fall just hours after Lila Mae has signed off on it, using the controversial "Intuitionist" method of ascertaining elevator safety. It is, after all, an election year in the Elevator Guild, and the Empiricists would do most anything to discredit the Intuitionist faction. Everyone on both sides assumes that Number Eleven was sabotaged and Lila Mae set up to take the fall. "So complete is Number Eleven's ruin," writes Whitehead, "that there's nothing left but the sound of the crash, rising in the shaft, a fall in opposite: a soul." Lila Mae's doom seems equally irreversible.

Whitehead evokes a world so utterly involving to its own denizens that outside reality does not impinge on its perfect solipsism. We the readers are taken hostage as Lila Mae strives to exonerate herself in this urgent adventure full of government spies, underworld hit men, and seductive double agents. Behind the action, always, is the Idea. Lila Mae's quest reveals the existence of heretofore lost writings by James Fulton, father of Intuitionism, a giant of vertical thought, whose fate is mysteriously entwined with her own. If she is able to find and reveal his plan for the Black Box, the perfect, next-generation elevator, the city as it now exists will instantly be obsolescent. The social and economic implications are huge and the denouement is elegantly philosophical. Most impressive of all is the integrity of Whitehead's prose. Eschewing mere cleverness, resisting showoff word play, he somehow manages to strike a tone that's always funny, always fierce, and always entirely respectful of his characters and their world. May the god of second novels smile as broadly on him as did the god of firsts. --Joyce Thompson

Book Description

Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist wowed critics and readers everywhere and marked the debut of an important American writer. This marvellously inventive, genre-bending, noir-inflected novel, set in the curious world of elevator inspection, portrays a universe parallel to our own, where matters of morality, politics, and race reveal unexpected ironies.

Customer Reviews:

Powerful Surrealism in a First Novel.......2007-06-03

Elevators are the metaphor for progress - social, technological, economic. Using surrealism to obscure time and place, Colson Whitehead uses the elevator directions, up and down, to carry his agenda of racial inequality and it works surprisingly well.

Starting in a divided department of elevator inspectors, Whitehead plays the divisions for maximum tension - Intuitionists vs Empiricists, Minorities vs. Racists, Women vs. Sexists, Blue Collar vs. White. He plays the tensions and the conflicts musically in a book where the essentials seem real, but the structure is impossible. The city is a caricature of New York, perhaps at the turn of the century, but perhaps in modern times, or maybe in post-war industrialism, or it could be during the depression. At times the feeling transitions between those times with elements of all thrown in.

What this chronological surrealism does to the reader is prevent him or her from becoming complacent, keeping the setting unsure and gnawing at the edge of reason which keeps the mind sharp for the message that's being delivered. Also, by telling the story as a crime noir it keeps the racial inequality at the forefront, possible and shocking, but familiar at the same time. The protagonist, Lila Mae, the first black woman to be an Elevator Inspector steps through a minefield every day. She's an upstart, a minority in every possible way, Black, Woman, Intuitionist, Rookie, Intellectual. She personifies the new order, the higher level and the traditional white establishment doesn't want to rise to the levels of equality for all people, thoughts, and innovations.

There's a murder. She's blamed. We follow her as she keeps one step ahead of the investigation, finding out about herself while she investigates the reasons. She finds that there's a holy grail of elevators, a Black Box, that was theorized and perhaps realized by her idol, James Fulton. She joins this search as a way to both clear her name and vindicate her methods, her school of inspection.

The true knock I have with the book is that Whitehead was a bit ham-handed in his delivery. We got it and the story could've carried it without the preaching.

- CV Rick

Reasonable Read.......2007-05-13

Whitehead's book does not truly capture the reader until the end of the book. I could not help thinking to myself as I was reading it that he is a talented writer but this book was just not capturing me. Whitehead uses a great deal of visualization which at times is beautiful and times annoying. I think he will shape into a talented writer.

A New Take on the Racial Allegory.......2006-08-11

I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed this book not because of its racial implications nor because it uses the idea of the elevator as a symbol for mobility. I enjoyed it because of the way it uses a slightly darker, yet very possible alternate world, to explore a particular view about how African Americans connect with society. The book in fact reminded me of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged because of how fully developed the world these characters inhabit is. I was so impressed with how fully shaped the notion of an Elevator Guild was that I was able to ignore some of the somewhat rehashed idea of African Americans working in jobs that make them faceless and as homogenous a group within the eyes of the rest of the population. I loved Lila Mae and loved the way the whole ideological war between the intuitionists, a group of elevator inspectors who use their intuition and their 'gut' to decide if an elevator is safe, and the empiricists, who take a very logical, have to check every single piece individually before making a final verdict, comes about. It's a great novel, but doesn't get 5 stars from me because it remains trapped in the same framework that Morrison and Ellison left us with decades ago.

Noirish Read.......2006-07-31

This book reads like a timeless film noir. The author wields the langauge in such an intriguing manner, that the story line is sometimes secondary to his powerful use of words.

Elevating The Art.......2006-01-21

This book is a grand example of a writer pushing the literary
boundaries of style. His wording is inspiring. The down side
however , is the lack of time spent on the entertainment aspect
of this story. Leaving the book with a very mechanical feel ,
due to the relentless mention of elevators. This author definitely
has the tools to make a good , if not great book. Maybe next
time.

Realist Film Theory and Cinema: The Nineteenth-Century Lukacsian and Intuitionist Realist Traditions

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Realist Film Theory and Cinema: The Nineteenth-Century Lukacsian and Intuitionist Realist Traditions
Ian Aitken
Manufacturer: Manchester University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0719070015
Release Date: 2006-10-17

Book Description

This is the first book to attempt a rigorous and systematic application of realist film theory to the analysis of particular films. Ian Aitken embraces studies of cinematic realism and 19th century tradition, the realist film theories of Lukács, Grierson, Bazin and Kracauer, and the relationship of realist film theory to the general field of film theory and philosophy. The book suggests new ways forward for a new series of studies in cinematic realism, and for a new form of film theory based on realism. It stresses the importance of the question of realism both in film studies and in contemporary life.

Mystic, Geometer, and Intuitionist: The Life of L. E. J. Brouwer Volume 1: The Dawning Revolution

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Mystic, Geometer, and Intuitionist: The Life of L. E. J. Brouwer Volume 1: The Dawning Revolution
Dirk Van Dalen
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer is a remarkable figure, both in the development of mathematics and in wider Dutch history. A mathematical genius with strong mystical and philosophical leanings, he advocated the intuitionist view of mathematics and science as a constructive mental activity. This drew him into a discussion with David Hilbert, the leading advocate of the formalist school, about the nature of mathematics, a debate which made Brouwer a legend during his lifetime. He also contributed significantly to research in topology, and was a member of the socio- linguistic Signific Circle. As well as his diverse mathematical interests he had a great impact in wider Dutch society. His keen sense of justice made him a party in many conflicts, both scientific and political. He would often be involved in controversial issues, such as the campaign to undo the boycott of German scientists, and this made him a figure both of admiration and embarrassment in his native Holland. Although his abilities won him offers from prestigious universities such as Berlin and Gottingen, he preferred to stay in Amsterdam, so that he could pursue a life of quiet unconventionality in the artist community at Laren. This book provides a sophisticated analysis of this crucial era of mathematical research, but also gives an important insight into the wider life of one of the most fascinating characters involved. This book is available at the specially discounted price of L49.95 to customers in the Netherlands.

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The Intuitionist
Colson Whitehead
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MBZGT2

The urban gothic vision of Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist (1999).: An article from: African American Review

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The urban gothic vision of Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist (1999).: An article from: African American Review
Saundra Liggins
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from African American Review, published by Thomson Gale on June 22, 2006. The length of the article is 6631 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The urban gothic vision of Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist (1999).
Author: Saundra Liggins
Publication: African American Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 40 Issue: 2 Page: 359(11)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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The Intuitionist
Colson Whitehead
Manufacturer: Anchor / Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1862072361

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The Intuitionist
Colson Whitehead
Manufacturer: Anchor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GTSWHI

Mystic, Geometer, and Intuitionist: The Life of L. E. J. Brouwer : Volume 2: Hope and Disillusion

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Mystic, Geometer, and Intuitionist: The Life of L. E. J. Brouwer : Volume 2: Hope and Disillusion
Dirk van Dalen
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OLATF6

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THE INTUITIONIST
Colson Whitehead
Manufacturer: Doubleday USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000H6W5LO

The little professor, intuitionist: A transactional analysis of Isaac Asimov's The gods themselves

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The little professor, intuitionist: A transactional analysis of Isaac Asimov's The gods themselves
Elizabeth Anne Hull
Manufacturer: William Rainey Harper College
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006X9UMU

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