Before Richard Ford’s most recent novel, the one about a Ford-like
idiot trying to comprehend a world that’s passed him by, there was A
Multitude of Sins, a book of short stories wherein Ford-like idiots
are trying to deal with the aftermath of ill-advised extramarital
affairs. The novelist Colson Whitehead, reviewing Sins for the New York Times Book Review, excoriated Ford’s characters
for their shallowness and lambasted Ford himself for worrying
more about perfect word choice than why anyone should care in the first
place. This is the
end of that review:
When asked last year by the Kenyon Review what kind of
relationship he has with his characters, Ford replied: “Master to
slave. Sometimes I hear them at night singing
over in their
cabins.” Singing. So that’s
what that was. It sounded like
whining.
Swear to God, there was smoke rising off the page. It was the
kind of fearless, unforgiving call to action that had been far too long
coming: Ford is a Big Name of Literature, and his work had gotten
sloppy and pointless. Whitehead was the young sheriff calling out the
tired old windbag, and his aim was true. Ford’s reputation has never
completely recovered from that lashing, but he would eventually get his
petty little revenge.
Two years later, Ford approached Whitehead at a party,
announced that he had waited a long time for the moment, and then spat
on Whitehead. According to New York Magazine, Whitehead would
later comment: “This wasn’t the first time some old coot had drooled on
me, and it probably won’t be the last. But I would like to warn the
many other people who panned the book that they might want to get a
rain poncho, in case of inclement Ford.”
This was an historic loogie.
Ford’s sputum represented the passing of a literary torch to
Whitehead, exemplifying the rise of writers like Eggers, Foer, and
Smith. It was the untidy birth of a new literary generation, still
wet with the fluids of the previous one, and Colson Whitehead is
the author who finalized the transition.
Whitehead’s written four books in nine years, and the three novels
among them—The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, and
Apex Hides the Hurt—are all wildly different but
wonderful. African-American themes are as integral to these books as,
say, the desire to not be alone, or the overwhelming urge to forgo
aspirations in order to be more comfortable. It’s telling of the
generational sea change that race isn’t a problem to be solved in
Whitehead’s novels, it’s a fact. On his website, Whitehead responds to
the question “Are You a Black Writer, or a Writer Who Happens to Be
Black?” with a perfect “Is that a dumb question, or a question that
happens to be dumb?” 
Whitehead gives a Seattle Arts & Lectures talk at Benaroya
Hall (200 University St, 624-6600) on Mon Jan 14 at 7:30 pm,
$10–$27.