‘Cool Machine’: The last book in Colson Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy is classic New York fiction

Cool Machine is the last book in Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy. Across three decades, the series has followed the furniture dealer and family man Ray Carney as he navigates the changing cultural and political landscapes of New York City.

We meet Carney in Harlem Shuffle, which is set in the late 50s and early 60s. At this point, Carney is trying to stay straight in a world that turned many of his family members into criminals. However, try as he might, he can’t avoid getting dragged into the criminal underworld. In Crook Manifesto, set in the 70s, Carney is embroiled in crime as a secret fence (someone who sells on stolen goods) and living a double life.

Promise of prosperity

Cool Machine picks up the story in the 1980s, when Carney is winding down his criminal side hustle. Like Carney, New York is a city in transition. Fuelled by President Ronald Reagan’s neoliberal economy, the city is “spectacularly alive” to the sound of “jackhammering and rasp of steel beams across concrete” as new skyscrapers transform the cityscape.

In counterpoint to the promise of prosperity heralded by Reagan’s tax cuts – manifest in the advent of yuppies and gentrification – the “primitive language” of graffiti on the subway walls points to...

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