I usually do a lighter book and then a heavier book. I mean, you know, it ends up playing out. KING: Is it different in some way, better in some way, emotionally healthier in some way to write a book with less heavy themes? Or does that not really play into it? And so the crime genre, the heist novel allowed me to exercise that muscle once again. "The Underground Railroad" and "Nickel Boys" didn't really have room for some of my strange humor sometimes. Colson Whitehead told me this departure from very heavy themes was kind of a relief.ĬOLSON WHITEHEAD: I like to be able to make my weird jokes, and sometimes the subject matter allows me to do that. But Ray is drawn by family, friends, circumstance and his own ambition into some crooked scenarios, including a heist at the most glamorous hotel in Harlem. His new book, "Harlem Shuffle," is the story of Ray Carney, a furniture salesman trying to walk the straight and narrow in early '60s New York. So it's possible to forget that Colson Whitehead can be very funny. "The Nickel Boys" was about a reform school in Florida where boys were brutalized. "The Underground Railroad" was about slavery and escape. Colson Whitehead's last two books won Pulitzer Prizes.
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