From Whitman's romantic poems to Thomas Pynchon's Black City to Woody Allen's lens language, New York has inspired the aspirations and fantasies of generations of talented artists. Among contemporary American writers, Coulson Whitehead, who has won the National Book Award, won the Pulitzer Prize twice, and was praised by the media as "one of the most outstanding living American writers", was born in New York. As early as his first appearance, he presented the super-city with the prose collection "The Colossus of New York". At the beginning of 2022, Century Wenjing launched the Chinese version of "New York Colossus" for the first time in China.
He was in the prime of his creative years, a "literary chameleon"
Born in New York in 1969 and raised in the Upper East Side, Whitehead graduated from Harvard University and won the MacArthur Genius Award, the Guggenheim Award, and the Whiteing Writers Award.
In 2016, Whitehead's 16-year-long novel "Underground Railroad" was published and swept the United States, winning the National Book Award at the end of the year and winning the Pulitzer Prize the following year, becoming the only novelist in the twenty-first century to win both of these blockbuster awards with the same novel, and becoming one of the classic writers such as Faulkner, Ann Potter, Malmad, Updike, Walker, and Prue. Whitehead was in the prime of his creative years, unstoppable, followed by the publication of "Nicole Boys" in 2019 and won the Pulitzer Prize again, which was unique in the contemporary American literary scene.
Whitehead's work spans so widely and in a variety of styles that Harvard Magazine has called him a "literary chameleon," but he has always been committed to exploring the history of racism in the United States and the shadows that still linger in modern society. At a time of continued racial protest and political crisis in the United States, Whitehead's work has attracted more attention.
The essay collection Colossus of New York takes on a whole new style: it chronicles the multitude of beings in a super-metropolis in a dense and poetic language.
Coulson Whitehead
The book consists of thirteen chapters, showing the flowing faces of the crowd
The Colossus of New York consists of thirteen chapters and is also "thirteen ways to see New York." From Port Authority Station to Central Park, from Broadway to the Brooklyn Bridge, the author looks at important landmarks in New York City from an omniscient perspective, or is immersed in the noisy subway or strolls in the embarrassing rain, constantly examining the flowing faces while thinking about the relationship between people and the city.
Whitehead's brushstrokes delve into the collective unconscious of the people who once intersected with New York. If a man had lived in New York, the keen observations in the book would have made him smile; if he had never been to the city, New York would have hinted at the world in which he lived, and he could also find in the book the special connection between man and the city in modern society.
Critics believe that although the Colossus of New York is not long, its density is too great to read quickly. Each word deliberately tries to slow the reader's gaze. This "slowing down" is undoubtedly meaningful, allowing the reader to deeply look at the city in which they live, while re-examining their own lives.
In 2017, Century Wenjing published Whitehead's most important masterpiece, "Underground Railroad", based on the novel, and the Amazon TV series of the same name created by Oscar winner and director of "Moonlight Boy" Barry Jenkins is now on the scene. After "The New York Colossus", Century Wenjing will continue to launch Whitehead's latest crime novel "Harlem Storm" in 2021, which is worth looking forward to. Yangzi Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter Huang Yanwen