Category: Reviews by Sue Martin

Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead

Following two Pulitzer Prize winning novels in a row, Colson Whitehead has written a third brilliant portrait of systemic racism in America, wrapped in a deep dive into mid-twentieth century Harlem. This time the focus is on multi-class strivers and crooks and how they interact and mirror each other in a masterful, spare and engaging narrative – Harlem Shuffle.

Whitehead divides his tale into three sections that skillfully develop his main character Ray Carney in his three roles as committed family man; enterprising furniture store owner and part-time, small-time middle man for stolen TVs –“…only slightly bent, when it came to being crooked.” He becomes a proud striver who’s family now lives on Riverside Drive, Carney’s dream location but aims for the prestigious Striver’s Row, owner of a much expanded retail enterprise and go-to fence for major Harlem criminal Chink Montague.

Part One – The Truck   
The narrative opens in 1959 and introduces us to Ray’s wife Elizabeth, a cut above him in class and color and his strong emotional support; his deceased father Big Mike, a former full blown player in the local crime scene and cousin Freddie, Ray’s handsome soul mate since childhood who is both bone-headed and lacking in common sense. Freddie draws from his deep knowledge of Ray and his fascination with his father’s criminal underworld to volunteer Ray as a fence for the proceeds from a heist of the St. Theresa Hotel. Thus Ray begins his reluctant descent into a deeper level of criminality, and a higher class of living financed initially by the $30,000 Ray discovers in the wheel well of the old blue truck he thought was his sole legacy from his father, but was actually only the tangible element.

Part Two – Dorvay
In 1961 Ray connects with this centuries old practice of interrupting sleep with several hours of awake time. He describes his personal Dorvay as “…a period of focused rage,” his middle of the night crooked hours during which he plots his revenge against Wilfred Duke, the financier who bilked him out of a $500 envelope with the broken promise of membership in the exclusive Dumas Club. Ray develops an intricate plan to ruin Duke based on calling in stored up favors from envelopes he’s been coerced to provide in the past and some new ones, to a wide variety of criminal types, including the corrupt policeman Munson. After all “An envelope is an envelope. Disrespect the order and the whole system breaks down, “says one of them. Once the plan unfolds, Duke is ruined by scandalous photos taken during his drugged sleep at his favorite prostitute’s apartment on Convent Street. Describing the only downside of his revenge, Carney concludes, “Black eye aside, it had all been a pleasure.”  

Part Three – Cool it Baby  
It’s now 1964. The World’s Fair and riots in Harlem over the death of a black boy killed by a policeman are taking place simultaneously. They provide Whitehead an ironic juxtaposition of progress in the overall cynical bent of his narrative – “Good old American know-how on display: We do marvels, we do injustice, and our hands are always busy.” At the Dumas Club, many of Wilfred Dukes’ associates have also been disgraced, and the rules of membership have evolved to welcome younger entrepreneurs like Ray Carney, who detective Munson describes as “the biggest nobody in Harlem.” Back at the furniture store, Ray reluctantly agrees to stash an expensive looking briefcase filled with jewelry and papers stolen from the Van Wyk mansion by cousin Freddie and his drug-addled buddy Linus Van Wyk, scion of that super wealthy real estate family. Following discovery of Linus’ murder and a harrowing attempt to fence the jewelry, Ray and his hired gunman come face-to-face with the deep corruption of the Van Wyk  empire, the ultimate strivers. Whitehead calls their economic development activities more destructive than the mayhem wrought by the riots and says, “The devastation (caused by the riots) had been nothing compared to what lay before him now, but if you bottled the rage and hope and fury of all the people of Harlem and made it into a bomb, the results would look something like this.”  

As Part Three concludes, Carney cradles the dying Freddie in the bed of the legacy truck speeding to the hospital. He looks up at the stars, noting that unlike when he and Freddie were growing up together and the stars made them feel insignificant, the stars now make him feel recognized, because he has found his station in life and intends to make himself into something.

Whitehead’s vivid and eye-opening portrait of life on the raw side in Harlem at mid- twentieth century offers a gripping tale of ambition and malevolence in a rapidly changing and racially tense melieu that combine to whet the reader’s appetite for a sequel.     

— Sue Martin

Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships, by Nina Totenberg

The title of Nina Totenberg’s memoir Dinners with Ruth immediately hooks the reader, but the subtitle nails the essence of this engaging narrative on the power of friendships. Through the lens of Nina’s professional career as a legal affairs correspondent and also her personal life, readers do learn much about Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s long public law career as well as a basic outline of her fifty-year friendship with Nina, but the book’s focus is on Nina.

The two women had a number of things in common. They were also very different. Nina was a daughter of privilege whose father, Roman Totenberg, was a world famous violinist. Ruth was born in Brooklyn to a humble family who lived in the shadow of an older sibling’s early death. Nina dropped out of college. Ruth excelled at Cornell University and Harvard Law School. Both were Jewish and the children of immigrants who had high expectations for their ambitious daughters. Both loved to shop and dress well.

Nina and Ruth were outsiders in their chosen fields and among the first women to storm the ramparts of male domination in the workplace. Both learned to brush aside catcalls, sexual harassment (before the term was coined) and were invective about displacing men in the workplace. They respected each other’s work, but were strictly personal friends. From time to time and more frequently as Ruth rose to prominence, Nina interviewed her in person or for radio broadcasts. Following Ruth’s public comments criticizing President Trump and then walking them back, Nina pointedly asked in an interview “why did you apologize?” despite Ruth’s obvious discomfort with the topic.

The two met in 1971 when Nina had just begun covering the Supreme Court and Ruth was an attorney for the ACLU. Their friendship blossomed when Ruth was appointed to the US Court of Appeals and moved to Washington D.C. with her husband Marty, who had used his connection with a prominent senator to secure her selection. Now they could more often meet for dinner and enjoy both husbands’ culinary skills, one of the few talents Ruth definitely did not possess. 

Over the years both women were essential supports for each other through good times and bad –illness and death of spouses; Ruth’s appointment to the Supreme Court; Nina’s second marriage; Ruth’s 20 year challenges with cancer and other ailments; Nina’s refusal to reveal her sources to a Senate Committee following her ground breaking coverage of the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill hearings; Ruth’s refusal to accept membership in a prestigious club, because Nina had earlier been black-balled.

The book explores numerous examples of how making and utilizing friendships and connections propelled both women’s careers. At one point Nina says Ruth had an instinctive ability to make connections, which often came into play when working toward consensus on the Supreme Court as well as personally, typified by her long term personal friendship with philosophical rival Justice Scalia. Nina also excelled in this arena, something she learned growing up. An early example:  Nina’s mother wrote Eleanor Roosevelt seeking help to land a prestigious D.C. internship for Nina. Mrs. Roosevelt replied, and Nina got the internship. After she was hired at NPR as a legal correspondent and began regularly covering the Supreme Court, Nina cultivated friendships with justices, sometimes fairly easily as with Justice Powell and Justice Scalia and sometimes only after great effort as with Justice Brennan. Nina does note such connections among Washington’s governing elite, including White House poker games, would not be possible or tolerated today.   Those were very different times.

Friendships often deepened over a meal. Supreme Court justices and other Washington notables were frequent dinner guests at Nina and husband David’s table.  The couple also had a standing date for dinner and a movie with her NPR work friends Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer and their spouses. David loved to cook for Ruth, especially after the death of her spouse, and even more after Covid-19 hit when Ruth began coming for dinner every Saturday night. Speaking for herself and David, Nina says feeding Ruth was “one of the great privileges of their lives.”

The friendship between Nina and Ruth expanded in the years following Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement from the Supreme Court when Ruth gradually found her voice and developed her powerful influence in furthering the cause of women’s rights. Largely thru social media she became The Notorious RBG. Nationwide popularity made RBG visible nearly anywhere she went, so Nina’s long standing friendship was her port of reliable and authentic connection until her death.

Totenberg uses an interesting device to develop her story – seventeen chapters, each titled with an aspect of friendship – Friends in Need, Friends in Joy, etc. Though this structure could get in the way and seem artificial, it actually keeps the focus on the overriding theme and creates an opportunity to reflect on the components of the friendships in readers’ own lives. Chapter Thirteen, Fame and Friendship, reveals the most detailed anecdotal information about RBG. For example, her prowess at horseback riding and especially at confounding males who underestimate her.

The book club enjoyed this memoir though some were left wanting more detail about Ruth Bader Ginsberg. They did appreciate learning that her firm belief a democrat would be elected in 2016 kept her from resigning during the Obama years. Her death on September 18, 2019 brought her very close to Biden’s election less than two months later. Readers were appalled at Mitch McConnell’s decision not to allow her to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda – a partisan ploy that only served to burnish Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s legacy as a lifetime champion of consensus and connection.

— Sue Martin