Apex hides the hurt skin#
Apex hides the hurt professional#
Apex hides the hurt free#

Whitehead attended Tin House the year I was there, about 12 months before an exerpt from Sag Harbor appeared in the New Yorker. A quiet page-turner, this book has a startling depth, bringing up ideas of what can be named, the effect of name, and personal and cultural identity. He negotiates councilmember politics, the cultural and economic and racial history of the town, as well as his own reclusiveness following a strange physical accident.

Apex hides the hurt professional#

The protagonist is an unnamed 'nomenclature consultant' a professional paid for naming products who is hired to rename a town. This deceptively slim novel opens a world of ideas. A qu Colson Whitehead is one of those writers who is so eloquent, whose prose is so elegant and clear, it makes my best efforts look like those of a hack.

But Apex covered the problem, holding back the blood and pus and pain, until finally there was no choice but to amputate the toe.Ĭolson Whitehead is one of those writers who is so eloquent, whose prose is so elegant and clear, it makes my best efforts look like those of a hack. But then the toe became, somehow, accident prone, suffering repeated random stubbings. He stubbed his toe and used the appropriate brown bandage. But in his case, Apex hid the hurt all too well.

Apex hides the hurt skin#

The idea: multicultural bandages in various hues to match various skin tones. It began with his greatest triumph, the revitalization of a moribund Band-Aid competitor. Interspersed with the consultant's current case are flashbacks to the source of his psychosomatic limp. But his research reveals another option, the name proposed by Field: Struggle. All have agreed to abide by the arbiter's decision and to let the name he chooses stand for at least one year.ĭuring his stay in Winthrop the protagonist is wooed by all three camps. Tech baron Lucky wants New Prospera the last batty scion of the Winthrop family wants to cling to tradition and Mayor Regina Goode, a descendant of the first Goode, wants to return to Freedom. Now a native son made good has brought his technology company back to town, and he wants a forward-thinking name that will help him recruit employees and other silicon prairie businesses - the protagonist's former firm has come up with New Prospera.īut as in the town's earliest days, the three-member town council must vote to change the name. Then Sterling Winthrop came to town, bringing with him a bustling barbed wire business Winthrop and the town's two founders, optimist Goode and pessimist/realist Field renamed the town Winthrop, a name that would reassure other white businessmen and settlers.

Apex hides the hurt free#

The town was founded by newly free former slaves and was dubbed Freedom. He's been roped back in for one last job - arbitrating a naming dispute in what is now known as Winthrop and what might soon be rechristened New Prospera or might revert to being Freedom. But of late, ever since 'the incident,' he's been avoiding work, people, and even hygiene in favor of hiding out at home. He tells companies what to call their new cars, drugs, floor polishes, and widgets. Our narrator is a nomenclature consultant. The town was founded by newly f Company crossed with Paradise.

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