52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
30. The intuitionist.
A racial allegory, pitting Lila Mae Watson, first female black elevator inspector and a confirmed Intuitionist, against the Department of Elevator Inspectors and its ruling class of Empiricists. A vague historicity and strong detective-noir tones (reminds me of The Maltese Falcon meets Gattaca). Interesting, to read a novel about race that didn’t simply retread the crushing slavery narrative. The protagonists — both Watson and her analogue, Fulton — are almost pathologically walled off against their own feelings, the cost of attempting to penetrate the world of the majority. And the elevators, with their promise of ascension, their threat of failure and death, their cold unfeeling machinery (one episode has a motor casing erupting in a flood of cockroaches), their identification with the white world of the city… I found myself thankful for the novelty. Also, a page-turner.
