The Intuitionist
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 First edition cover |
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| Author | Colson Whitehead |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Speculative fiction, Novel |
| Publisher | Bantam Doubleday Dell (HB) & Anchor Books (PB) |
| Released | January 1999 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 272 pp (hardback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-385-49299-5 (hardback edition) & ISBN 0-385-49300-2 (paperback edition) |
The Intuitionist is a 1999 novel by Colson Whitehead. It falls broadly into speculative fiction.
The Intuitionist takes place in a modern city (implicitly, New York, New York) full of skyscrapers and other buildings requiring vertical transportation in the form of elevators. The protagonist is Lila Mae Watson, an elevator inspector of the "intuitionist" school (which should not be confused with Empiricism). The Intuitionists practice an inspecting method by which they stand in an elevator and simply feel or intuit whether it's in jeopardy of falling. The competing school, the "empiricists" (again, not to be confused with Empiricism), insist upon traditional instrument-based verification of the condition of the elevator. Watson is the second black inspector and the first black female inspector in the city.
The book is a race allegory of sorts, in which the concept of the elevator, of "uplift" is perhaps a metaphor for racial progress.
[edit] Plot summary
The story begins with the catastrophic failure of an elevator which Watson had inspected just days before, leading to suspicion cast upon both herself and the intuitionist school as a whole. To cope with the inspectorate, the corporate elevator establishment, and other looming elements, she must return to her intellectual roots, the texts (both known and lost) of the founder of the school, to try to reconstruct what is happening around her.
In the course of her search, she discovers the central idea of the founder of intuitionism - that of the "black box". Ostensibly a perfect elevator of sorts, its true nature is never explored in the novel. In the end, Lila Mae discovers that intuitionism began as a practical joke on white people that soon spiraled out of control.
[edit] Characters in "The Intuitionist"
- Lila Mae Watson – protagonist
- Fulton – Founder of intuitionism
[edit] Release details
- 1999, USA, Bantam Doubleday Dell ISBN 0-385-49299-5, Pub date ? January 1999, hardback first edition
- 1999, UK, Granta Books ISBN 1-86207-236-1, Pub date 14 January 1999, paperback
- 1999, UK, Granta Books ISBN 1-86207-310-4, Pub date 11 October 1999, paperback
- 2000, USA, Anchor Books ISBN 0-385-49300-2, Pub date ? January 2000, paperback
