Apex Hides the Hurt

'Apex Hides the Hurt' by Colson Whitehead (my goodness he has won a shitload of awards) was picked up as a charity shop find, his name recognisable because he had been on the Booker long-list. It concerns a (I suddenly realised, presumably ironically) nameless hero, who's job it is to come up with new names for things, or names for new things; a really unpromising scenario for a novel, but I have so enjoyed it. When not much happens a book has to be character driven and what a wonderful collection of vivid people Colson has created here. 

So, he arrives in the town of Winthrop because the local council is having debate about the town's name; whether to retain the name Winthrop, return to the town's original name of Freedom, or to change it to New Prospera. Each of the three members of the town council is championing one of the options, and they each take turns making their case to him, while he spends time to get to know the town and its people. Here he has just arrived at the Hotel Winthrop (he's limping because he has just had a toe removed, this is relevant to the back story), I love this whole description, a good example of his writing:

"He limped around the room. He was on the top floor of the hotel and had a nice view of the emptied square. He pressed his palms to the sill. People had umbrellas now, not the compact-click found in major metropolitan areas but favourite umbrellas they never lost, and they made a break out of doorways for their cars or homes, confident now that this was not a brief sudden shower but a rain that was going to hang around for a while. It was a bad cough that had turned into something that showed up on X-rays. The leaves fled one way, then another. From the window, the river along the square was a brown worm without head or tail. The wind changed, and he was startled by a gust that threw spray against the panes for a few vicious seconds. The bed was safe, well-pillowed, and he made his retreat." (P.13)

He goes in search of some local history (he takes his job seriously, he's not just here to pick a name out of the hat), and I also loved this description of libraries (the local one is unfortunately being replaced with an 'Outfit Outlet'):

"On the rare occasions that he entered libraries, he always felt assured of his virtue. If they figured out how to distill essence of library into a convenient delivery system - a piece of gum or a gelcap, for example - he would consume it eagerly, relieved to be finished with more taxing methods of virtue gratification. Helping old ladies across the street. Giving tourists directions. Libraries. Alas there would be no warm feeling of satisfaction today. The place was a husk. The books were gone. Where he would usually be intimidated by an army of daunting spines, there were only dust-ball rinds and Dewey decimal grave markers. as if by consensus, all the educational posters and maps had cast out their top right-hand corner tacks, so the their undersides bowed over like blades of grass. Nothing would be referenced this afternoon, save indomitable market forces." (p.91-2)

I loved the picture of small town life, it's politics and history, that although they disagreed they all liked and respected each other. Here is another little snippet that I noted, where he just goes for a walk in the woods, something, I get the impression, he had never down before:

"At first it was quiet. Such was his frame of reference that he likened it to the deep silence that follows when a refrigerator stops humming. Only him and the apartment, alone, the end of the fridge's hum the departure of a guest he hadn't even known was present. He continued down the path, which terminated at the lip of a gloomy, mottled marsh. He heard the words of the woods. Animals, insects, small branches disturbed by unseen creatures. The more he listened, the deeper he tumbled into the noise. For a few minutes he allowed himself to be swayed by the sales pitch of nature." (p.152)

Regina, Lucky and Albie vie for his attention, each in their own unique way, though it was his relationship with the surly barkeeper and the overly pugnacious housekeeper at the hotel that I found most entertaining. The whole book was just a delight, and had a suitably delightful denouement. Our hero's personal existential crisis seems to have been helped by his stay too. (By the way, Apex is the name he gave to a brand of plasters.) Names in all their complexity play an important role, in life, in society, in consumerism, and maybe you do have to live with a name for a while for it to come into its own.

Stay safe. Be kind. Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet.