Colson Whitehead’s new novel has been out for several months, but we’ve avoided mentioning it, as we are not big fans of the horror genre. But the San Francisco Chronicle ran yet another story on the book yesterday, so we have decided to face our fears:
…”Apex Hides the Hurt,” shares much stylistically with his two previous prize-winning books (”The Intuitionist” and “John Henry Days”) — dark humor, imaginative tangents and puns galore — and a subject that is a smart meditation on these times…
…The central character of “Apex” doesn’t have a name, but he is a professional namer. The title of the book is taken from one of the namer’s most famous creations — the slogan for the bandage Apex — it “hides the hurt.” He’s ludicrously good at his job, but he doesn’t seem to care about that. He doesn’t seem to care about much; his tone is generally sour.
Naming, apparently, has failed to help him move beyond appearances.
That last sentence we can vouch for. Ouch.
After leaving his firm for unknown reasons, the namer goes to a small town with a naming crisis. It’s currently called Winthrop, and the town’s leaders are split on whether to keep it the same (as Councilman Albie Winthrop would prefer), change it to Freedom, which was what former slaves christened the town, or opt for the name that the namer’s former firm chose, New Prospera.
This is scary stuff, so scary that we couldn’t get the idiot in the pointed hat to come out from under his Davenport to comment.