Now come on, baby, I don't want you to scuffle now
Just groove it right here, do the Harlem Shuffle
Yeah, yeah, yeah, do the Harlem Shuffle
(oh do the monkey shine)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, do the Harlem Shuffle
— Bob & Earl
I always look for a novel’s title within the text (much can be learned from what an author plucks as meaningful), and as Harlem Shuffle doesn’t include its titular phrase anywhere, I decided to google it to see if it has a meaning I’m not aware of. First of all: I was surprised to learn that the song of this name was originally written and performed by the African-American duo Bob & Earl in 1965, and a few different websites that give the meanings of lyrics told me that the “Harlem Shuffle draws from line dances that originated in ballrooms during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s”. That wasn’t much help, but one website suggests that the song tells the story of a heroin addict shuffling down the streets of Harlem, swaying and itching and ooooh, do that monkey shine. That seems like a better allusion for what Colson Whitehead was writing about — heroin does make an appearance — but I sense that Whitehead was being more metaphorical than that: the “Harlem Shuffle” of the title seems to really be about the main character’s sideline as a fence for stolen goods (shuffling items in and out and making them legit), and also his striving for respectability (shuffling his way up through Harlem’s class structure). The last two novels I read by Whitehead (The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys) were necessary and finely-written social commentary on African-American history, and while Harlem Shuffle is that, too, it’s also highly entertaining, with a huge cast of colourful characters and a tense and interesting plot. I learned a lot about classism within the Harlem African-American community in the 50s and 60s — from paper bag clubs and country hicks to Strivers Row — and I really cared about the characters; top-notch reading experience on every level.
Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked, in practice and ambition. The odd piece of jewelry, the electronic appliances Freddie and then a few other local characters brought by the store, he could justify. Nothing major, nothing that attracted undue attention to his store, the front he put out to the world. If he got a thrill out of transforming these ill-gotten goods into legit merchandise, a zap-charge in his blood like he’d plugged into a socket, he was in control of it and not the other way around. Dizzying and powerful as it was. Everyone had secret corners and alleys that no one else saw — what mattered were your major streets and boulevards, the stuff that showed up on other people’s maps of you.
Ray Carney is a social climber: son of petty criminal Big Mike and a mother who died young, Carney put himself through business school and opened a furniture store with his name in two foot letters on the plate glass window out front. Married to a beautiful and educated woman from the best neighbourhood in Harlem — Elizabeth’s parents (“Light enough to pass for white, but a little too eager to remind you that they could pass for white”) sniff that their daughter definitely married down — and as he and Elizabeth are expecting their second child, Carney would like nothing better than to move his family to a nicer, bigger apartment; if only the business was doing a little better and the rent more than barely covered. Carney’s ne'er-do-well cousin Freddie — more brother than cousin — has been in the habit of bringing the odd bit of jewellery and electronics into the store for Carney to fence for him, but when Freddie gets his cousin embroiled in a major heist with dangerous gangsters, Carney will need to decide which side of the law he wants to operate on and what lengths he will go to protect his family.
The novel is separated into three sections — 1959, 1961, and 1964 — and as I haven’t seen the following discussed elsewhere, I’ll add a spoiler warning here.
Each of the sections seem influenced by a different literary work. I noticed this first in the second section when Carney goes to the Dumas Club (a snooty social club for African-Americans, named after the famous author Alexandre Dumas; son of a French officer and a Haitian slave) and a character says, “If you remember the story of the Count of Monte Cristo — and I realize it’s been a long time since some of you were in school” — there was some chuckling — “he was a man who got things done once he’d decided on a course of action. And that’s the spirit we strive for in our fraternity. The bootstrap spirit that delivered our ancestors from bondage, and now inspires all of us as we try to make a better Harlem.” Hear, hear. This stuck out to me because this section eventually plays out as an intricate Count of Monte Cristoesque revenge plot.
In the third section, we learn that while Carney was hitting his school books, his cousin Freddie preferred “dime novels”: Strange Sisters, Violent Saturday, Her Name — Jezebel. Stories where no one was saved, not the guilty (killers and crooks) and not the innocent (orphans scooped up at bus stations, librarians inducted into worlds of vice). Each time he thought things would work out for them. They never did and he forgot that lesson each time he closed the covers. I took this as a warning for how the plot would develop, and I wasn’t wrong.
This made me return to the first section, and while I couldn’t find any pertinent literary references within it when I flipped through, there was this bit that comes later (after the Dumas reference): Carney hadn’t read Homer or Cervantes, but recalled Great Expectations (humble beginnings) and A Christmas Carol (rueful ghosts) with much fondness. And I have to admit that the first section — and Harlem Shuffle overall — feels totally Dickensian; from the poor orphan stumbling upon an inheritance, receiving help from unlikely allies, and the colourful names (Pepper, Miami Joe, Cheap Brucie, et al) to being dogged by his father’s reputation as though by a rueful ghost, Carney’s story is straight out of Dickens.
The three sections develop in this way like three different types of novels, while always hanging together as a cohesive whole, and it felt like Whitehead pulled off a tidy trick with this format.
If Carney walked five minutes in any direction, one generations’ immaculate townhouses were the next’s shooting galleries, slum blocks testified in a chorus of neglect, and businessmen sat ravaged and demolished after nights of violent protest. What had started it, the mess this week? A white cop shot an unarmed black boy three times and killed him. Good old American know-how on display: We do marvels, we do injustice, and our hands are always busy.
Again, this is social commentary wrapped up in an entertaining crime novel. Elizabeth works for the Black Star Travel agency (a Green Book type service for African-American travellers) and she adds stories about the dangers for Civil Rights advocates and Freedom Riders; the only white characters in Harlem are the cops who shake Carney down for protection money; the Harlem riot of 1964 — sparked by the killing of an unarmed fifteen-year-old by an off-duty police officer — is the backdrop for the last section. Against this racial divide, Whitehead shows the classism within the African-American community — based on skin tone, economic background, North vs South vs Caribbean islander — and through Carney, examines what it takes to move up the social ladder; ooooh, do that Harlem Shuffle. I loved every bit of it.
