Ad Aged: Wow Writing.

Thursday, August 6, 2026

Wow Writing.

I read this last week in The Economist:

If you care about passé things like art, literature, craft, beauty and wit, this would be a hard article to ignore.

Also if you’re from New York and you love it as so many New Yorkers do. Even if they’ve re-locaterized two-hours north to the Gingham Coast, where an outfit of Lilly Pulitzer is considered resolutely OG.

Then if you make it to the first paragraph, you’ll find yourself practically compelled to download some Whitehead and start reading while you still have a head. (IMHO heads are on the endangered species list.)

I’m old enough so that I’m still impressed by hoary awards like the Pulitzer Prize. They haven’t awarded one to tump yet for pecuniary concerns, so in my mind, it still carries some weight. What’s more “the most fun to read,” is just what I needed on my night-stand, the world what it is and given the lugubrious tenor of my usual reading.

I picked up and, quickly, read the first of Whitehead’s “three-part love letter to New York.” I will soon read parts two and three.

Most men, and it is usually men, put Raymond Chandler on the highest echelon of the noir-pantheon. While Hammett is a better writer, Chandler can turn a phrase like no one I ever read, including Billy Shakespeare and everything that’s ever been said, Billy said first and best.

Here are just five from Chandler, maybe not his best. But still pretty good shells from the oyster tower of life:

“The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.”

“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”

“I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”

“If I had a razor, I'd cut your throat - just to see what ran out of it."

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."

I opened Harlem Shuffle two Tuesdays ago and read this—a quotation alone on the page even before its first chapter.

OK, I said. I’m somewhere special. That feeling increased as I read on:

(See Hammett’s line from The Maltese Falcon:

“The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”)

—

Before long—certainly before the end of the year—I’ll read books two and three. Until then, I’ll leave you with this photographic archive from a recent Times’ article.

A black-and-white photo of a man wearing glasses and a pinstriped vest and pants, drawing on an easel next to a woman with short hair, posing seated. Several people stand nearby in the background, and in the foreground there’s a white poster that reads “I’LL DRAW YOUR PORTRAIT FOR ONLY $2.50.”

In 1974, a local portrait artist sells his talents from the sidewalk of 125th between Seventh and Eighth, close to where the protagonist Ray Carney owns a furniture store in Colson Whitehead’s novel “Crook Manifesto.”Credit...Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times

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Account

The Setting of Colson Whitehead’s ‘Crook Manifesto,’ in Archives

A selection of photos from The New York Times of Harlem in the 1970s.

By Erica Ackerberg

July 21, 2023

Image A black-and-white photo of the first three floors of three residential buildings, taken from across the street. There are fire escapes on the facades of all three. The heads of two men appear in the foreground.

Two men across the street from rehabilitated five-story tenement buildings on 114th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, not far from the Canaan Baptist Church, where a movie scene is filmed in the novel.Credit...Tyrone Dukes/The New York Times

Image

A black-and-white photo of men wearings jackets and hats standing on a sidewalk in front of a store whose awning is falling apart. A sign above the store reads “7UP CANDY SHOE SHINE SODA.” A trash can and a leaking fire hydrant are in the foreground.

A rainy day on 118th Street and Lenox Avenue, 1974. In Whitehead’s novel, an arsonist sets a fateful fire a few blocks west, at 118th Street and Morningside Avenue.Credit...Neal Boenzi/The New York Times

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A black-and-white photo of two men standing in front of the back of a truck with the door open. Inside are hanging sausages, aluminum cans and other packaged food items. Buckets of sweet potatoes are by their feet.

A soul food truck on Amsterdam and 125th Street, 1971.Credit...Librado Romero/The New York Times

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Perusing the shelves at the National Memorial African Bookstore on Seventh Avenue near 125th Street in 1970. (The store closed in 1974.)Credit...Carl T. Gossett/The New York Times

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A black-and-white photo of a sidewalk stand bearing wigs for sale, on mannequin heads. People sit and stand outside a store called “Chock full o’ Nuts” to the left of the frame.

Vendors along 125th Street near Lenox Avenue, a few blocks east from where Whitehead’s Ray Carney owns a furniture store, 1972.Credit...Librado Romero/The New York Times

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A black-and-white photo of a city street taken from several stories up, so you can see vertical signs that say “APOLLO” and “LOEW’S” at eye level. Cars drive in the street below, and the sidewalk is filled with people.

The Apollo Theater on 125th Street, 1978.Credit...John Sotomayor/The New York Times

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A black-and-white photo of four men seated around a table on a sidewalk, playing cards and smoking. Two other men stand nearby.

A group of men play cards near the corner of Morningside Avenue and 126th Street, a block from Carney’s store.Credit...Tyrone Dukes/The New York Times

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A black-and-white photo of several men standing around in a packed store selling shoes and clothes. A ladder leans against one wall, covered in shoeboxes.