Colson Whitehead on Harlem, Heists, and New York’s Relentless Rebirth

In a wide-ranging interview, Colson Whitehead discusses Cool Machine, the final volume in his Harlem Trilogy, detailing how it wraps Carney and Pepper’s story while broadening to city-wide corruption. He explains his love of genre fiction, the trilogy’s structure across three connected novellas, and how 1960s–80s New York informs the books. Whitehead also reflects on his city’s continual reinvention, shares favorite old neighborhoods, speaks about the role of music in his writing, and reveals what the coffee-table conversation in the interview reveals about his characters and themes.