The Intuitionist

The Intuitionist is a 1999 novel by Colson Whitehead. It falls broadly into speculative fiction.

The Intuitionist takes place in a city (implicitly, New York) full of skyscrapers and other buildings requiring vertical transportation in the form of elevators. The time, never identified explicitly, is one when black people are called "colored" and integration is a current topic. The protagonist is Lila Mae Watson, an elevator inspector of the "Intuitionist" school. The Intuitionists practice an inspecting method by which they ride in an elevator and intuit the state of the elevator and its related systems. The competing school, the "Empiricists," insists upon traditional instrument-based verification of the condition of the elevator. Watson is the second black inspector and the first black female inspector in the city.

The book contains many images of lifting and falling, and the concept of the elevator, of "uplift", is perhaps a metaphor for racial progress.

Plot summary

The story begins with the catastrophic failure of an elevator which Watson had inspected just days before, leading to suspicion cast upon both herself and the Intuitionist school as a whole. To cope with the inspectorate, the corporate elevator establishment, and other looming elements, she must return to her intellectual roots, the texts (both known and lost) of the founder of the school, to try to reconstruct what is happening around her.

In the course of her search, she discovers the central idea of the founder of Intuitionism – that of the "black box", the perfect elevator, which will deliver the people to the city of the future.

Characters in "The Intuitionist"

• Lila Mae Watson – Protagonist
• James Fulton – Founder of Intuitionism (Dead before the story starts.)
• Raymond Coombs – Spy for a big elevator company (disguised as "Natchez", a poor nephew of Fulton's interested in the black box and in Lila Mae. )
• Marie Claire Rogers – Fulton's servant and heir
• Ben Urich – Reporter who has written a story on the black box for Lift magazine.
• Jim Corrigan and John Murphy – Thugs
• Chancre – President of the Elevator Guild, Empiricist
• Orville Lever – Liberal and Intuitionist candidate for the presidency of the Elevator Guild.
• Mr. Reed – Lever's secretary and campaign manager
• Charles "Chuck" Gould – Mere escalator inspector, on good terms with Lila Mae.
• Pompey – Black elevator inspector, Empiricist.

Important Themes

• Afrofuturism
• Social Elevation of African Americans
• Uplift Ideology
• Social Change

Release details

• 1999, USA, Bantam Doubleday Dell ISBN 0-385-49299-5, Pub date ? January 1999, hardback first edition
• 1999, UK, Granta Books ISBN 1-86207-236-1, Pub date 14 January 1999, paperback
• 1999, UK, Granta Books ISBN 1-86207-310-4, Pub date 11 October 1999, paperback
• 2000, USA, Anchor Books ISBN 0-385-49300-2, Pub date ? January 2000, paperback

External links

• Cafe in the Woods (review)
• Agony Column (review)
• The Cafe Irreal (essay which tries to place The Intuitionist in the broader framework of American literature)