« SELZER: You clearly like to leave things open-ended—just as you do in the conclusions to your novels, which is one of the attractions of your fiction. Let me ask you about your creative non-fiction book, The Colossus of New York. In the first sentence of that collection one of the multiple narrators says that because he was born in New York he was “ruined for anywhere else.” Is that pretty much the same reason why you moved back from your brief relocation to the West Coast?WHITEHEAD: If I could live anywhere else, I would. When I think of nice places to move, it’s always a big city that comes to mind. London, Los Angeles. When I leave New York, I miss the misery. I miss 24-hour bodegas. I don’t drive, so I miss cabs. This is my home. I started writing Colossus as a side project. I didn’t know the pieces were a book—I was just having fun playing with the form and enjoying having a side project. After 9-11 they became more vital to me, as I tried to figure out how to live in a place that had been so injured. As I tried to figure out my own injury.SELZER: That sounds like an ongoing process. You’ve written compellingly about what it was like to be in the city on that day. As you look back now from several year’s distance, what stands out to you the most?WHITEHEAD: That I don’t freak out every September, like I used to. It’s probably too soon to have any perspective on it. I’m glad I’m here.SELZER: Amen. . . . You mention that in writing Colossus you were having fun playing with its form. The narrative technique of that book is especially striking.WHITEHEAD: The narrative voice in Colossus comes from the “Country Fair” chapter in John Henry Days. In that chapter, I was trying to link the Talcott, West Virginia, fair with all fairs, in all towns—what are the universal experiences that define such an occasion, the mood and sound and smells, no matter where it takes place. I had a lot of fun with that voice, and started using it to make impressionistic portraits of key New York places and states of being, Times Square and rush hour, the Brooklyn Bridge and Downtown, capturing a metropolitan feeling that is true for all cities, not just New York. Hopefully, you can apply your own feelings about your home town to it. Faced with the lack of a main character or story I was following, the voice had to do the work, its rhythms. It telescopes out for a wide shot, zooms in for a close-up, details an abstract thought and then captures a small and concrete detail. And that back and forth makes a certain rhythm that pulls you along through each chapter. It is intended to be a chorus of citizens. »Linda Selzer, « New Eclecticism An Interview with Colson Whitehead », Callaloo, Volume 31, Number 2, Spring 2008, pp. 393-401Disponible dans le bouquet de revues payant Project Muse : http://muse.jhu.edu.scdbases.uhb.fr/journals/callaloo/toc/cal.31.2.html