![]() ![]() Helping little old ladies across the street. If they figured out how to distill the essence of library into a convenient delivery system - a piece of gum or a gelcap, for example - he would consume it eagerly, relieved to be finished with more taxing methods of virtue gratification. On the rare occasions that he entered libraries, he always felt assured of his virtue. I enjoyed this book which was both funny and sad, often at the same time. In one of the great literary tricks, Whitehead gives us a man who creates names without giving that man a name himself. One could write a whole book about the topic, and Colson Whitehead has. The power of names, and more so the power to give name are both very important. The significance of naming is also an important symbol. His inner pain is also covered by the unhealing bandage of consumer culture. The lead character literally loses a toe because the bandages prevent him from seeing the wound festering and decaying. The protagonist gives the product his best name to the product and the marketers come up with the slogan “Apex Hides the Hurt.” It doesn’t take a PhD in literary criticism to see the symbolism of bandages that hide the wound. The title of the book comes from Apex adhesive bandages, a competitor to Band-Aid which rises to prominence after the producers start making them available in every skin tone of humankind. Over several days spent in Winthrop observing the consumerist culture suck the soul out of the town, the nomenclature consultant struggles with playing off these interested parties and his own skill at naming. ![]() Albie Winthrop represents the old money and is perfectly content with keeping his family’s name on the town. Regina Goode, mayor and descendant of the towns original black settlers wants to revert to the name given to the town by it the freed slaves who founded the town, Freedom. Lucky Aberdeen, a software exec who speaks in corporate clinches and technobabble, wants to give the town the forward-looking name of New Prospera. As the novel begins the protagonist, sideline from his lucrative corporate job by a mysterious toe injury, is called upon by the town council of Winthrop to help rename the town. 28.Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead is a darkly comic novel about a nomenclature consultant, that is a man who is called upon to come up with brand names for product. ![]() But in a culture overwhelmed by marketing, the name is everything and our hero's efforts may result in not just a new name for the town but a new and subtler truth about it as well. 9780708898758 Apex Hides the Hurt 28.7000 NZD InStock /shop/books/fiction /shop/books /shop/books/fiction/contemporary This New York Times Notable Book from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is a brisk, comic tour de force about identity, history, and the adhesive bandage industry.Īnd, it turns out, the consultant needs them. What they need, they realize, is a nomenclature consultant.Īnd, it turns out, the consultant needs them. The resident software millionaire wants to call it New Prospera the mayor wants to return to the original choice of the founding black settlers and the town's aristocracy sees no reason to change the name at all. The town of Winthrop has decided it needs a new name. This New York Times Notable Book from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD is a brisk, comic tour de force about identity, history, and the adhesive bandage industry. ![]()
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