I enjoyed the narration of William DeMeritt for The Underground Airlines. He did different voices for different characters with ease.
It’s February 1st! Welcome to our discussion of The Underground Railroad and Underground Airlines. There is much to reflect on in these two books. Despite the heavy material, I found them both to be very quick reads and actually finished a couple of weeks ago. I’ll post questions for both books, then off we go – as usual, free free to add your own or ignore completely.
I’m going to jump right in with question #6 about Underground Airlines: Should a white man have even attempted to write this book?
I’m not inclined to muzzle anyone who feels inspired to write, cares deeply about the subject matter, and writes with thoughtfulness and compassion. That said, I understand why it would be necessary to proceed with caution, and why the question is controversial. Did Winters pull it off? I don’t have an answer to that because I am white. (The closest I can come to this kind of question is my tendency to be less tolerant and more critical of books by male authors writing as first person female narrators.)
How do the rest of you feel about Ben Winters’ approach? Is it wrong (or offensive) for a white author to write in the persona of a black man? Winters was praised by many reviewers for what he accomplished with Underground Airlines, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/books/ben-winters-underground-airlines.html?_r=0 . Other critics were not as impressed. This is from a Slate review, written in response to the New York Times:
I think anybody “should” write anything they want.
I read Underground Railroad first and adored it, partly because the black people in it were depicted as such beautiful souls.
I didn’t really like Underground Airlines all that much. I thought the alternate history in it was gimmicky (I’ll admit it was the first time I had read any alternative history) and the book wasn’t really all that much about black people. To a large degree, I felt that it was an “undercover agent” novel with a window dressing of African American concerns. The borderline cutesy names for skin tones were almost offensive.to me.
While I toally understand Slate’s take - it’s certainly unfair that Butler has not gotten the recognition she deserves - ultimately it’s the book that counts. I don’t think we should call Winters fearless or brave. He had a story to tell. Does it work or not? I think it does, though I wasn’t sure it was going to at first. Because it’s sci fi/alternate history I think he’s made his job easier. I can’t fault him for getting the voice of his black protagonist wrong - since we are dealing with a different future. None of us have experienced slavery, so it’s hard to say that he’s got that wrong either. I wanted to like his book less than I did, but in the end, because it had more plot, because the protagonist was a more interesting character I ended up finding it a more satisfying read. At it’s heart I felt like The Underground Railroad seemed like a better more literate version of The Perils of Pauline. (And I think that Whitehead may well have intended that - he’s got a huge interest in genre forms.)
I thought both books made the point that escaping slavery is only half the battle. Victor is still a slave until he finally escapes at the end. Cora is still a slave in South Carolina, no matter how comfortable things seem to be.
BTW very interesting article about the mythology of the real Underground Railroad (which also touches upon both books) here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/22/the-perilous-lure-of-the-underground-railroad
I actually loved the numbering/naming system for skin tones. Just like paint chips. It was part of the dehumanization process. When Victor finally stops noting skin color first, is when he finally can make a move to do the right thing.
I also read Underground Railroad first and, while I thought it was very good, to me it paled in comparison to cerrtain chapters of The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, by Garganus. That book has several chapters describing the inhumane ways slaves were treated and at the time I read it – maybe 15 or 20 years ago – I found the scenes horrifying. The Underground Railroad’s scenes of violence to the slaves were less compelling to me – maybe because I already read the Garganus book, but maybe because I thought the author sped through those scenes. One scene did stick with me, though: He describes Terrence Randall “lying with” the new slave brides before their husbands could, so Terrance could “show them what to do.” (The quotes are not literal from the book; they’re my remembrance.) I thought that was so humiliating and demoralizing to the slaves.
I thought Underground Airlines was an extremely clever use of alternative history and that it hung together very well. At times I began to wonder if the chip inserted in Victor’s neck was just a lie they told him to keep him in line – it wouldn’t have been surprising, although it would have been horribly ironic. I enjoyed this book much more than Underground Railroad.
I enjoyed both books. Both had “alternate facts” to some extent; one book more than the other. I can understand the opinion of the critic @Mary13 quotes above – although IMO he/she is complaining more about the outcomes/results of “Underground Airlines” than the book itself.
Touching on Q 15 re: “The Underground Railroad” – In some ways it annoyed me that the story involved an actual railroad with locomotives, box cars, etc. Perhaps because much of the story is grounded in actual history, but this part clearly is not. In “Underground Airlines,” so much of the story is “alternate history” that I could just approach the book from that perspective. I guess my question here is, “Why?”
That bothered me too. It seemed that just about everything else in the book was based on actual historical fact (I’ll admit I have not looked up the historical accuracy of things like dorms for black workers in South Carolina or the decimation/banishment of blacks in favor of European indentured workers to pick cotton in North Carolina).
The literal railroads were so far-fetched. How could they have been built without people noticing? What about the smoke from the locomotives? Where did it go?
On the other hand…I read this book so soon after we chose it that I felt the need to go back and reread it more recently… I liked it even better on second reading. The second time around, the railroad did not bother me so much. It seemed like a metaphor that fit into the fabric of the book.
The South and North Carolina histories were total fiction, though based on ideas floating around at the time. Certainly the idea that the best solution to slavery was leaving the US was one that appealed to blacks as well as whites. (Liberia was settled by former slaves.) Obviously the medical experiments were based on the Tuskagee syphilis experiments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment I felt like the physical-ness of the railroad, was a reminder that we are dealing with metaphorical truths here. The real underground RR (to the extent it existed at all - see the New Yorker article) was a metaphor. Here we have a story that is a metaphor for the entirety of the black experience. At least that’s what I think he was up to. But yes, having describe the RR in such detail, it bothered me that I couldn’t possibly actually believe in it. I’ve lived above subway tracks! You hear them. You feel them!
@VeryHappy a fake chip! That would have been truly diabolical! I wondered how he was so sure that he could know that the chip was gone or that they didn’t just replace it with a new one.
I think that’s exactly the intended goal. I liked @mathmom’s description—dehumanization ala paint chips.
I’m glad you mentioned this! I thought about Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All many times while reading The Underground Railroad. Allan Gurganus’ novel stuck with me for a very long time after I read it. (And actually, I was going to refer to his novel in my earlier post for another reason – he is one of the few male authors who [in my opinion] gets his first person female narrator right.)
I wasn’t so much bothered by the realism (or lack thereof) as I was by the pointlessness. I understand the need for suspension of disbelief with magical realism, but I want to know why it had to be included in the first place. It’s such a small portion of the novel. Did it enrich my reading experience to have a “real” railroad rather than the true, historical one? No. But that’s just me. I’m sure there was a point—as @NJTheatreMOM put it, perhaps as “a metaphor that fit into the fabric of the book”—but it didn’t resonate with me.
I got a kick out of some of the one-star reviews on Amazon by people who thought Colson Whitehead was just confused, e.g., “Someone should have told the author the Underground Railroad was not Underground, and not a Railroad."
The medical sterilization story bothered me more than the real railroad, as did Cora’s life in the city with its 12 story building with an elevator, because those were anachronisms. Is that a type of magical realism, too, or simply historical inaccuracy?
Good point about the elevator. I hadn’t thought about that!!
- How do you feel about Cora’s mother’s decision to run away? How does your opinion of Cora’s mother change once you’ve learned about her fate?
From the beginning, when we see young Cora take control of her tiny plot of land, I was on Team Cora. It was difficult to reconcile her mother’s actions. Along with Cora, I had a hard time piecing it all together and had more questions than answers.
I did not see the plot twist at the end coming, and the unfolding of Cora’s mother’s (was it Mabel?) fate. It made me tear up and shifted my complicated feelings about her.
- Should a white man have even attempted to write this book?
Huh. I didn’t know the author was white. Not sure what I think about that. Need to think it over.
I’m not sure if The Underground Airlines would have grabbed me if I was reading it, versus listening to it. The narration was very good, and that can certainly make or break a story on audio.
I think the story fell apart for me at the end, when he ventures into the “plantation” in search of the envelope.
When the author was describing the existence of the Hard Four, and how they were thriving, economically, it made me think of our country’s current reliance on cheap foreign labor so we have cheap goods.
I don’t think the elevator was necessarily an anachronism. We don’t know when the Underground Railroad takes place - but it really could be any time, likely after our Civil War. In fact, perhaps the Industrial Revolution may have been gotten to the US even sooner without the War.
In any event hand pull elevators have existed since BCE. (I still remember the hand pulley elevator at the Victoria Hotel in London which was still operating in the 1970s.) In our world the electric elevator really starts getting used in 1852 when Otis invents the safety brake. The first passenger elevator is installed in NYC before the Civil War breaks out. (1857)
Skyscrapers come a little later - the first one was built in Chicago in 1884. It was ten stories tall and had a steel frame.
I’m sure more than you wanted to know, says the architect who had to learn this stuff. 
That part of the book seemed like something intended for a movie script. Martha being so clever was sort of “fun” but so improbable.
Victor was sent south on his mission with paperwork carefully prepared and supplied by Bridge, but with a bullet festering in his shoulder that Martha had to dig out in a motel room?? Just silly, in my opinion.
There were definitely pulp fiction aspects to the book.
With these similarly titled books, we may be in confusing waters…I was referring to anachronisms in The Underground Railroad, set before the Civil War (and before elevators or multi-story buildings or medical sterilization). But I found my answer to the anachronism question from Whitehead himself:
^ It’s actually sort of a confusing quote, because Whitehead says 1850 was his “mental cutoff for technology”…then immediately follows that sentence with another saying that it wasn’t his cutoff at all. In any case, he plays fast and loose with history. I’m trying to be okay with that. 
- Should a white man have even attempted to write this book?
Yes, I think he should have attempted it but I question his success. Knowing the author was a white man addressing racial issues in a thriller novel peppered with racial epithets, two dimensional characters, and an escaped slave/slave catcher protagonist made me uncomfortable. I did like the book, but I couldn’t help but compare this author’s efforts with some of the controversies surrounding white support of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s complicated.