--- title: Colson Whitehead on Summer Reading | TIME description: Colson Whitehead -- the author of the critically acclaimed new coming-of-age novel 'Sag Harbor' -- talks to Katherine Lanpher about what he's reading this summer canonical: https://time.com/video/6l4aWhpr/ og:title: Colson Whitehead on Summer Reading og:description: Colson Whitehead -- the author of the critically acclaimed new coming-of-age novel 'Sag Harbor' -- talks to Katherine Lanpher about what he's reading this summer og:url: https://time.com/video/6l4aWhpr/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/6l4aWhpr/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Colson Whitehead on Summer Reading twitter:description: Colson Whitehead -- the author of the critically acclaimed new coming-of-age novel 'Sag Harbor' -- talks to Katherine Lanpher about what he's reading this summer twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/6l4aWhpr/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Colson Whitehead on Summer Reading > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Colson Whitehead on Summer Reading [Watch (HLS stream): Colson Whitehead on Summer Reading](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/6l4aWhpr.m3u8) (5:33)  _Published 2009-07-02. Colson Whitehead -- the author of the critically acclaimed new coming-of-age novel 'Sag Harbor' -- talks to Katherine Lanpher about what he's reading this summer_ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:11 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Colson Whitehead on Reading and Writing](/video/2mxG7ivn/) ### Colson Whitehead on Reading and Writing [Colson Whitehead’s Favorite Pop Culture Zombies](/video/NDDTV9dO/) ### Colson Whitehead’s Favorite Pop Culture Zombies [Summer Reading](/video/5arH1ZSd/) ### Summer Reading --- ## Transcript >> It took Colson Whitehead three novels to get around to the first- person, coming- of- age tale that most writers start with. Instead, Whitehead kicked off his career with richly imagined tales-- such as his debut novel, The Intuitinist, a noir- ish mystery set in still- segregated New York, or John Henry Days, his spin on the legendary steel- driving man, that was a finalist for a Pulitzer. But when Whitehead does get around to his coming- of- age tale and all the requisite embarrassments and agonies, he sets it in the summer. His fourth novel, Sag Harbor, is based on his own summers spent at the resort areas carved out by the black community in Long Island's Sag Harbor. His pick for summer reading is Ann Carson's Autobiography of Red. Tell us a little bit about who Ann Carson is. I think of her as a writer's writer. >> Yeah. I mean, I'm a fiction writer, and I don't really read a lot of poetry. But certain names, you know, contemporary poets keep coming up and up, and so Ann Carson was one. >> In fact, Autobiography of Red is her contemporary retelling of the myth of Herakles and Geryon. >> I was not familiar with the myth, but apparently, one of Hercules' labors, his ten labors, is to steal a cattle of Geryon and kill him, which he does. And so Geryon in the myth, [ unk ] and Ann Carson's Autobiography of Red, is a red monsters with wings. And he walks around. He goes to school, but he's a monster like we're all sort of monsters sometimes, you know. And so he's a fantastic creature in a way that we're all fantastic creatures in a way. >> One of the things that struck me is that there's even the line from her retelling of this tale in which she says, " Everyday life as a red- winged monster had accommodated him to ridicule ." And I thought, " Not a bad encapsulation of adolescence ." >> No. Yeah, I mean, the book is following him in his teenage years, his early twenties. And I think, when I was asked to pick a summer book-- because I've been talking about Sag Harbor so much and my take on adolescence, I thought of Ann Carson's sort of off- kilter take on adolescence, which is the story of this red monster. >> What distinguishes summer reading to winter reading theme? >> When I was coming here, I was thinking of-- you know, why did I pick Autobiography of Red? It's not your sort of traditional summer choice. And I was thinking of the trip I took in '94 when I was like trying to find myself. I went to Brazil for six weeks. I never really travelled before, never by myself, and the book I bought was Ulysses by James Joyce. And so I had like this canvass bag, and I was like going through all these beach towns. And I had-- I didn't know that it was like their winter, and so all the beach towns were empty. You know, they're 60 degrees. It was just me like in my cut- off jeans. And I was in the beach, sort of feeling miserable, trying to speak Portuguese; and I was really a good traveler, and just being Ulysses. When I think back of some of my more enjoyable reading experiences in summer, I think of like strange big boats like Gravity's Rainbow and Ulysses, books that really sort of changed my idea of like what it is to be a writer. >> I wanna get back to the Ann Carson retelling this myth-- >> Sure. >> because it's also in its way a story of survival through art. And talk about how that often for your own adolescence and for the adolescent you were writing about. >> Yeah. Autobiography of the [ unk ] is our little monster's collection of photographs, and so photography becomes the way of his achieving mastery over his world. >> In the Ann Carson-- >> In the Ann Carson book. >> Yes. Yes. >> For me, reading, writing has always been a sort of refuge in a way of, you know, taking [ unk ] to the world and figuring things out. With my earlier novels, I start off of intellectual proposition-- for example, what if we-- how do you update the John Henry myth for the information age? And that's also a way-- it's also a sort of parallel with Ulysses and Autobiography of Red because I'm taking this sort of folklore figure and trying to figure out how it works in the modern world. With Sag Harbor, I think I was trying to figure out how people really were and not so much this sort of intellectual paradigm or system. >> You mentioned that the information age-- you have a broad Twitter following, you're pretty adept at handling the online technology these days. But 140 characters for a tweet versus a book? How are books gonna survive? Come on, man. What are you doing? >> Well, yeah, they're still completely different. I mean, you know, I started Twittering-- it's very weird because I don't like people, and it's a very sort of a-- >> You heard it here first. >> Yeah, so actually, I'm there with other people, and there's no sort of buffer-- I'm all about buffers. But definitely, since I'm in between projects, it's a nice way to sort of send out thing I would normally say to my cat, and send them out to the Twitter world. And then other people can meow back, and it's been sort of fun. >> So in other words, it's not [ unk ] of another Colson Whitehead novel? >> No. No. It's one of the other, and when the other comes, I'll be a little quieter. >> All right. Have a good summer. >> That's-- Thanks. 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