The Intuitionist

by Colin Whitehead

I picked up Colin Whitehead's The Intuitionist sometime last year (i.e., in 2000), but didn't get a chance to read it right away; and then, by chance, two family members heard about it a couple weeks ago, and picked up their own copy. Thus reminded of its existence, I retrieved my own copy and read through it on a couple of short plane flights.

I must say that I enjoyed it, if only because it's relatively different from most of the fiction that I tend to read; but reactions from various other people tends to be mixed, so you might want to click on the Amazon links, in order to see comments and reviews from several dozen other readers. The surface-level story-line of the book is a challenge faced by a young, black female elevator-inspector (Lila Mae Watson) to determine why an office-building elevator that she previously inspected has suddenly crashed in a spectacular fashion. Ms. Watson is a so-called "Intuitionist," who determines whether or not an elevator is in good working order primarily by "gut instinct," as opposed to the "Empiricists," who follow an elaborate set of detailed rules and procedures in order to make their determinations. As such, it's an interesting metaphor for the kind of left-brain/right-brain distinctions that we see in many business situations — where it's not always clear whether the people who follow their hunches and instincts are more likely, or less likely, to succeed than those who follow a rigid set of rules. In The Intuitionist, as in real life, the deep philosophical differences between the two approaches are obscured and confused by bureaucracy, politics, greed, and corruption — which makes it all the more difficult for the young heroine to really make up her mind about "the way things ought to be."

In addition to the surface-level story-line and the primary metaphor, there are a number of other sub-plots and sub-metaphors; I'm not sure I understood or appreciated all of them, but they contributed to an interesting mood and aura. The story takes place in an unnamed metropolis that's clearly intended to be New York City — much in the way that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged was set in a city that could be none other than New York, or the way that the Batman/Superman comic stories are set in Gotham City. The time-frame in which the story takes place is also left unstated, but it sounds like either the 1930s or the 1950s, depending on your perspective.

A few reviewers on the Amazon site said that they couldn't develop any sense of enthusiasm, concern, or even genuine interest in the heroine; some even gave up reading altogether, half way through the novel. I can see how this might happen, but I stuck with it, and was pleased to see how it ended. Lila Mae Watson does figure out the way things ought to be, and devotes herself — and, if necessary, the remainder of her life — to the path that she believes to be correct. I like that ... and I suspect that anyone who believes deeply in the pursuit of his or her profession would feel good about the outcome, too. Unless, that is, you're a died-in-the-wood Empiricist, who has never been guided by instinct or gut feelings in anything you've done. But who could possibly admit to such a thing?