Harlem Shuffle

哈林,洗牌.

This is a story about a young furniture dealer named Ray Carney (an Black American) who is caught up in a jewel heist that forces him to wrestle with the impossible terms confronting him, trying to get ahead in life. To escape his circumstances, he has to decide whether to simply follow the straight and narrow or to rely on the world of criminals to get what he wants, and what he needs. After all, their ends and means feel no less amoral than what he sees being practiced by businessmen and the moneyed elite. “Crooked world, straight world, they follow the same rules,” Ray thinks. “Everybody had a hand out for the envelope.”

这是一个关于一位名叫雷卡尼（美国黑人）的年轻家具商的故事，他卷入了一起珠宝抢劫案，这迫使他与他面临的不可能的条件作斗争，试图在生活中出人头地。为了逃避他的处境，他必须决定是简单地循规蹈矩，还是依靠罪犯的世界来得到他想要和需要的东西。毕竟，他们的目的和手段与他所看到的商人和有钱精英的做法一样不道德。 “扭曲的世界，正直的世界，他们遵循相同的规则，”雷认为。 “每个人都伸手去拿信封。”

The story is also about property and the relationship that African Americans have with it. It is set against a backdrop of the 1964 Harlem race riots, looting, and corrupt Black capitalists.  Indeed, what is theft for a people who were themselves once property (“stolen bodies working in stolen land,” as the author Whitehead had said in his earlier novel “The Underground Railroad “, and for whom their very freedom was the ultimate heist?

这个故事还讲述了财产以及非裔美国人与财产的关系。它以 1964 年哈莱姆种族骚乱、抢劫和腐败的黑人资本家为背景。事实上，对于一个曾经是财产的人来说，盗窃是什么（“被盗的尸体在被盗的土地上工作，”正如作者怀特海德在他早期的小说“地下铁路”中所说的那样），对他们来说，他们的自由就是最终的抢劫？

Brief Summary of the Story: In 1959, Ray Carney lives in Harlem with his wife Elizabeth, with whom he is expecting a second child. Although descending from a criminal family, Ray makes his living working as an upstanding furniture salesman on 125th Street.  However, he is involved occasionally in the selling of stolen goods through his furniture store (this is called fencing). Whereas Ray has steered his way toward an honest living, his cousin Freddie is descending into Harlem’s criminal underworld. Freddie orchestrates a robbery of Hotel Theresa with his associates and Ray is involved with the project only to fence what is stolen. The heist however goes wrong and a cast of criminal figures enter Ray’s life, forcing him into a personal struggle between aspects of his fractured self. The novel is divided in three parts and covers three separate periods of Ray’s life, set in 1959 : “The Truck”: “Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked … “

1961: “Dorvay”: “An envelope is an envelope. Disrespect the order and the whole system breaks down.” and

1964, “Cool It Baby”: ” … maybe don’t play the same number all the time. Play something else, see what happens. Maybe you been playing the wrong thing this whole time.”

故事简介：1959 年，雷·卡尼 (Ray Carney) 和妻子伊丽莎白住在哈莱姆区，他正在等待第二个孩子的到来。雷虽然出身于犯罪家庭，但他在第 125 街做一名正直的家具推销员谋生。然而，他偶尔会通过他的家具店参与出售赃物（这称为击剑）。雷 (Ray) 开始过上诚实的生活，而他的表弟弗雷迪 (Freddie) 却陷入了哈莱姆 (Harlem) 的犯罪黑社会。弗雷迪和他的同伙策划了一场特蕾莎酒店的抢劫案，雷参与了这个项目，只是为了保护被盗的东西。然而，抢劫失败了，一群犯罪分子进入了雷的生活，迫使他在破碎的自我的各个方面之间进行个人斗争。小说分为三部分，涵盖了雷生活的三个不同时期，时间设定在 1959 年：“卡车”：“卡尼在弯曲时只是轻微弯曲……”  
1961 年：“Dorvay”：“信封就是信封。不遵守命令，整个系统就会崩溃。”和
1964，“Cool It Baby”：“......也许不要一直玩同一个游戏。玩别的，看看会发生什么。也许你一直都在玩错游戏。”

There are three aspects of the story that I have learned something somewhat new, The first is a definition of the word ‘fence’.

“There’s not a lot of literature about fences,” Whitehead had said. “But there is actually a book … a sociological study about these guys in the Midwest in the ’60s, and one of the first things that struck me was their description of [the fences] being a wall between the straight world and the crooked world.”

故事的三个方面让我学到了一些新东西，首先是“栅栏”这个词的定义。 “关于栅栏的文献不多，”怀特黑德说。 “但实际上有一本书……关于 60 年代中西部这些人的社会学研究，让我印象深刻的第一件事是他们描述 [the fences] 是直截了当的世界和弯曲的世界之间的一堵墙”.

Ray Carney here is that wall. He owns a legitimate furniture store on 125th Street in Harlem, but he has a sideline trafficking in stolen goods.  He is the ‘fence’ or he is ‘fencing’ on a daily basis.

雷卡尼就是那堵墙。他在哈林区第 125 街拥有一家合法的家具店，但他的副业是贩卖赃物。他是“篱笆”，或者他每天都在“击剑”。

The second lesson for me is the day called “Juneteenth Day”. Juneteenth is the official name of federal holiday in the United Stated. It is also called tHE Emancipation Day or Freedom Day, commemorating the end of slavery in the United Stated. It is observed every year on June 19th.

给我上的第二课是“六月节”这一天。六月节是美国联邦假日的正式名称。它也被称为 HE 解放日或自由日，以纪念美国奴隶制的终结。每年的 6 月 19 日是这一天。

The third lesson I have learned is that the way the crooks or gangsters around the world operate is similar. They leave you with an envelope and they expect that the envelope to be filled in cash that equates to the level of “services” that we want. Building inspectors (or Clerk-of-Works) in construction simply leave their coats at the entrance to the meeting room and after they have completed their rounds of inspection, they return to the meeting room, wear their coats, feel the thickness of the envelopes inside their coat pockets and approve the works accordingly. Crooks collect their protection money the same way. Politicians are smarter. They have ways to collect their donations, either to their political parties or to their personal accounts.

我学到的第三个教训是，世界各地的骗子或歹徒的行事方式都是相似的。他们给你留下一个信封，他们希望信封里装满现金，这等同于我们想要的“服务”水平。施工中的建筑检查员（或工程文员）只需将外套留在会议室入口处，完成检查后，他们返回会议室，穿上外套，感受信封的厚度在他们的外套口袋里，并相应地批准作品。骗子以同样的方式收取保护费。政治家更聪明。他们有办法收集他们的捐款，无论是对他们的政党还是对他们的个人账户。

Finally, the words of one of the reviewers of the book ring in my ears, loudly and clearly.

“I was hoping to read, in the book, a relatively fast-paced narrative with the criminal element to the story with these heists and a lot of tension high stakes with a really compelling background of actual socio-economic and political reality of New York at the time. But I feel like neither side of the story was fully realized so if we were more interested in the socio-political element of the story this is likely to leave us slightly underwhelmed.

“Crucially if we were more excited about the heist element of the story or the thriller side of things where we were expecting a really tense story with high stakes and a page turning plot, we would be disappointed as well.

“The book overall felt quite aimless, taking us in one direction and then pulling back, then a different direction then pulling back, again and again. Then, in the process, Whitehead takes several tangents exploring other characters or other events that have relatively little to do with the overall story.

“I never really felt invested enough to care about any of these characters to a significant extent. Carney as a character was the only one that was very well realized, the rest were really quite shallow in their development.

“Whitehead almost keeps us at arm’s length from his characters where I never really felt fully invested in the story, in the characters, or anything that was happening.

“So I really have to say that I struggled to finish the book.”

最后，这本书的一位评论家的话在我耳边响起，响亮而清晰。
“我希望在这本书中读到一个相对快节奏的叙事，其中包含这些抢劫案的犯罪元素和许多紧张的高风险，以及纽约实际社会经济和政治现实的真正令人信服的背景当时。但我觉得故事的两面都没有完全实现，所以如果我们对故事的社会政治元素更感兴趣，这可能会让我们有点不知所措。  
“至关重要的是，如果我们对故事的抢劫元素或事物的惊悚面更感兴趣，我们期待一个真正紧张的故事，高风险和翻页情节，我们也会感到失望。
“这本书整体上感觉很漫无目的，把我们带到一个方向然后后退，然后是另一个方向然后后退，一次又一次。然后，在这个过程中，怀特海采取了几个切线探索其他人物或其他事件，这些人物或事件相对较少与整个故事有关。
“我从来没有真正觉得有足够的投入来在很大程度上关心这些角色中的任何一个。卡尼作为一个角色是唯一一个被很好理解的角色，其余的在他们的发展中真的很肤浅。
“怀特海几乎让我们与他的角色保持一定的距离，在这些角色中，我从未真正完全投入到故事、角色或发生的任何事情中。
“所以我真的不得不说，我很难完成读这本书。”