I didn’t know how a proper player would actually take it.

And then writing it while it was being published was just an intense experience, the feedback from people who had never heard of my novels but were reading Grantland. The whole training process was intense, stunt-y, fun. And I’ve been playing for 20 years so my home game was not up to snuff. I was writing about it, if I’m out the first day I would have been horrified. I’m still kind of mourning how intense it was, the training. What was it like immersing yourself in that world?Ĭolson Whitehead: It’s one of the singular experiences of my life.

The first line, 'I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside' is awesome. GQ: The World Series Of Poker essay series for Grantland is one of my favorite things I’ve read this year. I wanted to be true to my own inner New York that I carry around. My city was destroyed, and the earliest betrayals I encountered were in movies where the city was being destroyed. Seeing the city destroyed in Escape To New York, controlled by gangs and warriors, or even just the betrayal of urban blight in Death Wish. The book is informed by movies moreso than novels. GQ: Did 'Zone One,' the area that was the first to be cleared of zombies, have to be New York?Ĭolson Whitehead: I’m from here, I’ve never set a book directly in New York before, so it was about time. Each book requires a different kind of treatment and structural gambit. So it was my exchange to have something a little more plot-driven and have a little more action. The structure of Sag Harbor is very loose, it’s a portrait of a time and a character, and despite the fact that there aren’t these huge artificial moments of melodrama hopefully the voice is compelling enough. GQ: Compared to Sag Harbor, which is a book without much of a narrative structure, the survival story of _Zone One _is pretty much the opposite of the tale of a lost summer in the Hamptons.Ĭolson Whitehead: I try to keep it interesting for me and the people that follow my books. My first book The Intuitionist takes place in an alternative world where elevator inspectors are important so you have to establish rules and part of that is, How do people talk? How do they behave? GQ: How did you make the rules that govern the skels?Ĭolson Whitehead: Part of any book is establishing the rules at the end of the world. I’ve certainly been stuck on certain periods and events in my life, so a skel is a statue dedicated to nostalgia. The skels are ghosts, other people haunted by their pasts. Colson Whitehead: In terms of direct influences, I wanted to be true to the Romero version of the slow zombie.

Zone One by Colson Whitehead