Harlem Shuffle Themes

Harlem Shuffle follows furniture salesman Ray Carney as he endeavors to make a living in 1960s Harlem. With a family to support, Carney begins the novel worrying about how he’s going to make rent and dreaming of owning an apartment on peaceful Riverside Drive. Carney’s cousin, Freddie, is known to make money through illegal means, just like Carney’s father, Big Mike. Though Carney initially denies any crookedness in his own nature, he ultimately…

Throughout Harlem Shuffle, Ray Carney struggles to reconcile two discordant but equally important sides of his identity: the straight-shooting businessman and the crooked criminal. Try as he might to deny the parts of himself that remind him of his father, Big Mike—a ruthless and violent man who led an openly immoral life—Carney routinely ends up bending society’s rules to benefit himself and those he loves. At the novel’s start in 1959, Carney denies…

Set against the backdrop of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, Harlem Shuffle investigates the specific effects of racial inequality on men like Raymond Carney, who straddle the line between businessman and crook. Part of the reason Carney turns to criminal enterprises in the first place is that systemic racism makes it difficult for him to make a decent living sticking to the straight and narrow path. Some racist furniture suppliers will not sell to…

Although Ray Carney consistently maintains a sense of personal integrity in both his legal and illegal business, many of his associates unapologetically betray the people they work with. Miami Joe double-crosses Carney and the other men involved in the Theresa heist, and Wilfred Duke takes Carney’s bribe for membership in the Dumas Club without delivering on his end of the bargain. Even Moskowitz, who invests time and energy into honing Carney’s ability to recognize the…