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Amazon.co.uk Review
Following on the heels of The Intuitionist, Whitehead's widely praised debut, John Henry Days won't disappoint anyone who delighted in that book's wonderfully quirky writing or its complex allegories of race. The historical set pieces here dazzle and the author casts a withering eye on our media-driven culture: "Since the days of Gutenberg, an ambient hype wafted the world, throbbing and palpitating. From time to time, some of that material cooled, forming bodies of dense publicity." Still, these brilliant parts don't necessarily add up to a satisfying whole. Whitehead writes the kind of smart, allusive, highly wrought prose that is impressive sentence by sentence. Over the course of 400 pages though, it can be somewhat daunting; it's a bit like eating a meal in which each of the seven courses comes topped with hollandaise sauce. Worse, some of the characters' motivations remain abstract, as if the author hovered so far above his creations that their foibles struck him as simple absurdities. In a novel of this calibre, of course, much can be forgiven. But one is eager to see Whitehead make an emotional investment in his characters. The result will be fiction that engages the heart as well as the head. --Mary Park, Amazon.com --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'Blithely gifted…an ambitious, finely chiselled work.' John Updike
' Hugely talented…Colson Whitehead has produced an immensely rich, many stranded novel. The writing is inspired on every page. Just Wonderful! One of my books of the year.' Time Out
'Such is the buoyancy of his talent, and the protean assuredness of his prose, that the result is controlled, poignant, wittily observed and often gleefully comic.' Guardian
'Colson Whitehead's dazzling second novel…It may be nothing new to suggest that history is fiction; but the pleasure of reading this ingenious patchwork lies in how it reminds us of the vitality of those fictions.' Independent on Sunday
'”John Henry Days” is funny and wise and sumptuously written.' New York Times
'Witty, acerbic and immensely compelling…fresh and evocative…Whitehead is a first-rate writer who has produced a novel that is compelling'. Financial Times
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Customer Reviews
A good portion of the story follows hack-for-hire J. Sutter, a freelance "journalist" who "covers" whatever product/personality/story pays for his airfare, hotel, and bar bills. A once-promising writer, he's since sold his soul for whatever freebies, access, and perks he can wrangle in exchange for a decent write-up. He's currently embarked on a junketeering streak, having attended press events every day for weeks on end. Clearly, the reader is supposed to draw some kind of parallel between his struggle to take on the corporate publicity machine and the struggle of steel-drivin' John Henry taking on the corporate steam-drill machine. Each is beat down by a grinding life, but John Henry literally dies, while J. Sutter is only spiritually dead. It's no accident that the story takes place at the start of the Internet boom, just as John Henry's legend takes place at the start of the industrial era. It's kind of an interesting gambit by Whitehead, but never really coalesces into a cohesive idea.
Meanwhile, there are a ton of other ingredients tossed in the pot. There's a section on competing academics in the 1920s attempting to determine the truth of the John Henry legend. An extremely lengthy digressive story told about the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont. The story of a mild-mannered collector of railroad stamps. A nice part about the early days of recording popular songs and the scams used to increase sales. Another piece tells the story of young girl from Striver's Row buying sheet music to "The Ballad of John Henry". The tale of a Chicago bluesman making a John Henry record. Paul Robeson's ill-fated attempt to do a play based on John Henry's life. And probably a few others I forgot. One very much gets the impression that Whitehead did a ton of research on the John Henry myth in America and fell in love with all these story ideas. Each is very well-written and imagined on its own, but the presence of so many tangential parts only acts to distract from the central story, and they kind of strobe in and out, sometimes overwhelming the main plotline by being far more interesting.
There's plenty to like here—tons and tons of great writing, brilliant sentences, and vivid scenes. However, the book is so crammed with fragmentary ideas and themes of race, class, capitalism, memory, and so on, that none is allowed to emerge as central. So it's one of those rare books that is well wroth reading, and yet is kind of disappointing on the whole.
The book's 'big picture' involves the ongoing, primordial struggle between humanity and technology. The big, historical, picture is presented through the prism of John Henry's 19th century battle against the soulldless steam drill. The story of John Henry is set out in juxtaposition to the contemporary struggle of J. Sutter, a freelance writer. J. Sutter's inner struggle to survive in the souless world of frelance,junketeering oriented writing in the 21st century makes for an ironic comparision to Henry's far more physical struggle.. The book is layered and textured through time. The juxtaposition, in the hands of Whitehead works exceedingly well. His writing and prose style is superb. There were some pargraphs that I read two or three times in order to savor better their flavor. Well done Colson.
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