eShop USA > Books > John Henry Days
John Henry Days
List Price: $14.95Our Price: $10.17 You Save: $4.78 (32%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780385498203
ISBN: 0385498209
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: May 14, 2002
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: May 14, 2002
Studio: Anchor
Related Items: Featured Listmania!
Editorial Review:
Colson Whitehead's second novel posits a folk antihero for the information age: junketeer and puff-piece-writing man J. Sutter. For his latest assignment, this freelance hack is sent to Talcott, West Virginia, to cover its John Henry Days festival and the unveiling of the United States Postal Service's John Henry stamp. Sutter hasn't devoted much thought to American mythology lately, or to the epic struggle of man vs. machine, or to anything else besides padding his expense account and cadging free drinks. Still, our hero is engaged in a private contest of his own--a kind of junket jag, in which he plans to attend a public relations event every single day. Alas, this journalistic obstacle course threatens to eradicate Sutter's soul, just as the folkloric steam shovel eradicated John Henry's body. Whitehead cuts back and forth between eras and exploits. And what begins as a media-saturated satire soon turns into a jazzy, expansive meditation on man, machine, nature, race, history, myth, and pop culture--in short, on America, as expressed through the story of (who else?) a former slave.
Following on the heels of Whitehead's widely praised debut, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days won't disappoint anyone who delighted in the first 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 caliber, of course, much can be forgiven. But one is eager to see Whitehead quit riffing and make an emotional investment in his characters. The result will be fiction that engages the heart as well as the head. --Mary Park
Colson Whitehead’s eagerly awaited and triumphantly acclaimed new novel is on one level a multifaceted retelling of the story of John Henry, the black steel-driver who died outracing a machine designed to replace him. On another level it’s the story of a disaffected, middle-aged black journalist on a mission to set a record for junketeering who attends the annual John Henry Days festival. It is also a high-velocity thrill ride through the tunnel where American legend gives way to American pop culture, replete with p. r. flacks, stamp collectors, blues men , and turn-of-the-century song pluggers. John Henry Days is an acrobatic, intellectually dazzling, and laugh-out-loud funny book that will be read and talked about for years to come.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Interesting
When I finished John Henry Days I felt that I wanted to know more about the title character. The most interesting chapters in this book were the historical ones. What was John Henry really like, what about Lil Bob, was John Henry's wife really Polly? The excerpt on Paul Robeson was also interesting. As for J., I too like Pamela was wondering what the J stands for?
Rating: - I liked the Intuitionist better..
This is good too, although it took me a long time to actually finish it. It sat on the desk beside my bed for a few months, and, despite my best intentions, I read a few different books during that time while slightly avoiding this one. This one is a bit long, and at times I wondered if he's the sort of writer that people like to own more than they like to read.
But still, Whitehead is a force to be reckoned with. He writes like a white guy. There, I said it. More like Updike than Baldwin. ... Read More
Rating: - Good writing, but all over the place...
Grandiose undertaking presented in a convoluted epic of a story. Whitehead writes parallel stories that engage and is presented in a straight-forward, albiet alternating fashion, until about half-way through the novel, where it seems he loses focus or becomes bored and starts interjecting a series of new sub-plots in alternating seccession in the guise of a contributing back-story, but in reality this takes away from the main story. Once it's over, a feeling of importance permeates, but for all the loose ... Read More
Rating: - Long, but OK
JHD is too long, and it sometimes takes too much of a byroad to return to the main narrative. There is much beauty in those byways, but by the time you get back to J. and Pamela, you feel you've travelled too far to be happy about your return, and the two characters don't grip you like they could or should. What made The Intuitionist such a great book - the detailled accounts - is this novel's main flaw.
Rating:  - Really didn't like this book at all
I had to read this for a class. I just could not get into this story. I normally love to read but this book just could not cut it. I would not continue reading this book by choice. I will be glad to be done with it. The instructor could have picked a better book. No one else in the class cares for this book either. A waste of my money. J. is an annoying character. Couldn't care less about him....
Related Categories:
| |
 |
