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A review by ruthiella
John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead
4.0
It is pretty clear to me from this book that Whitehead is a versatile and ambitious writer. I really liked the Delillo-like riffs on simulacra and modern malaise, the Doctorow-like ability to time travel to a historical era and the Kunzru-like (only Whitehead did it here first) dive in to African American cultural appropriation.
The book uses the fictional launch of a John Henry commemorative stamp (to be part of a set that will include other American folkloric heroes Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill and Casey at the Bat) as its inspiration and the main character is J. Sutter, a “junketeer” which is sort of a professional grifter-journalist who goes from movie opening to product launch, allegedly to write it up for some news outlet but really for the open bar and free lunch and the expense account, which he inflates by fishing for abandoned receipts to claim for reimbursement.
The book moves from satire to absurdity to passages so moving it was hard not to cry. There is also a black cloud of the threat of violence hovering over the entire novel, for example when a black man feels perfectly fine standing in line to buy beer with crack-heads and drug dealers at 2:00 AM in Brooklyn in one section but is later worried about his wellbeing in broad daylight in small town West Virginia.
But for all its brilliance, there was a lot of writing in here that tends to annoy me and pull me out, such as, “The smoke lights out into the dark lands and swirls away by forces into diasporic scattering.” or “…that block where street lights stare blindly, handicapped by vandalism and city neglect, where shadows confab to trade samizdat decrying illumination.”. Finally, there is certain cohesion to the novel, but I found that congruity difficult to hang on to as I read.
The book uses the fictional launch of a John Henry commemorative stamp (to be part of a set that will include other American folkloric heroes Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill and Casey at the Bat) as its inspiration and the main character is J. Sutter, a “junketeer” which is sort of a professional grifter-journalist who goes from movie opening to product launch, allegedly to write it up for some news outlet but really for the open bar and free lunch and the expense account, which he inflates by fishing for abandoned receipts to claim for reimbursement.
The book moves from satire to absurdity to passages so moving it was hard not to cry. There is also a black cloud of the threat of violence hovering over the entire novel, for example when a black man feels perfectly fine standing in line to buy beer with crack-heads and drug dealers at 2:00 AM in Brooklyn in one section but is later worried about his wellbeing in broad daylight in small town West Virginia.
But for all its brilliance, there was a lot of writing in here that tends to annoy me and pull me out, such as, “The smoke lights out into the dark lands and swirls away by forces into diasporic scattering.” or “…that block where street lights stare blindly, handicapped by vandalism and city neglect, where shadows confab to trade samizdat decrying illumination.”. Finally, there is certain cohesion to the novel, but I found that congruity difficult to hang on to as I read.