I want my authors to challenge me to the edge, like the characters in this novel get pushed to the edge.

To dismiss the humor as too smart means there are some really stupid readers reading this book. In terms of tone, what everyone is dismissing as Whitehead being ever-clever here is really very simple: there is a racial tet-a-tet in the South that must be rendered in irony so that one doesn't just give up altogether. And oh, look, the book is structured in the EXACT same way! What is contemporary folklore and mythology? How has it transformed since 2001 (or 1996 in the timeline of the novel)? It would be interesting to see where J. Subjectivity is a bitch, and it can be tedious to sift through the multiple narrative threads of real life. And that transcends history, it transcends the narrative threads in the novel, it transcends human experience.īut there is also the structure of the novel, which is explained in the prologue: all story is composed of multiple stories of individuals. This is most assuredly a novel about character, characters in the literary vein of Ahab, obsessed beyond the brink: with stamps, with memory, with ghosts, with stories, with notoriety. The entirety of the book, conceptually and structurally, is freaking genius.

But don't be mistaken: the last few chapters are emotional gold. I'm basing the star rating (really a 3 1/2) on this read of it, which for me has lost a little of the magic since a) I know what's going to happen and b) I've poured over every line a 1000 times. But John Henry Days? This is about my 11th time reading it, this time in prep for teaching it again for the first time in almost 10 years. I have tried to read The Intuitionist 4 times APEX is a riff on all the good in John Henry Days Sag Harbor worked better as a short story.

John henry days by colson whitehead