Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant at times
Review: Colson Whitehead is a keen observer with a penetrating eye. Combine this with his formidable skill as a prose craftsman and the result is, in John Henry Days, a work that is at times extraordinary. It seems nothing is lost on Whitehead. He manages to steer clear of snide or pessimistic social criticisms, yet there is a sting to his words. There is not the bitterness of someone noting phantom slights or thinking everything said is personal to him. John Henry Days is about a black journalist traveling to West Virginia for a stamp commemoration of the legendary John Henry. The novel itself is also a commemoration of sorts in that it examines the legend from several points of view: the singers and songwriters of the ballad to which the legend owes its fame; the towns and people who were allegedly connected to John Henry; the historians and collectors who sought to preserve, and find the truth behind, the legend. The novel centers on a journalist named J. Sutter who is a self-described "junketeer" - someone who writes puff pieces and gets sundry freebies at the events they cover. J. is nervous about being in West Virginia and frets, jocularly to himself, about meeting a violent end there at the hands of racists. Through J. we learn about the world of media publicity and this is the best part of the novel. Whitehead presents this in a hilarious way, but it would not be so good if there did not seem to be a lot of truth to it. I got the sense that J. was mostly autobiographical and there is a brilliant exposition here on publicity. Whitehead is much more serious when it comes to the John Henry legend. For the first half of the novel it seems like he is building up to something, going back and forth between J. at the commemoration event and the historic characters surrounding the legend. New characters are frequently introduced but we always return to J. and the commemoration narrative. The problem is these new voices from the past never stop coming and the story does not really progress. The characters are never fully developed. Three-quarters through let-down sets in at the realization that things are not converging into a plot or overarching structure; there is nothing that will tie it all together - it all turns out to be merely a collage. At this point the inertia is lost; the reading becomes a chore, the solemnity begins to seem didactic. With each new section I moaned at the onset of yet another new narrative. Also, the novel's humor seems to be front-loaded, it dries up the further you go. If the theme to the novel were "man vs. machine" or a jeremiad about modernity than I missed it. If I had caught it I would have put it down at that point. Whitehead is a much better writer than that. There is a positive energy to his prose and it only falls into didacticism when it laments woes of the past. In that regard I fail to see how this is a plaint against modernity.
Rating: 
Summary: Good writing, but all over the place...
Review: 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 ends this feeling is diminished a bit.
Rating: 
Summary: In a word: wordy
Review: I admire the idea behind the novel, but, in my opinion, it doesn't work. For one thing, the characters are all one-dimensional. I really can't say that I cared for any of them and I think that that's because I didn't really get a sense of who they were.
Like Ulysses, its premise is a noble and grand one, but, ironically, because of its grandness, it fails. It's a novel of ideas and no feelings. I found it very difficult to even care about the event. It seemed so inconsequential and unlike other writers, like Don Delillo, who are able to take the mundane and infuse it with fascination, this event, the celebration of a fictional(?) folk hero, on a weekend that culminates in a commemorative stamp and shootout, didn't capture my interest at all.
The other problem with the novel is the multitude of characters, all of whom you don't get to know at all. They are supposed to be representative of the effect that John Henry has on society, but really, John Henry? Out of all the folk heroes, why him? If there are reasons for interest in John Henry, perhaps society's interest in him due to a subtle racism, or for the reader to know the reason behind why the novel is centered around a seemingly innocuous event, they are never made clear, except to show the obvious and oft-repeated take on pop culture and the corrosion of society such as it is. It's been done before, and the novels are called Catch-22, The Cather in the Rye, and White Noise.
Rating: 
Summary: Really didn't like this book at all
Review: I loved Whitehead's debut, The Intuitionist, but for some reason it took me a few years to get to this second novel. This sprawling work shows that while his sheer talent and style are once again on display, his ability to sustain a narrative is not. Set in 1996, the book is loosely organized around the titular weekend festival±a grand celebration in a small West Virginia town to commemorate the release of a John Henry postage stamp. This is a center which only barely manages to hold on to the multiple storylines, vignettes, flashbacks, ghost stories and Great American themes that Whitehead spins from it. 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Must-Have Book for the Most Discerning Novel Reader
Review: I never thought somebody could have made a book comparing/contrasting a junketeer journalist on the verge of spiritual extinction and a mythical, superhuman former-slave railroad builder "must-reading". I didn't even know what a junketeer was. Never thought much about the building of the railroads (feel a little guilty). And never heard anything about John Henry either. (Am I from a cave?) These subjects just never crossed my mind. But I love good novels, and I'm a hard person to please (a poet no less). After happening on Mr. Whitehead's interview on public radio, I thought it sounded interesting. And then he was on the cover of Poets and Writers. All that hype, and the prestigous awards. The New Literary Darling. I bought the book and it sat on my shelf whilst I read Franzen's "The Corrections". After reading that, my palette was sophisticated. I have not been able to find another novel quite as worth my time, as brilliant and sweeping and amazing. That is until John Henry Days. The prose is not just ostentatious (though he does command with a magic wand), it is succulent, it is mouthwatering. I literally slaver over paragraphs and sentences as I go. I cannot believe someone has such a command, such a god-given gift. But besides the delectability of it all (forgive me, but it is John-Henry strength), it is a story brilliantly weaved, expertly built, and simply GOOD. It speaks on many levels if you listen. Mark my words: Coleson Whitehead will win a Pullitzer (or National Book, or Nobel) Prize. This guy was born to write.
Rating:
Summary: I'm Jealous
Review: I read The Intuitionist and while I enjoyed it I was somewhat disappointed in the writing and in the amateurlike nature of the novel's pacing. I figured John Henry Days would be less than The Intutitonist as most sophmore efforts are. Imagine my pleasant surprise. I picked up the book with a lot of trepidation, started it with the plan of just flipping through it, but found out once I started reading that I couldn't put it down. It's a more complex and better written novel than his first and you'll certainly enjoy it as I did. It's funny, dazzling and just a joy to behold in terms of what it says about our country today and how it says it.
Rating:
Summary: Worthy of a Commemorative Stamp
Review: If you know the ballad of "John Henry", in any of its many versions, and have pondered whether the title character in the song is best viewed as a heroic or as a tragic figure, you will find this novel compelling. The story moves seemlessly between past and present as modern day slaves to capitalism wage their own contests against obsolescence. Juxtaposing these modern tales with the rich details of the larger than life steel driving man, John Henry, is both brilliant and chilling. The result is an interesting tale of self discovery for not only the main character, J. Sutter, but also for several subsidiary characters. This is not a quick read because each chapter is filled with prose so rich in detail and symbolism that you will be inclined to linger for fear of missing a clever observation, or the irony which abounds. You will no doubt find yourself wanting to read sentences aloud to anyone in earshot in order to share the humor and insights. When I finished the book, my first reaction was that the ending is unsatisfying. But I found myself continuing to think about and talk about the story and the characters long after I put the novel down. In retrospect, the final epiphanies of the characters, though subtle, are quite satisfying.
Rating:
Summary: Long, but OK
Review: 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:
Summary: The beauty is in the details...unfortunately.
Review: JOHN HENRY DAYS gives us John Henry, the icon, the mascot, the hero, the folktale, all wrapped up in this novel that bounces between Talcott, West Virginia for the U.S. Postal service release of the John Henry stamp and a number of times and place that show John Henry's importance in the fabric of America's history. Our protagonist in Talcott is J, a writer working on a non-stop jag of event after event, getting work from the omniscient List and living on free food and lodging, collecting receipts and rarely contemplating an empty existence. J's progression from this rather shallow being to a man who at least begins to question life's meaning is the main focus of the story. Too bad, it doesn't work. By the time J becomes interesting you just don't care enough about him. Whitehead creates such an emotional distance between the character and the reader that you really want to get back to the other stories contained within this novel.
The other stories are trips through America's past and John Henry's place in it, a bittersweet look at a young girl discovering the joy of discovering "The Ballad of John Henry" and how that doesn't fit in with view her mother has of a future member of the Sepia Ladies club of Harlem, a blues singer in Chicago cutting record sides and John Henry being his ticket to a few extra dollars, the destruction of Paul Robeson for not being what the American establishment wanted him to be; these are the stories that make this book worth reading. Best of all are Whitehead's takes on John Henry himself, the folktale comes to life as real human being.
Whitehead writes wonderful sentences. They are crafted beautifully and each seems to be placed with as much care as any master craftsman creating a work of art. The problem is that he spends too much time working with a creation that doesn't seem to warrant his attention. Read it for the beauty of its construction and the trips into the past, but the central plot left me cold.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious, made me laugh aloud (brilliant too by the way).
Review: They say laughter can extend your lifetime, if so, I'm going to live a long, long time as I laughed aloud over and over again when reading this book. Colson Whitehead has the sharpest sense of humour, and a knack for making perfect, sharp observations about people - their physial tics, their dress, their pretensions, their fears, their ambitions, their uncertainties. The journalists, Tiny and One Eye, were excrutiatingly funny, I reread some of the scenes in which they appeared, just to be sure I didn't miss a single barb. Whitehead knows how to convey something else rather piercingly too - loneliness. Pamela Street, a woman trying to decide what to do with the strange inheritance her father burdened her with (John Henry memorabilia, gathered obssessively, touchingly), reminded me of Lila Mae, the strong minded but deeply solitary woman in Whitehead's first book (called The Intuitionist, another stunning novel). And these are just a few of the secondary characters, I haven't even begun to describe the main guys, J. Sutter and the mythical (?) John Henry. And I'm not going to, this is a book that you just have to read for yourself, enjoy for yourself. And if you're anything like me, laugh while you're doing it.
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