MixedLondon Review of BooksWhether John Henry himself existed is uncertain, though Whitehead weaves every scrap of information about him he can find into the narrative, in both fictional and documentary form. Which accounts in part for the novel’s bulk, as much a feature of Postmodern fiction as its unrelenting self-consciousness ... These passages of research are interspersed not merely with the narrative but with comparably detailed documentary material ... All this research holds back the narrative, robbing it of suspense and forward momentum ... Also undeveloped, or developed only minimally, is J.’s attraction to Pamela Street, daughter of an obsessive collector of John Henry memorabilia ... Though the ending is left open, we never feel that J. has the power to reform his life or escape it, or that Pamela offers any alternative. Neither character has much of an internal life, the sort that might offer a counterweight to the soullessness and superficiality of modernity ... The absence of dramatized choices in the novel is a flaw, however, as well as a theme. Whitehead wants it both ways: he wants to write a humanist as well as a Postmodern epic ... The pleasures and insights of the novel are in its sharp and funny touches, especially in the satire of the junketeers. Moments in the fictionalized chapters on John Henry have a quiet spareness, and real ingenuity underpins several of the multiple allusions to the legend. Yet there is also overwriting ... we see Whitehead straining to meet the demands of the ambitious second novel.
