John Henry Days
by Colson Whitehead
- 1 Members Following
Follow a topic to see new activity, such as homework help questions and answers, in your personal feed on the homepage.
Navigate
At a glance:
- Author: Colson Whitehead
- First Published: 2001
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: July, 1996
- Setting: Talcott, West Virginia
- Characters: J. Sutter, Pamela Street, Alphonse Miggs, John Henry, Lucien Joyce, Dave Brown, One Eye, James Moses
- Genres: Long fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: African Americans, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, Journalism or journalists, Racism, Twentieth century, 1990's, Collecting or collectors, West Virginia
- Locales: West Virginia
The main character of John Henry Days, Colson Whitehead’s second novel, is a hack journalist, J. Sutter, involved in his own man-against-machine contest. The machine in this case is not a mechanical steel driver, but something quite abstract: It is, generally, the media machine of American culture. More specifically, it is “The List,” maintained by a public relations man, of freelance journalists who travel to all-expenses-paid events for the free food and drinks, and who can be counted on to hand in a few hundred words of puff to their respective media outlets. J....
(The entire page is 1909 words.)
Want to read the whole thing?
Subscribe now to read the rest of this article. Plus, get access to:
- 30,000+ literature study guides
- Critical essays on more than 30,000 works of literature from Salem on Literature (exclusive to eNotes)
- An unparalleled literary criticism section. 40,000 full-length or excerpted essays.
- Content from leading academic publishers, all easily citable with our "Cite this page" button.
- 100% satisfaction guarantee READ MORE
