For my purposes, just to establish general parameters, let’s say a rock novel is any work of fiction with popular music themes from the Rock era as a big part of the story—and I mean Rock era in the most expansive sense, Elvis to The Chronic, Blues to Krautrock, R&B to Punk, Jazz to World Music, Hiphop to Taylor Swift. It can be about musicians on stages or in shabby practice spaces, fans at festivals, record geeks at record stores, music producers in the studio, dancers at danceclubs, collector obsessives and their private collections and playlists, music peoples anywhere popular music is made and/or shared and/or consumed. No doubt there are a ridiculous number of these kind of novels I haven’t found or read yet. But Whitehead’s second novel, JHD, from almost the last century, is a clever spin on the rock novel and if you too like these kinds of stories I’m suggesting you might have some fun with it.
For starters, as relevant learning experience, Whitehead wrote a lot of rock criticism for the Village Voice and elsewhere before he started writing novels in the late ‘90s. (And, I should note, I know he is now a big Pulitzer winning novelist but actually all I know so far of his novels are his first, The Intuitionist, which was not what I’d call a rock novel, and this one, JHD, his second.)
The protagonist of JHD is a freelance magazine writer, J. Sutter, African American, who along with all his hustling freelancer pals (mostly not Black) write about music, artist profiles, records, concerts or what have you, or have in the past anyhow, and now, flush with hopes of a new freelancing gravy train at the dawn of the internet, branched out to writing gigs about anything the publishing industry is willing to pay for and promote, a civic event in the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia, for instance; a folklore festival launching a new postage stamp and celebrating the origins and myth and music and Merch of John Henry the “steel-driving man.”
The main event and best parts of JHD are J. and his scuffling freelancing journalist comrades, Dave Brown, Frenchie, One-Eye, etc, all down from NYC for the event, strategically scarfing freebie dinners, pontificating about the art of the artist profile, plotting schemes against the tyranny of their imperious publicist overlord, Lucien, and the publishing industry upon which they all precariously depend, and endlessly wisecracking about the perks and perils of the freelance writing game they're trying to hang onto. Whether press gang junkets this size, five-ten people, all from NYC, caravanning to Podunk West Virginia for pop culture stuff like the JHD festival really happens I don’t know but Whitehead’s fictionalizing the various banter that might ensue in such a scenario is goofy clever and at times hilarious.
As the story begins, arriving in small Talcott, West Virginia, J., a “junketeer,” has already lived entirely off freelance gigs, or on the publisher’s tab, cheap hotels, promotional buffets and party food, no out-of-pocket expenses, for a while and is falling into a sort of death march challenge, almost against his will, to set the record for living entirely off freelance press junkets, and, in his mind anyway defeat the freelance publishing writing machine. He is that strong, together, and focused he imagines, or wants to be, even though he experiences a near death event on his first night in town, choking on some prime rib, and the legendary “junketeer” record holder infamous to all the freelancers, making it not quite a full year, is most notorious as another hotshot writer who flied too close to the sun and ended up a heap of ash. An utter burnout and loser. So it is undoubtably not a healthy lifestyle choice but it pays you to write and how long can you endure this kind of crash course research and writing on deadlines rigor is the question? Maybe it's like a journalism boot camp that can go on forever; or in more heroic terms, in their dreams, like a doctor's residency training. Regardless, for Sutter it is an inescapable challenge.
And coincidentally a challenge not entirely unlike how long John Henry, African American laborer, could swing his hammer against a steam-drill-- i.e., against the machine. John Henry knew he was doomed to lose in the end, the machine always wins, but battles on because he can, as the ultimate test of his awesome strength as a worker and the pride he takes in that strength.
The stakes for J. and his freelancing pals are more prosaic, a smaller tragedy than the plight of labor in American history, of course, but also funnier. In one hilarious set piece the freelancers are sitting around discussing the definition and/or evolution of the feature puff piece. Capsulizing every variation on the puff piece feature written over the years into a bullseye formula. Still puzzling in the end over whether there are really three or four variations on the original form or are all the differences mere gimmicky twists on the original? In another, old timer Dave Brown goes on a long vivid druggy hippie soliloquy about the Rolling Stones at Altamont, the whole thing culminating in the death of a Black concert goer lying on the ground, murdered by Hell’s Angels hired as security for the event by the Stones, the tragic symbolism of the death, another Black martyr to the machine, a John Henry to the Rock era, near unbearable in Dave's poignant telling; or until one of the other freelancer’s breaks the ice and quips, “Yeah, I don’t know about the Stones, Dave. I’m more a Hootie and the Blowfish kind of guy, myself.”
Outside J. and Dave, most the press gang go by nicknames; One-Eye, in particular, is obsessed with seeing The List, publicist Lucien’s list of writers who are to be admitted free to promotional events, free food and drinks on the tab of the publishers, crucial to the livelihood of the freelancers, and ropes J. into a mad caper to enter Lucien’s hotel room while he’s out and find The List. To what end it isn’t clear other than One-Eye somehow thinks it will compromise or undermine Lucien’s tyranny over the freelancer’s lives. In the freelance writing-game The List, One-Eye seems to think, is the key to the machine.
There are other good parts to the novel. Whitehead imagines the hard laboring historical life of John Henry the steel driving man. And he imagines the existence of an itinerant blues performer who breaks through or at least documents on record an early version of The Ballard of John Henry. His historical accounts are convincing, the crude recording circumstances of the 1930s, gritty with blood and sweat and alcohol; a nice contrast with the kitschy folkloric vibe of the JHD festival in West Virginia but they are still side roads.
There is little dispute that the historical John Henry was an African American man, a big and strong railroad worker, but his actual life, whether in West Virginia or Alabama or elsewhere is still debated by historians. Most think the song originated out of late 19th century work songs, “hammer songs,” sang by incarcerated former slaves around the refrain “with my hammer,” and it is assumed the ballad of John Henry “the steel driving man” was generated out of that experience. The first recordings of the Ballad of John Henry or variations on the story appear in the 1920s and 1930s. In some versions he’s a railroad worker, in some a coal miner; in some Black, some white. There are many Blues and Country versions; even classical composer Aaron Copland comes up with a version of the song. On the Williamson Brothers and Curry version, from Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, “Gonna Die with My Hammer in My Hand” (1927), West Virginian hillbillies tell the story of the great “steel-driving man’s” demise. Man against machine. John Henry knows he can’t win but fights to the death anyway. He’s the proud industrial worker, Black or white, as tragic hero.
There are other curious sub-stories in JHD as well. The old Harlem NY-er, also Black, a former railroad worker, who amasses one of the largest collections of folklore artifacts on John Henry, opening his home as a museum curiosity to rare and random gawkers, and his alienated daughter, Pamela, who after his death mulls over giving her dad’s collection to Talcott, WV for the JHD festival and a permanent historical exhibit. Even Whitehead’s cynical riffing on J.’s sexual affair with a publicist, Monica, who frequents, as does he, the arts world cocktail party scene back in NYC resonates with a weary sympathy for all the inescapably jaded routines of life. Both display good storytelling chops.
A rare misstep might be the gun-toting malcontent that menaces the festival. This thread feels way underdeveloped, as if Whitehead were saying, skip the details, wherever Black history or culture is being celebrated you can count on somewhere lurking nearby some violent nutjob menacing the achievement. He’s probably right but it would have been helpful to make the white supremacy, undoubtably what we’re talking about here, more legible and also might have added to the missing drama in the JHD festival parts of his story. Also, Whitehead’s allusions to ghosts, like in The Intuitionist, don’t do much for me. This is perhaps concerning because I gather the ghost stuff figures prominently in his later Pulitzer novels but I’m going to hope he eventually figures out how to make it work better than he does here.
Whatever its few shortcomings, however, I maintain John Henry Days is over all a very good rock novel about freelance journalism, John Henry folklore and music, American myth and race and the struggle of man against machines, and also in parts very funny.
"Gonna Die with My Hammer in My Hand," Williamson Brothers & Curry (1927)
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