The Whole

by John Reed (Goodreads author)

book data

17 ratings, 4.41 average rating, 4 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		70%
4		11%
3		11%
2		0%
1		5%

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published

January 4th 2005 by MTV

binding

Paperback, 224 pages

url

http://www.johnreed.tv

characters

Thing

setting

The United States

isbn

0743485017 (isbn13: 9780743485012)

description

In this hip supernatural tale, a blonde, surgicallcy-enhanced MTV VJ named Thing finds herself unemployed when ratings on her show fall. Thing loses h...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 35)

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06/13/07

Laura rated it:

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: fans of satire, absurdism, Alice in Wonderland

You can check out reviews of this book online -- there's a good one at PopMatters -- so I'm limiting my comments to the book's use of language. Reed makes use of double entendre and malapropism to great effect here, and he slowly ramps up the level of absurdity to a point where meaninglessness might actually turn into meaning. It kind of melts your brain, this book, but that isn't a bad thing.

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1 comment

06/03/07

John rated it:

bookshelves: currently-reading, myprojects

Read in January, 2005

recommends it for: the fun, the furious, the crazed

I learned a number of things about writing stuff that's funny, like:

Put the funny part at the end of the sentence.
Keep the pace fast.

I also found that it was extremely difficult to give readings from the book, because you can't explain something that's out of context—kills the humor.

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

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12/07/07

Jason Pettus rated it:

Read in December, 2007

(My full review of this book is too large for GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

For those who don't know, I actually reprint CCLaP's reviews over at the three literary social networks I belong to as well, GoodReads.com and LibraryThing.com and Shelfari.com (although admittedly at GoodReads I can publish only the first couple of paragraphs, because of their insanely low word-count limits). A...more (My full review of this book is too large for GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

For those who don't know, I actually reprint CCLaP's reviews over at the three literary social networks I belong to as well, GoodReads.com and LibraryThing.com and Shelfari.com (although admittedly at GoodReads I can publish only the first couple of paragraphs, because of their insanely low word-count limits). And I have lots of friends of course who think this is crazy of me, that I should be doing everything possible instead to drive traffic towards the CCLaP site in particular, so as to drive up the total page hits here and impress the people who tend to be impressed by such things. But there are hidden benefits to doing what I do, not the least of which is the opportunity to become "friends" with a whole series of cutting-edge authors who are there themselves, and to get lots of review copies of books sent to you that you would normally otherwise not get to read (it's exactly how I came across my favorite book of the year so far, in fact, Michael FitzGerald's Radiant Days); and then another benefit that's not so obvious is that it inspires you to actually stick in there with a questionable book longer than you normally would, because of not wanting to let down that new acquaintance who you know went to a lot of trouble to send you a copy of their book. It's inspired me in a couple of cases already this year to eventually find a great story about halfway through a book, a story that you need to be patient with to eventually find but that ultimately is worth it.

I can think of no better example, in fact, than the latest novel by cutting-edge author John Reed, a highly experimental mind-bender called The Whole which believe it or not was put out by MTV Books, a division of the cable network I never even realized existed and that at first sounds like a bad intellectual joke. Because the fact is that this is a book that is difficult to get into; difficult to pick up the rhythm and pace and style that Reed ostentatiously displays here, difficult to understand where Reed is coming from thematically or emotionally, difficult even to understand the point of this book existing. All these things are thankfully answered as you get farther and farther along, or at least possibilities for explanations are offered up for your consideration; but without Reed being one of my formal "friends" over at one of these social networks I belong to, I admit that I would've given up on the book as a pretentious, artsy mess long before such answers came, and that the chances are most likely that I would've never written a review for this book at all.

Because Reed, see, is one of those people who uses...(less)

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10/04/07

Holos rated it:

recommends it for: anyone who's seen the spiders

Total mind f. At first I hated the ending, and almost even threw the book, but now I like that it was so ... so whatever it was.

Like this review? yes

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