The Whole

by John Reed

From John Reed, author of the controversial Orwell parody, Snowball's Chance, comes a subversive satire of modern culture, the complete lack thereof, and a lost generation that no one even tried to look for.
In the middle of America's heartland, a young boy digs a small hole in the ground...which grows into a big hole in the ground...which then proceeds to drag the boy, his parents, his dog, and most of their house into a deep void.
Then, as abruptly as the hole started growing, it stops. So begins the first in a series of events that takes the beautiful-if-not-brainy Thing on a quest to uncover the truth behind the mysterious Hole.
Inspired by visions, signs, and an unlimited supply of pink cocktails served by an ever-lurking "Black Rabbit," Thing and her dogged production crew travel around America, encountering Satanists, an Extraterrestrial/Christian cult group, and a surprisingly helpful phone psychic. Their search for answers could very well decide the fate of the world as they know it.
But the more Thing learns about the Hole, her shocking connection to it, and the mind-boggling destiny that awaits her, the more she realizes that human civilization isn't all it's cracked up to be -- and that it's just about time to start over.

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 4, 2005

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 1 out of 5]

By far the oddest thing I was able to find tucked into endless rows of Patricia Cornwall and Michael Connolly at a book barn in Maine last week. But despite an encouraging premise (a young journalist investigates the massive sinkhole threatening to consume all of America) this is less concerned with the actual hole and more with the nipples of our tragically vapid heroine, Thing, recruited off the set of MTV Spring Break and shuttled between Weird Americana hotspots by chance and dubious clairvoyance. As a satire, its targets are extremely soft even/especially for 2005 (celebrity culture and reality TV), and lack the teeth of plenty of other examples (I'm been over Palahniuk for years but this made me wistful for the pitch-black American wasteland of Survivor (which was contemporaneous), or more recently even something like Alexandra Kleeman's You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine). Perhaps MTV, who actually published this in addition to figuring prominently in the plot (and I didn't even know they had an imprint, let alone so late in their cultural relevance as 2005!) wouldn't have stood for it? In any event, line by line much of this collapses into a frenetic "...and then this happened!" string of meaningless relationship misadventures and malapropisms. To the author's credit, the messianic finale repurposes some of the novel's stupidest puns as insight and plot resolution, which shows a certain degree of cleverness and planning within what before seemed almost entirely haphazard. To the author's discredit, it's a bit of a slog to get to that point, especially as even the author (via an otherwise entirely pointless self-insert) despises the protagonist. It seems like most of the other one-star reviews quit before the resolution/reveal, but I'm here to say after the relatively non-committal preceding 200 pages, it's a surprisingly all-in quasi-spiritual eruption of absurdity. And, yet, alas, still stupid. Fortunately I tossed the entire thing off on a bus ride.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Holos · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 3 out of 5]

(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...

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Gena · Rating 1 out of 5]

I quit this book and I feel smarter already! I didn't like it at all. I guess I was more interested in the hole and not interested at all in the whole Thing... I hope in the end the hole spit everyone back out of it and swallowed Thing whole!

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has an interesting premise, but I figured out fairly quickly that it wasn't for me. YMMV.

[Chris Campanioni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really quite hilarious at times. Poignant at others. The whole, though, wasn't as satisfying as its parts. Or maybe I'm still scratching my head.

[Meghan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strange book. Not too fond of the writing style.

[Chris Notionless · Rating 1 out of 5]

At first I hoped that the author had grand plans for the book to unfold into a type of witty insanity but that never happened. Talk about 3 steps forwards and a dance backwards and sideways; I'm not certain anything is getting accomplished except confusion. I never found the writing style intriguing; it was annoying. Who names their main character Thing? This is very disappointing for the MTV Pocket series that typically introduces unique writers with breakout talent. Skip this one.

[Kayla Long · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book started off at a promising pace and level of interest, but I found myself impatient and disinterested for the majority of the book. The plot never reached an ah-ha moment and never seemed to peak. I think it may have been better off as a short story.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engaging and fun read.

[Terri Luer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't love it, but I wanted to know what happened to Thing next. Very strange little book.