Whole of Life

'I can assure you that no movie will ever achieve the speed of prose. Human beings just haven't realized that yet.' -Jurg Laederach. With tongue resolutely in cheek, saxophonist, critic, poet, and one-time enfant terrible of Swiss literature Jurg Laederach here pursues the ambition of forcing all of human existence into a single novel. The Whole of Life tells the story of a man, Robert 'Bob' Hecht, in three sections: 'Job' about work and looking for work; 'Wife' about sex during a bout of impotence; and 'Totems and Taboos,' in which Bob himself ruminates on the limitlessness of human limitation. In Life, space is compressed to the suffocating dimensions of a single mind, while single moments are expanded cubistically into entire landscapes. Bodies are vivisected and reassembled, and language is invaded, exploded, and reassembled. The Whole of Life sees Laederach composing a novel by taking it apart as he goes.