The whole of life

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"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.