Junketeering is RIDICULOUS...

As we go deeper into Colson Whitehead’s novel, John Henry Days, this concept of junketeering become more and more ridiculous and ill thought to me. First I would like to identify a formal, dictionary definition of this concept--

jun⋅ket 

·      noun

1.            a sweet, custardlike food of flavored milk curdled with rennet.

2.            a pleasure excursion, as a picnic or outing.

3.            a trip, as by an official or legislative committee, paid out of public funds and ostensibly to obtain information.

·      verb (used without object)

4.            to go on a junket.

·      verb (used with object)

5.            to entertain; feast; regale.

            After reading this definition of junket, it is completely clear to me as to why the characters in this novel are miserable. These junketeers do what they do because they believe it serves as an escape. They go to events that no one really cares about, they get free food, and they write articles about the events. Their job does not require or provide anyone with any motivation or any opportunity for self-improvement or pride for that matter. Miggs for example, lived an unhappy and unfulfilling life, and he used junketeering and stamp collecting as an escape, yet he is still miserable and depressed because his work provides him with nothing worth being satisfied. I can understand how free food and attending social events can be fun and harboring, but having it as a job and expecting it to be fulfilling is ridiculous. That’s like me saying that me going to the beach for vacation everyday of my life is going to never get old and it will always satisfy me. Paradise can only be paradise for so long once it becomes a commodity. J Sutter, the main character, wants to “[go] for the record”, meaning that he wants to go on a junket for more than 9 months without stopping and without break. It is clear and obvious that by looking at his fellow junketeers and their appalling and depressed nature that this is a horrible idea. These people have nothing in their lives that has value or no aspect of their personalities that anyone should want, and yet J thinks that this is a record worth breaking even when his fellow junketeers tell him that it is a horrible idea and when even they realize that their lives pretty much “suck” (excuse my lack of proper/formal vernacular) because of their jobs.