I can assure you that no movie will ever achieve the speed of prose. Human beings just haven't realized that yet."--J?rg Laederach. With tongue resolutely in cheek, saxophonist, critic, poet, and one-time enfant terrible of Swiss literature J?rg 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.