Powers, Richard

Average customer rating:

A relevant book for our time
I did my best
Wits . . .
Beautifully Written Garbage
"The Search for Self."

The Echo Maker: A Novel
Richard Powers
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0374146357
Release Date: 2006-10-17

Book Description

On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, 27-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near-fatal accident. His older sister Karin, his only near kin, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when he emerges from a protracted coma, Mark believes that this woman–who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister–is really an identical impostor. Shattered by her brother’s refusal to recognize her, Karin contacts the cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber, famous for his case histories describing the infinitely bizarre worlds of brain disorder. Weber recognizes Mark as a rare case of Capgras Syndrome, a doubling delusion, and eagerly investigates. What he discovers in Mark slowly undermines even his own sense of being. Meanwhile, Mark, armed only with a note left by an anonymous witness, attempts to learn what happened the night of his inexplicable accident. The truth of that evening will change the lives of all three beyond recognition.

Set against the Platte River’s massive spring migrations–one of the greatest spectacles in nature–The Echo Maker is a gripping mystery that explores the improvised human self and the even more precarious brain that splits us from and joins us to the rest of creation.

Customer Reviews:

A relevant book for our time.......2007-06-09

This book deals with important issues - what exactly is the mind? What is the self? Should we view the brain/mind as a teeming ecosystem of competing impulses and neuro-chemicals? Or, should we take a more holistic perspective?

Even as I try to form some sort of dichotomous framework here, I'm struggling, because Echo Maker is all about showing that the lines are blurry. Before more analysis, a brief synopsis.

Mark Schluter, average redneck, gets into a horrific car accident. He experiences brain damage, and as he rehabilitates he develops "Capgras" Syndrome - the condition of believing your closest friends and family members have been replaced by impostors or robots. His sister, Karin, is the main target. Mark rejects her and accuses her of working for the government in some vast conspiracy against him - he demands his sister back.

The case attracts famous neurologist Gerald Weber. Weber has written several books of case studies on mental patients - his overarching theme is that `we're all a little crazy - each person's brain struggles to produce a consistent story from the information it receives.' Weber's newest book is dismissed as overly simplistic and unscientific - it appears that the world is no longer satisfied with his literary approach to understanding the mind. They crave physiological and chemical explanations, and pills. Even worse, they accuse him of opportunism - visiting mental patients only in the interest of writing highly readable case studies.

The book follows the personal struggles of Karen Schluter and Gerald Weber - both individuals experiencing intense personal doubts. Karen is eternally frustrated that her brother rejects all her love and care. Weber increasingly questions everything he used to believe about the mind - he "stops believing in his research". Both individuals keep returning to Mark. Karen gives up her job to be with him, and Weber, haunted by a sense of abandoning the Schluters, returns several times to see him.

As for the themes...

The obvious one is "medicalizing the human condition." Every deficiency can be smoothed out with a drug. Should it be so? Or is that which is "wrong with us" really that which makes us human?

Powers pokes fun at the common phrase, "are you back to normal?" by asking, "what is normal?" The `normal' characters in the book are constantly experiencing episodes of intense self-confusion, and their crises of identity are highly analogous to pathological conditions that Weber describes in his books.

Capgras is the most pervasive of these disorder-symbols in the book. We are consciously changing, and it takes quite a bit of mental smoothing for the brain to accept the new version of reality (the present) as a continuation of a prior version of reality (the past), rather than something altogether new and strange. Mark literally rejects this leap of logic, but Karen and Weber both struggle with similar issues. Who was I one year ago... five years ago? Am I really the same person who said those things and did those things?

I am No one.

The cryptic beginning of the note that Mark finds at his bedside, and cannot understand. All three major characters felt like nothing at points in the novel. In each case, that moment of desperation and radical humility allows the person to reboot.

I did my best.......2007-05-17

The premise is so promising! But the book was unbelievably painful. Most of my book club-mates gave up after 100 pages, but I stuck it out until 100 pages UNTIL the end. What a sad, sad waste of my time.

Wits . . ........2007-05-13

There are at least a half dozen mysteries at the heart of this fascinating novel, and at the end of its 450 pages, most of them get more or less satisfactorily solved - what really happened when a young man's truck goes off the road and nearly kills him; what prevents him from fully recovering his wits afterwards; and who wrote the note left at his hospital bedside? The one unsolved mystery is the mystery of the human brain itself and the tenuous belief an individual clings to that the self exists and can be known.

Powers' book is a foray into the expanding field of neuroscience, whose discoveries reveal that brain functions do not always corroborate our sense of who and what we are. The central character struggles to make sense of a world that has suddenly gone haywire - at least from the perspective of everyone else - and he responds with increasing paranoia, as what he believes are secret conspirators replace the people and things that matter to him with replicas, the most significant of which is his sister, whom he takes for an imposter. Meanwhile, the novel introduces us to a range of other characters, whose identities undergo sea changes under the influence of a perfect storm of personality-altering stress. No one finally is exactly who they seem - especially to themselves. Along the way, we are brought to question our own easy assumptions about what seems like rock-solid, common sense reality.

For the seriousness of its subject (the fragility of the human brain, the death of species, ecological collapse), the book can be immensely entertaining in the sparkling surface wit of its characters, almost never at a loss for comic repartee and raillery, providing a kind of gallows humor that sometimes had me laughing through tears, while I kept turning pages, anticipating the solving of all the mysteries in this wonderful, thought-provoking, moving novel.

Beautifully Written Garbage.......2007-05-10

My ridiculous tub of a wife's Big Readers Book Club tackled this well reviewed novel several months ago (during the thick of winter, if I recall correctly). They (incorrigible blimps the all of them) fancy themselves cutting edge readers and since I'm such an avant guardsman myself, I try to keep up (no matter the pain involved). So...this.

What tripe, I confess it. This author (whose name is superhero ridiculous if you shorten the first to Rick with a "D") is a master of the English language and this book features some of the best and most poetic writing in any novel I've read. Very impressive and a pleasure to read. At least at first. So...why only two stars Hopperoo? I will tell you--be patient review reader, be patient. The problem is the story and the something else. For starters, the story is a putative mystery wrapped in such loving tender sister swaddling babycare that I felt like flinging this book at the first fat sandwich eating silly on the subway (they always glare at me when I read on the train--and I am always reading so they are always glaring). If I didn't know better (and heck, I don't) I'd think this book were written by a woman. And let me come clean: I don't like girly books or, aside from Mary Ward Brown or that recluse who wrote the Dead Mockingbird book, any books written by womyn.

So...this book is soft. All the male characters are cartoonish, buffoonish, unlikeable oafs painted with beautiful language yet cardboard cutouts of human beings. They are not likeable. They are not believable and it gets tiresome (almost as tiresome as my loathsome wife's incessant chatter--sorry for the digression, but she is hollering at the moment for me to stop typing and start sweeping the kitchen floor, which she claims is cluttered with Doritos' refuse from my last passthru). Really tiresome. As a result (not of the Doritos but of the lousy characterization and by the way, continual leftwing political interjections), this is a hard story to read. In spite of the fancy writing and because of the lousy unrealistic characters, I found this one of the most difficult books I've ever finished. In fact, it took me more than the three weeks the local library gave me to finish it. I got my revenge by scrawling a note on page 53 revealing the ending (ha, ha!). A public servant am I. And if you are wise, you'll read the first ten pages and discard this nonsense. It is overhyped touchy-feely sissy nonsense. I mean it. Your servant, HHD.

"The Search for Self.".......2007-05-09

Here is the best novel published in 2006. With The Echo Maker, Mr. Powers has written a novel that catapults him into the echelon of our best contemporary writers. And, truth to be told, he may well be remembered among those great, classic writers who are no longer with us, but whose works persist.

There will be no story synopsis here, for it is best that one delves into this story cold. What I will say is that Mr. Powers has written a novel that tackles nothing less than to discern the core of what it means when one says "I am he (or she)." Its map is the human mind; it also courses along those other hidden tributaries known as emotion and reflex, instinct and memory.

It's a curious amalgam for a novel: drama, mystery, scientific exploration, geographical representation, history, cultural investigation, and -- yes -- the migration of cranes.

One of the most beguiling elements of this novel is that Mr. Powers manages to seam effortlessly scientific thought with a passionate and character-driven story. I have never been particularly adept at either math or science, yet Mr. Powers writes so beautifully -- and with such sharp cunning -- about the machinations of the human mind that I found the most esoteric elements of the prose not all that terribly difficult to follow.

Above all, though, The Echo Maker is a gripping mystery; and, too, a love story. Love between people, as well as love for oneself (or, I should say, "one's self").

This is a challenging review to write, for its vagueness does apply. The novel rather reminded me -- in what some might discern as rather arcanely -- of Richard Russo's Empire Falls: a beautiful small-town story that, under the guise of a drama, reveals itself to be an entrancing mystery.

As for the prose: gorgeous, glimmering, brimming with clarity. The characters are drawn impeccably; and, too, their inner landscapes are rendered just as acutely.

As for the novel's pulse on what it means to live in a post-September 11th world: I've yet to see a writer capture so sharply -- and with utter conviction and importance -- what it means now to live in this country. To his credit, he does not approach the subject with arm-waving pedantics; rather, the theme of the story (what does it mean to be human; how can we ever known with certainty those we love, much less ourselves? [Fear, paranoia, resignation, will]) is suffused in every scene of the story itself. Quite an accomplishment.

There may be people who begin this novel feeling somewhat bewildered (I did); however, that's the point of the novel: you must feel this displacement in order to better experience the situations that arise in the lives of the characters about whom you are reading. So, hang in there; amelioration is not too far off.

While I read a number of good (The Road, Lisey's Story) and great (Everyman, The Lay of the Land) novels last year, The Echo Maker is the best. I finished it weeks ago and still its characters persist in my memory: the sign of a great novel.

If awards mean anything (increasingly, it seems that they do not; at least, not as much as they once did), then Mr. Powers should have a Pulitzer plaque sitting next to the National Book Award he won for this novel.

Average customer rating:

Not for the Lightweight Reader
A novel to savor, not to fear
Gold Bug Variations, reviewed without hubris and hot air
The People You Meet
Virtuoso writing

Gold Bug Variations
Richard Powers
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0060975008

Book Description

A national bestseller, voted by Time as the #1 novel of 1991, selected as one of the "Best Books of 1991" by Publishers Weekly, and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award--a magnificent story that probes the meaning of love, science, music, and art, by the brilliant author of Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance.

Customer Reviews:

Not for the Lightweight Reader.......2007-01-09

After reading Powers's Galatea 2.2, I started reading his novels in their order of publication. I was as prepared as anyone can be for the complexity of Gold Bug Variations, enjoyed it thoroughly through both laughter and tears, and had a very difficult time settling into the next book, Plowing The Dark. By the time I finished The Time of Our Singing, I was longing for more from this brilliant, addictive author. The Echo Maker is shelved until I can afford the time I know I'll want to devote to it. My children went unfed while I read Gold Bug Variations; it's just that engrossing. I miss Ressler, too.

A novel to savor, not to fear.......2006-10-28

I don't so much want to write a review of this novel as I want to encourage you to read it. The words "dense" and "erudite," often used to describe The Gold Bug Variations, surely scare off a fair share of potential readers. Don't be intimidated. Buy the book and give it a chance. Yes, you'll have to slow your reading pace and think while you turn the pages, but you'll rarely have a more enjoyable and rewarding reading experience. The Gold Bug Variations is a novel to savor.

Gold Bug Variations, reviewed without hubris and hot air.......2006-04-11

If you're in the mood for more than mere entertainment, check out Richard Powers. His books aren't a quick read - but if you truly love language, then a quick read wouldn't satisfy you anyway. This is a book of wit and beautiful prose. Richard's themes are manifold and his ideas complex. You could reread Gold Bug repeatedly and still not exhaust all it has to offer.

I don't understand some of the negative reviews - since when has complexity been cause for harsh criticism? One U. S. reviewer actually found this novel lacking when compared to a sitcom. Thanks for reinforcing American cultural inferiority, pal.

My toughest criticism of Richard is that through his books you can sense that he's capable of works even more brilliant than what he's written to date. I hope to still be reading him when he's writing at full power.

The People You Meet.......2006-04-11

One of the joys of reading fiction is in the people you meet on the way. The truly great books have you almost grieving for the characters to whom you must say goodbye as you close the book. So it is with The Gold Bug Variations - I miss Ressler too.

You'll read the prose that approaches poetry, the virtuosity, the contrapuntal style (not contrapunctal, as one reviewer put it), and the breadth of subject material. All of these delight and dazzle, but with Ressler, Powers reaches the heart.

Virtuoso writing.......2005-06-08

Simply put, one of the best books I've ever read. By best I mean 1) most deeply satisfying, intellectually and emotionally, and 2) one of the few books I've read that I want to read again and again and again. Like great music (classical, jazz, pop, what have you), this book offers meaning on many, many different levels, all entwined like the beautiful molecule that makes us human! For lovers of music, science, art, history, and life.

Average customer rating:

Overworked and Narcissistic
An instant classic
Well worth reading
Memory and Technology
A Novel Turing Test

Galatea 2.2: A Novel
Richard Powers
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0312423136

Amazon.com

Cognitive neurologist and well-known writer team up to produce a machine that can pass a comprehensive exam in English literature, with predictably unpredictable results. Like The Gold Bug Variations, this is another of Powers' wild, unforgettable novels encompassing science, philosophy, and the frailty of mankind.

Book Description

After four novels and several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2-Richard Powers-returns to the United States as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, an outspoken cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain by means of computer-based neural networks. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for exisiting.

Customer Reviews:

Overworked and Narcissistic .......2006-02-10

For the life of me, I can't figure out why so many readers give this book glowing reviews. I found it boring in the extreme. I guess you need to be a real "neural network" fan to enjoy this type of writing. For me this tome is overworked and overly pedantic.

The basic premise is a good one (and could have been wrapped in a much better story), but the plot fails to get going at a pace that would keep even the most jaded "computer drama" fan entertained or interested. Characters are not fully fleshed out and the story arc self-terminates in many places.

I really had a hard time getting through this, not because I'm dull-witted but because I found it far too overcooked and "clever" for my tastes. Even though it was written in first person, I've never read a novel where the writer is so clearly self-involved. As well, the devisive over-use of initials instead of proper names was irritating in the extreme and somewhat juvenile. OK, so the "author within the author" doesn't want to use names. Make up something to at least give the character a face!

All in all: a very tedious read. Save your money.

An instant classic.......2005-03-27

The writing is brilliant, with an extremely high vocabulary and a keen use of metaphor (Powers' standard). The science is suspect but is intelligently focused more by his expertise in literary devices and the logic of langauge (or lack of) than by knowledge of neural networks and computers (of which, even still, he knows a lot). The love story is fairly unmoving to me, and is annoying at times, though perhaps it is more realistic in that way. The ending is stunning.

You've never read anything quite like it, and may never again, so it is worth a try. It was the first Powers book I managed to get all the way through, and it revived the bookworm in me that was dormant for years. He has a knack for witty dialogue (though every character is so sharp (even a young child) it's hard to believe they are not of the same mind), and descriptions of the world that would never have occurred to you. You will be smarter after reading this. I love my friend for passing it on to me.

Well worth reading.......2004-10-23

Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2 is, I trust, a semi-autobiographical novel since it features the author as first person with his name intact. Stylistically, the novel takes some risks with its wording, though its creative use of technical vocabulary to create poetic metaphor generally succeeds with brilliance. The title itself, referring back to the legend of Pygmalion, concerns the education of a computer network whose growth of intelligence takes on increasingly human features, including even some female identity named Helen. Richard Powers, as research assistant, teaches the computer network through literary input via microphone, using audiovisual addenda where appropriate.

Parallel to this, we are presented with the story of his own human relationship with his girlfriend, C., a needy woman with whom he shares his life, first as his student, and later as his almost wife, and he acts as her mentor and protector as well as her lover. As this bond disintegrates, he returns to the USA from Belgium to take up his research role in an artificial intelligence experiment. There was a time when he himself was inspired by his own professor to enter into doctorate studies in English literature rather than physics, against his father's wishes, and finally into becoming a novelist in his own right - within a culture that reads less and less.

He has a curious love-hate relationship with the scientist who acts as his technical mentor (and who has a wife institutionalized with Alzheimer's disease) and intellectual foil between two worlds: the literary/humanistic and the scientific/materialistic. His relationship with his scientific colleagues is somewhat as an outsider, then, though that role is true in both of his worlds, in which he is clearly more than just a competent intellect. In passing, he raises issues concerning the humanities in academia losing their soul in recent scholarly fads. In all of his relationships, his own humanity is put to the test, and many moments of reflective sadness touch our own sensibilities as we read on.

When Helen gives up because of deep disappointment with the destructiveness of humankind, we find ourselves thrust upon the central thesis of our author: the human soul is a chance miracle that is unlikely ever to recur in nature; as a corollary, the lack of appreciation of that happenstance is already a degradation along the path of senseless destruction. Against this cosmic disappointment, the failures of his romantic life seem a pale theme in comparison, painful as they are in their inexorability. Are both themes to be subsumed under something greater still, or are they meant to be irreducible? For, imperfect as life on this planet is, it is still (painfully) preferable to any of the alternatives.

Memory and Technology.......2004-08-03

When I first picked up Richard Powers' novel Galatea 2.2, I knew little about the author or the work itself. What I did know was that Powers was supposedly a "genius" author whose works would help judge our era. What I found while reading the novel was that all the hype was true. Although his prose is at times thick, it is always beautiful and well crafted. Readers should have little trouble with the non-linear, interwoven plots. Likewise, I really enjoyed his typically Russian use of simple pseudonyms for the names of people and places. While the book deals with technology and is a few years old, the information is only theoretical and does not feel dated. I had never felt such sadness for the end of a computer program as I did when I finished this book. Overall, I would highly recommend this work. I look forward to reading more Richard Powers in the future.

A Novel Turing Test.......2004-07-23

In this novel, Richard Powers weaves an intriguing story out of ideas taken from Artificial Intelligence, neural network theory, the Turing test, Pygmalion stories, philosophy, brain-research, the state of literary criticism, and love of language. This was the first novel of his that I've read, and I was looking forward to it because I've read that Powers has a reputation for writing cerebral works that delight polymaths, using a style that would delight any highly verbal virtuoso. Unfortunately, I didn't think the book lived up to some of the reviews that called it "dazzling," though I found it intriguing in parts.

The novel has two major plotlines. First, a failed writer named (coincidentally) Richard Powers takes a temporary job as "Humanist-in-Residence" at a research institute. An AI researcher there takes him under his wing; later, that same researcher makes a bar-room bet with a colleague that he can write a computer program that would be able to comment on great works of literature with as much competence as an undergraduate English major. With the bet made, Powers is drawn into the project to train the program by reading literature to it. In doing so he learns its quirks, and muses about the nature consciousness as his dialogues with the program grow more elaborate and "intelligent." Another separate plotline revolves around flashbacks Powers has to the years he lived in Holland with an ex-girlfriend.

One of the strengths of this novel is that Powers has clearly done his homework in the areas of AI and neural networks. He uses all the field's lingo correctly, and works all the right buzzwords into his literary pyrotechnics. Overall, I found the novel to be intelligent, erudite, and chock full of literary and technical references.

On the negative side, I thought the narrator's many flashbacks to his life with an ex-girlfriend in Holland could have been easily deleted; it didn't seem like there was any strong thematic link between that plotline and the rest of the action in the novel. Also, the flashbacks seem annoyingly autobiographical (though we don't know how closely the narrator's life actually represents the authors real life). Finally, although Powers is capable of linguistic pyrotechnics, they can sometimes be distractingly ornate; after a while his verbal virtuosity doesn't rescue the slightly plodding pace of the plot.

Overall, though, I was entertained by his clever turns-of-phrase, the intriguing concepts and the narrators philosophical musings and debates. However, I kept thinking that the plot could have moved a little more quickly, and that something a little more surprising could have happened or there would be a slight twist to this theme. Overall, though, I think this would be a good novel from an unknown writer, however, it was slightly disappointing based on the reputation and history of the "dazzling" Richard Powers. Three stars.

Average customer rating:

An ambitious project.
Best read of the year to date
A rare treat
Many Old Ideas
Extraordinary

The Time of Our Singing: A Novel
Richard Powers
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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The Echo Maker: A Novel
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ASIN: 0312422180

Amazon.com

In some respects, Richard Powers's The Time of Our Singing is just a big, absorbing drama about an American family, with the typical ingredients of an immigrant parent and some social obstacles--in this case, a biracial marriage in the Civil Rights era--to be overcome by the talented children. But Powers's lyrical gifts lift this material far above its familiar subject matter. His descriptions of music alone will transport the reader. The Strom family were raised with this common language: "Our parents' Crazed Quotations game played on the notion that every moment's tune had all history's music box for its counterpoint. On any evening in Hamilton Heights, we could jump from organum to atonality without any hint of all the centuries that had died fiery deaths between them." The central figure of this novel is the dazzling Jonah, who makes a life from singing, and who may be the only person around him who regards his racial heritage as irrelevant to his ambitions. Powers's is such a fertile writer, however, that he can't stay with any single story, but plunges into pages and pages of family and social histories. The result is a rambling, resonant, fearless novel that pulls the reader along in its wake. --Regina Marler

Book Description

On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson's epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish migr scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and-against all odds and better judgment-they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped only in song. Jonah, Joseph, and Ruth grow up, however, during the Civil Rights era, coming of age in the violent 1960s, and living out adulthood in the racially retrenched late century. Jonah, the eldest, 'whose voice could make heads of state repent,' follows a life in his parents' beloved classical music. Ruth, the youngest, devotes herself to community activism and repudiates the white culture her brother represents. Joseph, the middle child and the narrator of this generation-bridging tale, struggles to find himself and remain connected to them both.

Download Description

On Easter Day, 1939, at Marian Anderson's epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish émigré scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a concert singer. Against all odds, they marry, vowing to raise their offspring beyond time, beyond race, beyond belonging, steeped in song. But their children, Jonah, Joseph, and Ruth, must survive America's brutal here and now. As a polarized America threatens to tear the family apart, only their deep, shared love of song stands any hope of preserving them. Set against the sweeping backdrop of contemporary American history, The Time of Our Singing is nevertheless deeply personal and intimate, a heartrending tale of the power of music and the tangled loops of time that rewrite all identity.

Customer Reviews:

An ambitious project........2007-05-07

It's a Richard Powers book concerning two brothers, both classical musicians, of different temperment and talent, born in the forties, their parents are a black Philadelphia aristocratic soprano woman and a Jewish physicist man who emigrated from Germany on the eve of World War II.

The couple homeschools their children and raises them on classical music and above race. As you can imagine, once the boys leave school, armed with music alone, the two navigate their life with a deep sense of alienation and social irresponsibility that comes with being passable black classical musicians in the nineteen fifties when there is a bloody revolution happening outside of your practice room and on the streets of America.

The book has an enormous and tumultuous span, from the 20s until the 90s, and should be considered an epic. I recommend it, but it's a qualified recommend. Powers is a bit relentless in his narrative, if you don't know anything about music, physics, or American history, he doesn't take time to catch you up. It didn't bother me, but that's because I happen to know music, physics, and American History. Had the story been about painting, chemistry, and Canadian History, I would have been looking up a lot of wikipedia.

Some of the relationships are truly touching, and at its best, the book is like the Adventures of Kavalier and Clay meets the Grapes of Wrath, which is a recipe for the Great American Novel, at its worst, Powers overwrites like Rushdie. It's a thoughtful, fantastic story of small people who never wanted to do anything big, but historical circumstance and love precluded them from living small.

There is a huge story he tries to tell. The structure necessary to contain the scope and the breadth of this story is awesome. Bravo. It wasn't an unqualified success, but I am definitely going to run out and read "The Prisoner's Dilemma."

Getting showing the impact of race in America on Black men is deeply difficult, but Powers succeeds in provocative ways.

Best read of the year to date.......2007-05-02

This is the first novel I have read by Richard Powers, and it knocked my socks off. A big book grappling with big issues: race, art, humanity's capacity to annihilate itself. What I admired most was that Powers' approach doesn't come to hard conclusions, but rather acknowledges that these issues are complex, that human beings respond to situations in myriad ways--nothing is preordained and life is finally mysterious, no matter what path you take. Besides inspiring a lot of rather philosophical musing about life, the novel is also a damned good read--I laughed, I cried, and when the book was done, I kept dreaming about these characters.

A rare treat.......2007-01-05

The most obvious attraction of this book is its language: rich and economical, often just suggestive enough to seed your imagination, something expected perhaps in a poem, but remarkable in a novel of this size.

The white man and the black woman chance upon meeting in each other a kindred soul that can equally share their singular love for music. Their love at first sound was long time in the making: they fell in love with the same music long before they met. At their catalytic encounter, they hit on new notes and surprise themselves with thinking out of the tribe. Together they discover the joy of improvisation and from that day on will never look back at scripted performance alone. This magic of the triple birth - two voices and the harmony they formed - inspires them to build a family around it.

Building up this tradition with their children, they share in daily singing sessions: creating harmony while actively helping each family member, including the youngest ones, develop their own voice. The two older brothers are defined by these early sessions, their lives governed by music. One could argue that the youngest Ruth is defined by these sessions as well, although in a different way: by the time they abruptly ended with her mother's death, Ruth needed these sessions, and her family, the most. She spent her life looking for the cause of Delia's death and fighting it. She rejected the music that, she was convinced, ultimately killed her mother, and she defined herself in opposition to the belief that brought her parents together. This book is as much about family as it is about music and race.

The intertwining stories of past and present form the DNA of the book. Their alternating chapter pattern with occasional cliff hangers at the end make up a lively and engaging structure.

Powers's special signature is his personal and poetic rendition of the art and science that he mixes in with the main characters of his books. In "Gold Bug Variations", it was molecular biology and Bach. In "Prisoner's Dilemma", it was game theory and pathology. In "The Time of Our Singing", it is music and theory of relativity. Here, for physics he chooses the most difficult delivery: in the voice of the scientist at the top of the field, explaining his work to his children. As for the music, it is not simply the inspiration bringing out the best in many characters of the book, or only the force connecting parents with children and children with each other. More importantly, it clearly inspires Powers and elevates the narrative to the state of grace.

For all the other merits of the book, for its fresh look at race in America, for its colorful characters and unexpected situations, I would most readily pick it up again for its language, for the beautifully crafted prose.

Many Old Ideas.......2006-12-17

I really like Powers - as a scientist I appreciate his ability to write intelligently about a world that includes maths and physics - and I have read many of his books. I'm unsure what order they were published in, so it may be that what follows would apply to another book if you are reading in chronological order, but this book contained many ideas (motifs? ticks?) from the work I was already familiar with.

In particular, there's a long (this is not a short book) rehash of "relationship failing due to sense of indebtedness". I assume this is taken from the author's own life (I recall something similar in (what I assume was) the semi-autobiographical Galatea 2.2). Richard Powers, if you're reading this: please, get over it. I am tired of paying to be your therapist. OK?

The historical context was fascinating - I learnt a huge amount - but both Goldberg and Galatea are better books. At least, if you read them before this one.

Extraordinary.......2006-08-02

This book is a brilliant accomplishment. It is a wonderful introduction to areas that don't usually overlap -- race relations (esp. the civil rights movement, about which you will learn a lot), physics, family dynamics (what it means to have a brother), and marriage. It is written in some of the most extraordinary prose that any novelist working today can muster. Read it.

Average customer rating:

A decent plot, but...
"We speak of profit, we speak of loss."
will "Echo Maker" at last alert readers to an extraordinary writer in their midst?
Full of the sound and the fury...
A moving, affecting novel

Gain
Richard Powers
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

ASIN: 0312204094

Amazon.com

Richard Powers made his debut in 1985 with Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, a brilliant and almost unbelievably brainy meditation on what he calls "our tortured century." Since then he has produced four more novels, showcasing his mastery of genetics, art history, computer science, theology, aesthetics, and a host of other pointy-headed fields. The author's range--and the meticulous music of his prose, which suggests a considerably less zany Thomas Pynchon--is mind-boggling. Yet his subject remains fairly constant: the acceleration, and consequent dehumanization, of contemporary life.

In Gain, Powers puts our modernity through the wringer once again. This time, though, he points the finger at one villain in particular: rampant, American-style capitalism, as exemplified by a conglomerate called Clare International. His novel, it should be said, is no piece of agitprop, but an intricate lamination of two separate stories. On one hand, Powers describes the rise (and fall and rise) of the Clare empire, beginning in its mercantile infancy: "That family flocked to commerce like finches to morning. They clung to the watery edge of existence: ports, always ports. They thrived in tidal pools, half salt, half sweet." The author's Clare-eyed narrative amounts to a pocket history of corporate America, and a marvelously entertaining one. Lest we get too enamored of this success story, though, Powers introduces a second, countervailing tale, in which a 42-year-old resident of Lacewood, Illinois, is stricken with ovarian cancer. Lacewood happens to be the headquarters of Clare's North American Agricultural Products Division, and lo and behold, it seems that chemical wastes from the plant may be the source of Laura Bodey's illness. The analogy between corporate and cancerous proliferation is pointed--too pointed, perhaps. But no other recent novelist has written so knowingly, and with such splendid indignation, about capitalism and its discontents.

Book Description

A New York Times Notable Book of the YearGain tells two parallel stories: one, of Laura Bodey, divorced mother of two and successful real-estate agent in the small town of Lacewood, Illinois, who one day discovers that she has ovarian cancer; and two, of Clare Soap amp; Chemical, the company begun by three merchant brothers in 19th-century Boston, which by the turn of the century has grown into a large multiconglomerate with factories in Laura's hometown. As the history of Clare Soap changes through the history of America, so a modern-day Laura Bodey descends into a battle with her terminal illness. By the novel's conclusion, we have learned how the largest enterprises affect us on the most personal level.

Customer Reviews:

A decent plot, but..........2007-06-26

I found Power's writing style to be unbearable at points, and the reader must be more than well-rounded to understand the obscure references such as "subatomic van der Waals forces" that are pervasive in this novel. Powers goes into a superfluous amount of detail, and the constant sentence fragments and lists quickly become tedious. I often found myself rolling my eyes at the dialogue, as Powers too obviously associates the fast pace and impersonality of modern-day life with the characters' inability to speak in complete sentences.

It's hard not to have compassion for the characters, but I felt there was always a barrier between them and the reader, and that they lacked development. This is especially true in the children, who are the stereotypical cheerleader and computer addict. The only reason I finished the book was to see how it ended, which was nothing special. While Gain's underlying story is meaningful and memorable, the journey through it is not worth overlooking its faults.

"We speak of profit, we speak of loss.".......2007-03-05

"Everybody who lives here is on her own." So run the thoughts of Laura Bodey, one of the two main characters in Richard Power's GAIN. "We speak of profit, we speak of loss." Although these are from the thoughts of Clare Soap & Chemical's CEO, they represent the essence of the other principal character in this novel, Clare. Laura's story (what happens in her life following the discovery of ovarian cancer), and Clare's story (what happens in the life of this business over one and three-quarters centuries) are the yin and yang that Powers explores - the individual and the corporation.
Perhaps it's because I love Moby Dick, but I often was reminded of Ishmael and the whaling industry. But Laura the realtor is not a part of the Clare company conglomerate in the way that Ishmael is a cog in the whaling industry. That is unless Powers' has been able to enlarge the breadth of his novel in a fashion similar to the way in which global corporations have been able to cross boundaries, span the globe, and attach themselves to our lives in more ways that we usually acknowledge. And Powers has done that with the links between Laura and Clare.
GAIN effortlessly interlaces these two stories without diminishing the role of either. Powers has accomplished something quite unusual in that he neither sentimentalizes Laura's story, nor stereotypes business (or, more broadly, capitalism). Powers doesn't create victims.
All in all it's a most unusual achievement. Highly recommended. You will profit from the business "history" of Clare, and you will feel Laura's losses. There are not many authors who tackle such large themes with such success. Read Powers, you'll be rewarded.

will "Echo Maker" at last alert readers to an extraordinary writer in their midst?.......2006-12-18

With the critical acclaim piling onto his most recent novel, "The Echo Maker," one can only hope that Richard Power's other superb works will cease to languish undeservedly in the ranking of sales. One of the finest American novelists currently working, Mr. Power's work stands out for the author's deft prose, careful plotting and complex approach to issues of modern identity, science, and the self. Those put off by the sheer size of Powers' novels (the breath taking "Time of Our Singing" comes in at a back bending 640 pages, the recent "Echo Maker" at an only slightly less intimidating 464) may do well to look to begin exploring his work with the rich and thoughtful "Gain" a shorter novel of substantial depth.

An excellent demonstration of Powers' versatility, "Gain" tells two different connected stories in parallel. In the first, told in a close third person, the reader watches as Laura Bodey, a divorced mother working in real estate battles against cancer. The second track, told in an omniscient third person, tells the history of the Clare Corporation, a soap company that eventually rose to become a multi national chemical conglomerate, from its beginnings as a family concern at the beginning of the 19th century up to the present day. The connection between the two-stories? Lacewood, where Laura lives is a Clare company town.

Some short sighted reviewers imagine Powers' work as a general condemnation of corporations and capitalism. But not only does such shallow analysis ignore the novel's quite clever ending, they are further far too simple for this complex and thoughtful author. Readers familiar with Powers will know that he is no Luddite, nor political hack pimping an agenda. Instead, Powers offers a deep view of both the strengths and limitations of what corporations offer society. Of course being a work by this particular author, readers will further learn a great deal, part of his gift being how he weaves his research into his writing, in this case with a fascinating history of soap! If that seems uninteresting, wait to read the novel, because in all likelihood you will be enrapt.

The closer story Power tells. Of Laura's struggle with cancer, proves both gripping and human. As with all his characters, readers find here no cookie cutter bits of melodrama but whole people of blood on the page. Children struggling with the approaching loss of their mother, an ex-husband who can neither understand nor console his ex-wife, in short an engaging emotional experience.

Powers' fans may disagree on which is his best work. For me, I lean towards the transcendent "Time of Our Singing." But as with any great author, all his work offers readers a rare opportunity. For the vast majority, "Gain" will surely not disappoint.

Full of the sound and the fury..........2006-03-21

Richard Powers writes his book, Gain, with an agenda that is evident from the beginning. I happen to believe that enterprise has done much for the country and the world in the last 150 years but I agree that corporations do not have a direct interest in serving the public, and thus do not always make model citizens. Powers attacks corporations' greed and constant desire for exapnsion, but fails to provide evidence to support his point. Indeed, his arguments against big business can be summed up as pernicious snipes peppered throughout the novel, for example, to note how much machinery was required to produce a disposable camera packaging, all to be thrown away. These constant barrages become tedious and beg the question, so what? Are we worse off for having the packaging or a myriad of other advances? Instead of exploring the question, Powers seems to suggest that the old, simpler days were better, happily ignoring the evils of that age.

Gain is a well written and structured novel, and Powers has an expansive vocabulary and a handle on style he uses to great effect. He is at his best when he mimics the voice of yesteryear in describing the advances of Clare Corporation. However, his technical prowess is ultimately overshadowed by lack of factual data to back up the opinions that he holds so strongly. If you happen to belong to the choir to whom Powers is preaching, you will find Gain a good read.

A moving, affecting novel.......2005-10-11

I remember reading, many years ago, a passage in which a writer- it might have been Paul Theroux- detailed a conversation with an African about a man who had been bitten by a snake. "Witchcraft", the African said knowingly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"But the man walking down the path- that wasn't witchcraft," argued the European, and the African nodded. "And the snake coming down the path- that wasn't witchcraft either" the writer went on. The African agreed with this as well. "Then how could it be witchcraft?"

"Ah," said the African, "the fact the the man and the snake happened to be there at the exact same time- *that* was witchcraft!"

Reading Richard Powers novels often puts me in mind of that story, and perhaps there is no better example than Gain. As is often the case in Powers' novels, there are two seemingly unconnected- or tenuously connected at best- threads, seperated by time. One story is that of an old-line American company- you could be forgiven for thinking Lever Brother or perhaps Proctor and Gamble- slowly making its way from humble beginnings to becoming a major industrial power, proceeding in fits and starts, and always thinking of the customer and the employees. In a somewhat different time frame, a divorced woman is living her life as she believes best for her and her children. And yet, with good intentions all along the way, something terrible happens that no one seems to be to blame for- and yet someone must be.

This is one of Powers' most affecting books, I think, and one that will both move most readers and prompt them to examine many of their beliefs about justice and responsibility.

Average customer rating:

Fast read; interesting; moderately informative.
Short overview of the Merry Monarch
Lady Antonia Fraser rules!

Jonathan Lasker
Robert Hobbs , Richard Milazzo , and Jonathan Lasker
Manufacturer: Richter Verlag
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Pop | Schools, Periods & Styles | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 393380793X
Release Date: 2004-02-02

Book Description

The American painter Jonathan Lasker has plumbed the possibilities of abstract vocabularies, searching for a worldwide idiom for modernism in the wake of the end of abstraction. In his large-scale, color-intensive paintings, the artist uses a relatively limited repertoire of visual signs from recent art history. From the formal vocabulary of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, geometric abstraction, and Pattern & Decoration, he has created exciting new constellations. His biomorphic forms, calligraphic shorthand, fields of stripes and lines, grid structures, and checkerboard patterns morph on the canvas into images of conflict--and thus into particularly contemporary manifestations. This publication focuses on Lasker's oil paintings from the 1970s, supplemented by drawings and preliminary sketches.

Customer Reviews:

Fast read; interesting; moderately informative........2006-05-18

This is a very quick read that gives one a picture of the stages in the life of Charles II, with whom the monarchy was restored after the English Civil War and the Protectorate (dictatorship) of Cromwell. The book does not go very deeply into politics as they pertain to the business of governance or the life of the people of England, but rather considers politics only as they pertain to the fortunes of the monarch. Charles II was popular, and has remained so in popular conception, but the reality of his reign was largely the unconcealed use of public funds to support his extravagant and frivolous lifestyle. The book does allow one to glimpse this, and in general to see something of the power politics in 17th Century England, though the focus is much more on producing a simple portrait of a colourful figure.

Short overview of the Merry Monarch.......2001-03-03

If you don't want to wade through a large tome on Charles II, this is the book for you. It's fairly short, filled with illustrations, and yet hits all the important points of England's most popular rex. Charles II was a happening dude, with a love of life and people, and his ability to overcome his tumultous childhood and adult intrigues is truly amazing. This isn't just a pure bio, however, because as the title implies, this is also about the times of Charles II, and what amazing events took place. Plague, devasting fire, wars, regicides, you name it, the times they were amazing. So was Charles II, a magnetic leader, if there ever was one. The monarchy has been all down hill ever since.

Lady Antonia Fraser rules!.......2000-06-09

No historian writes history like Antonia Fraser does. The lives and times of Charles the Second were quite remarkable and both his predecessor and sucsessor were ousted from their crown but Charles II managed to gain the crown and keep it until his death. The odds were against him and he had to flee fatherless (his father Charkes the first was executed for treason) and penniless to the continent chased by Cromwell and his spies. Charles II was a complex person but one thing that can not be taken from him is that he was a consumated survivalist in a very dangerous political climate. Lady Fraser does an excellent job of recounting his lifespan and it is not often that history books read like a thriller. "Life and times of Charles II: Kings and Queens of England" is a page turner in the truest sense of the word.

Average customer rating:

More educational than engrossing
An audacious novel
A Most Interesting Meta-Fiction
Impressive First Novel. Not for Casual Readers.
An Intelligent, Complex Novel of Ideas

Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance
Richard Powers
Manufacturer: William Morrow & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0688042015

Book Description

In the spring of 1914, renowned photographer August Sander took a photograph of three young men on their way to a country dance. This haunting image, capturing the last moments of innocence on the brink of World War I, provides the central focus of Powers's brilliant and compelling novel. As the fate of the three farmers is chronicled, two contemporary stories unfold. The young narrator becomes obsessed with the photo, while Peter Mays, a computer writer in Boston, discovers he has a personal link with it. The three stories connect in a surprising way and provide the reader with a mystery that spans a century of brutality and progress.

Customer Reviews:

More educational than engrossing.......2004-11-21

I like Richard Powers, in fact, I'd rate his "Galatea 2.2" as one of my top ten novels of all time.

But "Three Farmers" (which I read _after_ "Galatea" and "The Goldbug Variations" and "Gain") was a bit of a let down. Sure, it had all the intellectual stimulation that I expected. And yes, it had some great quotes (both from Powers and from others that he cites ... such as "The world has changed less since the death of Jesus than it has in the past 30 years").

What went wrong? Maybe I was just not in the mood. Maybe it was the lack of a compelling love interest (so powerful in his other novels). Maybe it was that his historical lectures (on Ford, WW I, Sarah Berndhart, and photography) were a bit too pedantic.

But what really bothered me was the gimmicky ending: in the final two pages, one of the protagonists (who is on the verge of continuing a relationship with a female character) abruptly stops and asks (the reader? the author?) "So does he [I] get the girl?" ... and he walks out of her life forever. Huh?

Okay, so Powers has just finished a lecture on how (in photography, at least) there is a fascinating relationship between photographer, subject, and viewer. They fulfill each other, they create each other, they cannot exist without each other. I get it: this same relationship exists between author, characters, and reader. But to take a 350 page narrative and have it end on this cheesy metaphysical note .. a bit of a let down. I'm not even sure what is happening: is the character stepping out of the novel and into the readers reality? If this is so important to Powers, why not at least develop it for a few pages rather than tack it on in the last page?

This device reminds me of Pirandello's "Seven Characters in Search of an Author" ... but in that case it was a successful device because it was clear what was happening, and gave the audience something to chew on.

Try one of Power's other books.

An audacious novel.......2004-08-20

Mr Powers begins his novel by following a narrator travelling by train from Chicago to Boston. He has to change trains in Detroit and since he has several hours at his leisure, he decides to visit the Detroit Institute of Arts. There, he is puzzled by a photograph taken by Augustus Sander in 1914 showing three farmers on their way to a dance. The reader follows the narrator's progress as he tries to find answers to the questions that preoccupy him about the photograph: who took it, why was it taken, who are the three farmers appearing in the picture.
On another level, Mr Powers gives a fictional account - or it may also be the result of the narrator's research, it is not explicit in the text - of the action taking place at the time the photograph was taken and also what happens subsequently. And so the reader gets to know the three farmers Hubert, Peter and Adolphe.
Yet on another level, the author introduces various contemporary characters working in the Powell Building for a magazine called "Micro Monthly News": Mays, Moseley, Delaney. After having at first the impression that the events at this level are unrelated to the two other levels, the reader soon realises that there is a connection indeed.
What makes Mr Powers's novel interesting are his many reflections on various topics. These range from the situation of a small Belgian village called Petit Roi during the First World War, the part that Henry Ford played in that war, various personalities like Darwin, Freud, Gödel, Planck or Sarah Bernhardt, to the Industrial Revolution and the changes that mechanisation brought to our civilisation. And because the main protagonist so to speak of the novel is a photograph, Mr Powers also deals in detail in the history of photography.
A very instructive novel, plenty of interesting points of view that show Mr Powers's broad knowledge.

A Most Interesting Meta-Fiction.......2003-11-11

I agree with the other customer reviewers of this novel when they state that it is a "difficult" work. In many ways, reading Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance is not even like reading a novel. The book uses its main stories as a clothesline to hang an astonishing number of meditations on history, culture, technology, and memory.

While the other customer reviews to a wonderful job of touching on most of the topics described above, the one area I would add is that the novel serves as an excellent explanation of the principles underlying the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: that it is impossible to study anything or anyone without bringing the researcher's bias into the study. In this novel, the reader is treated to discussions on the subjectivity of history, as well as of the seemingly concrete art of photography, that will cause the reader not to be able to view either discipline in the same way after completing the book.

Hopefully, readers will not find all of the discussion of the more challenging aspects of the novel as a reason to find the book too intimidating to read, as it is a work that surely rewards the efforts necessary to read it.

Impressive First Novel. Not for Casual Readers........2003-10-31

This book consists of three intertwined sagas, all revolving around a picture of three farmers taken in 1914. The main idea behind this book, as I see it, is the interconnectedness of observer and observed. The lives of people who see this picture are irrevocably changed, but the prospect of having their picture seen by generations of future viewers, changes the lives of the three farmers as well. This is a recurring motif in the book.

After reading this book, I discovered two amazing facts. The first is that this is Richard Powers' first novel and as such the virtuosity and craftsmanship that Powers' exhibits in this book are truly incredible. The second incredible fact is that the picture around which the novel revolves is a real one. Had I known these facts before reading the book, I would have enjoyed it even more.

On the down side, this book is not an easy read. The story itself never really gripped me, and there are a lot of dead spots. In addition, while the prose is beautiful it demands concentration and close attention to every word and sentence. Bottom line, I will definitely read Powers' other works, but I cannot recommend this one to the casual reader.

An Intelligent, Complex Novel of Ideas.......2002-07-26

In 1910, Richard Powers relates in "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance," the German photographer August Sander came upon the idea of an epic photographic collection to be called "Man of the Twentieth Century." Sander went on, during the next several decades, to take thousands of photographs of everyday life, "a massive, comprehensive catalog of people written in the universal language-photography."

One of Sander's photographs, taken in May, 1914, depicts three German farmers standing in a muddy road, their heads turned to the camera. The three farmers are dressed in their best suits, white shirts, ties, hats, and walking sticks. They are on their way to a dance. As Powers' first person narrator writes, "the date sufficed to show that they were not going to their expected dance. I was not going to my expected dance. We would all be taken blindfolded into a field somewhere in this tortured century and made to dance until we'd had enough. Dance until we dropped."

From this intriguing beginning, Richard Powers tells three stories, each of them connected through the photograph and through time. The first is that of the narrator, who stumbles upon Sander's photograph at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He becomes obsessed with the haunting aura of the photograph and spends the next several months trying to find out more about the photographer and the three men in the photograph. The second is that of the three farmers themselves-Hubert, Peter and Adolphe-and what happens to each of them when the Great War breaks out in Europe. The third story is that of Peter Mays, a writer for a computer trade magazine in 1980s Boston, who also becomes obsessed-not with the photograph, but with a beautiful red haired woman dressed in early twentieth century period costume that he sees on the street following a Veterans' Day Parade-and ultimately finds out that he has a connection to one of the men in the picture and to the events of the Great War.

To say that "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" tells three stories is misleading, however, insofar as the novel is dominated not by plot, but, rather, by a range of discursive narratives on how the world has changed between the Great War, when Sander's photograph was taken, and the present day. Plot does not drive the action of Powers' densely intellectual novel; rather, it provides a touchstone for the narrator to explore certain events and fundamental ideas of the Twentieth Century. For example, when the office cleaning woman shows the narrator artifacts from the Great War, it strikes an intellectual cord that leads to a long discourse on Charles Peguy, the French thinker who, in 1913, made the subsequently oft-quoted remark that "the world had changed less since the death of Jesus than it had in the last thirty years," and the ideas "hidden" in Peguy's formulation. Similarly, the narrator's obsessive study of the 1914 photograph leads to an historical investigation of Sander's life and works. It also leads to speculations on the nature of photography and on how photography changed conceptions of art that derive closely from Walter Benjamin's classic essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."

Ideas and intellectual referents are ubiquitous in this novel; simply read the epigraphs to each chapter to get a feel for the intellectual gyroscope that orients "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance". It is a remarkable work that demands a great deal from the reader. It is also a work that will disappoint anyone who is looking for a straightforward plot or a mere "page turner."

If you're interested in ideas, in novels with intellectual density, in narratives that force you to think deeply and reflectively about the world, "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" is the perfect novel. Read it, enjoy it, and move on to the rest of Richard Powers' remarkable list of fictions.

The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms
Average customer rating:

solidifying TPR's reputation as a preeminent literary pub...

Timely reading for the compulsive

The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms
The Paris Review
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Powers, Richard | ( P ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0312422407

Book Description

The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms is the ultimate, and perfect, theme-anthology. It's theme is the reader. Everyday we must live through moments of waiting-to get from one place to the next, from one appointment to another, for something to happen. This ingeniously useful compendium offers reading material to fill those gray moments with beauty, wonder, insight, and emotion. Organized by the time that the reader has available at that moment, the anthology provides a poem for that elevator ride to the lawyer's office; a short story for the thirty-minute commute; a novella for the three-hour plane ride. As ever, The Paris Review provides work from only the best writers of the last three generations.

Customer Reviews:

solidifying TPR's reputation as a preeminent literary pub..........2004-11-12

Richard Powers in his introduction to The Paris Review Book for Planes, Trains, Elevators, and Waiting Rooms, tells us readers that "We are living in the middle of an epidemic... infecting us with the contagion of real time", and "we read to escape - if only briefly - the trap of real time, and then to return and recognize - if only briefly - the times we are trapped in." Organized by the time that the reader has available at that moment - albeit vast stretches of time to merely seconds - this remarkable anthology delivers the breadth and depth of astute writing that has affirmed The Paris Review as the preeminent literary journal of our time.

In the section, "Planes" - life's brief moments to a dynasty of history marks the various stories assembled. Edward P. Jones's, "Marie", an elderly SSI recipient is summoned to wait in offices through notices signed by a dead bureaucrat, attacks a receptionist, wards off a mugger with a knife, and confesses her dismal life for a Howard University student onto tapes which are too painful to hear. In Karl Iagnemma's, "On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction", Joseph, an ex-PhD. student who mans phones in the TechInfo office, tries to mathematically comprehend the complexity of his love for his ex-PhD. advisor's daughter, Alexandra who "is stingy with love; she is afraid of ending up like her parent's, who squandered their love like drunks at a craps table". After posing a timed marriage ultimatum - accept the proposal prior to graduation, in the end Joseph loses the fickle Alexandra for he can't conjure the equations to make sense of the range of human emotion.

In the section, "Trains", great moments are compacted. In Raymond Carver's, "Why Don't You Dance", a lonely man offers up his belongings in a yard sale to a giddy couple only if they give him the pleasure of conversation and a quick dance. A Brahman wife, desperate for any prayer or religion which will save her dying husband, secretly turns to Christianity for a cure in V.S. Naipul's, "My Aunt Gold Teeth".

Poems predominately mark the section, "Elevators". Deborah Warren considers mortality and the invented machine "...so frail its breath/depends on something casual as the air/you cruise on, asymptotic to your death?" in her poem, "Airplane". The exquisite and seductive mistress heroin and the fantastic world and textures it simulates are addressed in Jim Carroll's, "Heroin". White rooms, white flowers, and chalky light evoke a supremely disturbing marriage to the lethal drug. Could escape and magic exist underneath the astringent hospital corridors - "through the deserted tunnels linking buildings" - in Lucy Grealy's wonderful verse, "Ward 10"? A world beyond medical terminology, animal experiments and recovery wards.

Perhaps the most prolific section of the anthology is "Waiting Rooms" with stories from Rick Moody, Charles D'Ambrosio and Ethan Canin. A year after her death, a brother grieves his sister who was killed in a tragic drunk-driving accident en route to her wedding rehearsal dinner in Rick Moody's, "The Mansion on the Hill". Andrew takes a job at a wedding planning agency, ignores the heart-felt advances of a pretend marriage-obsessive c-worker. Andrew excels at the problem-solving, the business of marriage until he spies the man who was to marry his sister, marrying another woman -- I no longer knew what marriage meant, really, except that the celebration of it seemed built into every life I knew but my own -- it is only then Andrew confronts and moves past his loss. In the absolute star of the collection is the closing story, Ethan Canin's, "The Palace Thief" where a classics professor meets his moral match in a manipulative senator's son - their complex and compromising relationship and war of ethics haunts the narrator for over four decades until he once again unites with the boy, now a wealthy baron who seeks to challenge the teacher once again.

The Paris Review is that experienced Madame, rouged up, filthy-mouthed - she's seen and done it all. From interviews with Nabokov to Richard Howard, the prose of Alice Munro, William Maxwell and T.C. Boyle - the artisans of the traditional short story form, to the innovative styles conjured by Lydia Davis and Raymond Carver, to the gritty poems of Jim Carroll and the prolific verses of Pinsky, Olds and Larkin, The Paris Review has published the greatest works of the twentieth century and no doubt after the untimely passing of its colorful patron, George Plimpton, the bar for great writing will continue to be raised high.

Timely reading for the compulsive.......2004-06-28

Plimpton was on to something with The Paris Review, a fresh venue for new authors, as well as a series of incisive interviews with innovative perspectives and opinions on the writing process. Certainly The Paris Review anthologies are a logical extension of the magazine. This newest anthology is a perfect companion for filling quiet moments, sampling a literary banquet that can be enjoyed incrementally.

Previously, The Paris Review, a singular literary magazine, published a 50 year celebratory anthology, The Paris Review Book of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, The Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World Since 1953. This first in the unexpected series was published prior to editor Gorge Plimpton's untimely death. The anthology was so well received, that Picador created a second volume in the Paris Review Book series, this one for those spare moments waiting for a train, plane, elevator, etc., when the avid reader might steal a moment of mental nourishment or a temporary release from boredom.

Tucked into a briefcase, this latest Paris Review effort is a welcome addition to reading-on-the-go, with stimulating short stories, poetry and even a novella. The selections are stimulating, carefully chosen and listed under the appropriate sections for each category: planes, trains, elevators and waiting rooms. Using the same premise and a variety of authors, Alice Munro, V.S. Naipaul, William S. Borroughs, Philip Roth and other luminaries that have graced the pages of the Paris Review over the years, the editors have created another unique grouping of talent, guaranteed to please the discerning reader.

Amazon.com

This encyclopedic look at the Federal Bureau of Investigation takes advantage of changes in the Freedom of Information Act to move beyond the typical glamorized or sensational portrayal of this government agency to a scholarly, evenhanded account that places it within a greater historical context. It may be textbook in nature, but the guide still makes for entertaining reading, especially its "Notable Cases" chapter, organized by decade, which covers John Dillinger, the murder of Medgar Evers, Watergate, the World Trade Center bombing, and the Unabomber, among others. Another chapter examines the role of the G-man in popular culture over the last century by looking at the portrayal of agents in comics, movies, TV, and radio.

The writers are a distinguished cast of university professors who have researched the FBI, written extensively about it, or gleaned an insider's knowledge of the organization. Most notable among these is Susan Rosenfeld, who served as the FBI's first official historian from 1984 to 1992. Each chapter, whether covering controversies or traditions within the bureau, portrays the agency's relations to the media, the president, Congress, or other law enforcement agencies, including previously unreleased details regarding the FBI's facilities and organizational structure. The guide also includes numerous surveillance and arrest photos, as well as demographics on bureau employees. It's useful for both those researching the FBI and those who are simply intrigued by the agency's complex role in American history. --Jodi Mailander Farrell

Book Description

From the Palmer Raids to the McCarthy era, to ABSCAM and Waco, the FBI has been enmeshed in controversy since its creation. It is also deeply woven into the fabric of our national identity and popular culture. The subject of countless movies, books, and television shows, we are fascinated by its mystique and drama. But how did the bureau that began with a modest 34 investigators in 1908 become the powerful force that it is today, employing over 12,000 agents across the country?

Customer Reviews:

Many glaring omissions.......2005-03-27

I'm doing a research project on J. Edgar Hoover and while I found this useful, easy to use and fact filled...its just amazing when you compare it to other reference materials on the same subjects. All the bad stuff has just been completely left out! In one case that I have found so far they have even gone so far as to outright lie! It's a good jumping off point for sure, but this has definitely been a lesson in checking facts for me, you really have to be careful what you believe.

Good book for background information.......2003-06-11

The FBI Comprehensive Reference Guide is a very good resource for background information on the FBI. I have never seen a better book on the history and workings of the agency. I would recommend it, along with "FBI Careers" (by Thomas Ackerman), to anyone who is seeking FBI employment.

Great book for FBI overview........2002-08-22

"The FBI: A comprehensive reference guide" is a great book for information on FBI history and organization. I learned a lot about how the FBI carries out its mission by reading this book. This is a terrific reference.

FBI and 20th Century US History.......2000-06-05

This book covers the history and evolution of the FBI from 1908 to the present from an objective point of view. It has been well researched by these four scholars. The essays are well written and organized in ten chapters. Each chapter gives an in depth explanation of the origins of the FBI, its changes through the years, the relationship with other state and federal law enforcement agencies as well as its relationship with the President, Congress and the media. The reader not only learns about the history of the FBI, but also will learn about 20th century U.S. history. The chapters on Notable Cases and the FBI's influence on the American popular culture are very interesting. This book is very useful not only for the those who are interested in learn about the FBI but also for historians, sociologists, criminologists.

No matter your question, this book has the answer!.......2000-05-23

When I first bought this book on amazon.com I really was not expecting the vast ammount of information the book containted! The title of a 'comprehensive reference guide' is not over rated!

There is 396 pages chock full of information about the bureau you never knew or could easily find on your own. It even has virtually every movie, show, etc, about the FBI or had an FBI character in it! Truely amazing!

If you are looking to work for the FBI, write about the FBI or have an interest in the FBI you'll love this book...it'll keep you occupied for hours if not days.

You'll learn everything from day-to-day activities to tons of information you can amaze your friends with like the name of the first blind typist with the FBI!

Fidelity - Bravery - Integrity

Pathways to Spiritual Understanding: An Exciting Introduction to the Basics of the Christian Life
Average customer rating:

A wonderful exercise for new and growing christians

Pathways to Spiritual Understanding: An Exciting Introduction to the Basics of the Christian Life
Richard Powers
Manufacturer: Hensley Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1563220237

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful exercise for new and growing christians.......1998-01-27

I did the lessons in this book after being a Christian for several years. It blessed me even though I am not new in the faith. Helps to reinforce important teachings.

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