Powers, Richard 1957- (Richard S. Powers)

PERSONAL:

Born June 18, 1957, in Evanston, IL. Education: University of Illinois, M.A., 1979; studied the cello.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Heerlen, Netherlands. Agent—Gunther Stuhlmann, P.O. Box 276, Becket, MA 01223.

CAREER:

Writer. University of Illinois, writer-in-residence, 1992, then faculty appointments, including Swanlund Chair in English and appointment to the Center for Advanced Study, 1996—. Previously worked as a computer programmer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award for best American fiction from American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, special citation from PEN/Hemingway Foundation, and nomination for best novel award from National Book Critics Circle, all 1986, all for Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance; grant from the MacArthur Foundation, 1989; National Book Critics Circle Award nomination for fiction, 1992, for Gold Bug Variations; National Book Award nomination for fiction, 1993, for Operation Wandering Soul; Lannan Literary Award 1999; National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, 2003, and W.H. Smith Book Award, 2004, both for The Time of Our Singing; National Book Award for fiction, 2006, and finalist, Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 2007, both for The Echo Maker; Corrington Award for Literary Excellence; Dos Passos Prize For Literature.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, Beech Tree (New York, NY), 1985.

Prisoner's Dilemma, Beech Tree (New York, NY), 1988.

The Gold Bug Variations, Morrow (New York, NY), 1991.

Operation Wandering Soul, Morrow (New York, NY), 1993.

Galatea 2.2, Farrar (New York, NY), 1995.

Gain, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1998.

Plowing the Dark, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2000.

The Time of Our Singing, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2003.

The Echo Maker, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Harper's, New Yorker, and Yale Review.

ADAPTATIONS:

The Echo Maker has been adapted for audio, Audiobooks America, 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Richard Powers is the acclaimed writer of ambitious, overtly intellectual novels. A Contemporary Novelists contributor summarized Powers's work, noting that his novels deal with "historical subjects, including 20th-century wars, and his scientific orientations, including cybernetics and biology." The books show Powers's "interests in neurology and cognition, media such as photography and film, and the disasters of contemporary American life," and they use "autobiography to examine the sources and values of fictions," the contributor explained, adding: "What distinguishes Powers's work is his imaginative earnestness, this prodigy's premodern urge to impart his knowledge to readers."

Powers began his literary career in the mid-1980s with Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, in which a nameless narrator becomes obsessed with August Sander's 1914 photograph of three well-dressed men strolling outside Cologne, Germany. The same photograph is later uncovered by a magazine editor who is, in turn, searching for a woman he saw only briefly at an Armistice Day parade. As the narrator's hunt brings him to a greater understanding of the horrific World War I era, so too does it lead him to cross paths with the questing editor. These respective searches prompt a greater sense of the seeming interconnectedness of all things.

Powers next published Prisoner's Dilemma, in which a peculiar family comes to terms with death and, perhaps more important, with themselves. The family is dominated by the father, a retired history teacher who seems to have conducted child-rearing as an extended examination. Now fully grown, the four offspring alternately fear and revere their father, and they each find themselves in difficult emotional circumstances when it appears likely that the patriarch is gravely ill. Each of the characters contributes narration, and the father provides commentary of a different sort by recording tales of life in an imaginary American town. One of the offspring secretly studies the recordings and thus manages to gain a greater understanding of the quirky father.

Upon publication in 1988, Prisoner's Dilemma confirmed Powers's reputation as a daring, insightful writer. Ursula Hegi reported in the New York Times Book Review that Powers's "prose is sensuous, vivid and clear as he establishes the essence of the relationship between [the father] and his children." Maureen Howard proclaimed in Nation that Prisoner's Dilemma is "magnificent" and "grand fiction," while Tom LeClair affirmed in New Republic that Powers, "a major American novelist," had surpassed his earlier work by producing "a better novel, more mature and assured."

The Gold Bug Variations, Powers's third novel, embraces romance, science, and computer technology. The novel's central figure if Stuart Ressler, a biologist involved in DNA research. The narrative shifts back and forth between the 1950s, in which Ressler is pursuing his scientific endeavors, and the 1980s, when he holds a low-level position at a database operation. In the 1980s narrative, two of Ressler's coworkers determine to uncover why he ceased scientific work. The two coworkers eventually become romantically involved, but their relationship is soon threatened by another inquiry. With The Gold Bug Variations, Powers won further recognition as a versatile and demanding storyteller. Louis B. Jones, writing in the New York Times Book Review, found The Gold Bug Variations "a dense, symmetrical symphony in which no note goes unsounded." He added, "Just seeing so much sheer cleverness packed into 639 pages is a remarkable experience." Time's Paul Gray, noting that some readers might find the novel's title—a reference to Edgar Allan Poe's seminal mystery and J.S. Bach's great keyboard work—"a little too cute," but added that "the rest are in for a read of dazzling, sometimes intimidating complexity." The Gold Bug Variations, Gray noted, is a "masterly novel."

Gain presents the long history of Clare Corporation, a fictitious soap manufacturer that resembles Proctor & Gamble, and the life of Laura, a woman who eventually loses her struggle with ovarian cancer. Laura and one of Clare's factories both reside in the same Midwestern city. "Powers lays out parallel narrative lines—one telling the history of American business, the other examining the life of a contemporary homemaker," commented Tom LeClair in a Nation review of Gain, later remarking in the same review: "On a second reading one finds some ingenious connections and subtle analogues between the stories, but the novel essentially relies on old-fashioned suspense." In contrast, Mark Shecner declared in a review for New Leader that "Powers' history of soap [is not] always gripping; it is too much the fever chart in prose—boom, bust, next boom, next bust—populated by characters who only occasionally step out of their textbook personae long enough to become believable." Claiming "character development is not the strong suit of Gain," Shecner asserted: "The book is, rather, a succession of vivid moments, and Powers is never better than in his sharp exposures of the discrepancy between the cruelty of the young nation and its piety."

Although Booklist contributor Joann Wilkinson called Gain both "incredibly moving and incredibly dull," she praised the story for presenting "an ordinary woman's heroic struggle" in "a powerful and poignant" manner. LeClair wrote in his Nation review: "Powers's close focus on a year of her life is what soap opera used to be—women's daily tragedy." LeClair went on to write: "A plucky divorcee with a sulky daughter and virtual-reality son, a spineless lover and bumbling ex-husband, Laura thinks of her house and garden as a ‘safe haven’ from human conditions and disease." Shecner contended in New Leader that readers are not compelled to truly know Laura; he wrote: "But as she dies of cancer, Laura does not quite exist for us except as the sum of her sufferings, her treatments, her incomprehension of everything that is going on." Shecner, considering Powers' immense abilities, expressed surprise that in Gain "the corporation, for all its corruption and obtuseness, shines more brightly than the people it destroys."

In Nation, LeClair "found the richness of information in Gain both emotionally and intellectually compelling." Gain is a "somber book, not to everyone's taste," noted Library Journal contributor Mark Kloszewski, adding, however, that, as is characteristic of Powers's work in general, Gain "has something important to say."

Powers's next novel, Plowing the Dark, revolves around three characters: Steve Spiegel, a one-time engineer who became a poet and then a writer of computer codes; Adie Klarpol, a freelance artist who has left her higher artistic aspirations behind; and Taimur Martin, an Iranian American off to Beirut to teach English. Each character's story is told in a staggered fashion, with Spiegel and Klarpol moving to the Pacific Northwest where Klarpol works for a startup company called the Realization Lab, which focuses on a new all-life-encompassing interactive entertainment that will allow people to, in a sense, live their entertainment, from literature to movies. In the meantime, Martin finds himself taken hostage by Islamic terrorists. As he is held captive, Martin enters his own world of the mind. Speaking of Plowing the Dark, Tom Bissell in the Boston Review commented: "Richard Powers is America's greatest living novelist. So, in literary circles, one is occasionally told, and the judgment gathers force with each new Powers novel." Bissell went on to write in the review that "familiar Powers elements … cohere [in the novel]: the brilliant, disaffected characters; the narrative based upon dueling storylines; and the huge, vaulting themes—in this case, the purpose of art." "A profound meditation on the uses and abuses of the creative imagination, Plowing the Dark is a novel of ideas whose layered complexities will keep literary exegetes busy for years," wrote Charles B. Harris in the Review of Contemporary Fiction. Noting that Plowing the Dark "embraces both the intellect and the emotions, the head and the heart," Christian Century contributor Gordon Houser added: "It rewards the efforts of attentive reading."

The Time of Our Singing is about two generations of a family as told by Joey Strom. The young brother of the famous tenor Jonah Strom, Joey tells the family's story as he, along with his brother and his sister, Ruth, grow up in New York in the 1940s and 1950s, living in neighborhoods of mixed races and ethnic backgrounds. Home schooled and somewhat isolated by their parents, the young Strom children become enamored with music, which is a universal language that does not recognize race or ethnicity, aspects of life that their parents try to raise them to see and live beyond. Joey Strom has another good reason to be concerned with racial issues as his father, David Strom, a white physicist, married Joey's African American mother, Delia Daley, after meeting her during a concert by the famous African American opera singer Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939. The Time of Our Singing "is an impressive, accomplished and important novel and amid the other hype-garlanded and ultimately disappointing Next-Big-Thing and Must-Read novels recently to have crossed the Atlantic it is proof that there are still some writers for whom the telling of necessary, intelligent and engaging tales still matters," wrote G.E. Armitage in the Spectator. Writing in World Literature Today, W.M. Hagen noted that the author's "adaptations of music to language are so stunning … that characters' lives, however interesting, almost become breathing times between performances."

Powers's 2006 novel, The Echo Maker, received the prestigious National Book Award. The story revolves around a meatpacker named Mark Schulter who drives his truck off a road in the Nebraskan countryside. After being in a coma for two weeks, Mark recovers to find that he suffers from Capgras syndrome. A rare neurological disorder named after French psychiatrist Jean Marie Joseph Capgras and sometimes known as "Capgras delusion," the syndrome causes the primary delusion that a close relative or friend has been replaced by an exact double, an imposter who nevertheless acts exactly the same as the real person. In most cases, the sufferer is convinced that several people, if not almost everyone, he or she knows is such an imposter. Schulter believes that his sister, Karin, is an imposter, as well as most everyone else around him. For a while, he comes to trust Gerald Weber, a famous neurologist working on his case. However, as Schulter begins to improve, Weber and Karin's lives begin to change dramatically. "The story proceeds to a surprise ending, but the surprise is no gimmick: it really pulls together the complicated philosophical issues that the story has raised," wrote Daniel M. Murtaugh in Commonweal. Referring to the book as "the latest addition to … [an] impressive body of work," Steven Brzezinski went on to write in the Antioch Review: "The reader is left with a portrait of a post-9/11 world profoundly confused about its own purpose and identity." "From the start, The Echo Maker was a departure for me, with regard to storytelling," Powers told Alec Michod in an interview for the Believer magazine. He explained: "This plot slowly broadened into a story of how the brain cobbles up a highly provisional and improvised sense of self, one that, completely makeshift, still feels solid and continuous from ‘inside,’ even when we are completely dismantled by outside experience." Powers also told Michod that "the book itself [is] a tangled network, to make every theory about the self—from sophisticated neuropsychology to old folk descriptions—part of some distinct character's arsenal for surviving the world and keeping his or her own precarious sense of self intact."

Powers is described in Publishers Weekly as "a writer whose brilliance has so far been matched by his anonymity." The writer is hesitant to disclose personal information. "I really don't see what connection all that has with the work," Powers commented in Publishers Weekly. Such personal disclosure, he asserted, "just creates confusion about the nature of the book." And he noted that public interest in the artist ultimately slights the art itself. "That's what always seems to happen in this culture," he told John F. Baker in the Publishers Weekly interview, "you grab hold of a personality and ignore the work." However, Powers also noted that the absurdity of American culture—which he described as "an amazing mess," also serves as an inspiration in itself. "One of the great things about American fiction today is its outrageousness," he told Baker, adding that "you've only got to read certain writers to realize the country is wonderfully mad."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 93, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Contemporary Novelists, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, spring, 2007, Steven Brzezinski, review of The Echo Maker, p. 392.

Atlantic, July, 2000, review of Plowing the Dark, p. 95; January-February, 2003, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 190.

Believer, February, 2007, "Richard Powers," interview with author.

Book, January 1, 2003, Tom Leclair, "Pitch Perfect," review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 70.

Booklist, June 1, 1993, Martha Schoolman, review of Operation Wandering Soul, p. 1788; May 1, 1995, Nancy Pearl, review of Galatea 2.2, p. 1552; June 1, 1998, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Gain, p. 1726; May 1, 2000, Nancy Pearl, review of Plowing the Dark, p. 1653; October 15, 2002, John Green, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 390; January 1, 2004, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 777; August 1, 2006, Keir Graff, review of The Echo Maker, p. 43; March 1, 2007, Joyce Saricks, review of The Echo Maker, p. 97.

Books, November 19, 2006, Art Winslow, "Richard Powers' New Novel Explores the Mysteries of the Mind," review of The Echo Maker, p. 5.

Choice, September, 1993, R.B. Shuman, review of Operation Wandering Soul, p. 122.

Christian Century, December 13, 2000, Gordon Houser, review of Plowing the Dark, p. 1311.

Christian Science Monitor, October 10, 1995, Ron Fletcher, review of Galatea 2.2, p. 13.

Commonweal, March 23, 2007, Daniel M. Murtaugh, review of The Echo Maker, p. 22.

Economist, February 1, 2003, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 71.

Entertainment Weekly, October 6, 2006, Jennifer Reese, review of The Echo Maker, p. 77.

GQ, June, 1995, Thomas Mallon, review of Galatea 2.2, p. 86.

Harper's, January, 2003, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 69.

Houston Chronicle, Patrick Kurp, "Brain Drain," review of The Echo Maker.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2002, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 1500; July 15, 2006, review of The Echo Maker, p. 696.

Library Journal, May 1, 1993, Charles Michaud, review of Operation Wandering Soul, p. 117; May 15, 1995, David W. Henderson, review of Galatea 2.2, p. 97; May 1, 1998, Marc Kloszewski, review of Gain, p. 140; April 1, 2000, David Dodd, review of Plowing the Dark, p. 132; November 1, 2002, Bette-Lee Fox, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 130; July 1, 2006, Stephen Morrow, review of The Echo Maker, p. 70.

Nation, May 14, 1988, Maureen Howard, review of Prisoner's Dilemma, pp. 680-684; July 10, 1995, Gerald Howard, review of Galatea 2.2, pp. 64-66; July 27, 1998, Tom LeClair, review of Gain, p. 33; October 9, 2006, William Deresiewicz, review of The Echo Maker, p. 25.

New Leader, June 29, 1998, Mark Shecner, review of Gain, p. 26.

New Republic, April 25, 1988, Tom LeClair, review of Prisoner's Dilemma, pp. 40-42.

New Scientist, August 25, 2007, Bryan Appleyard, "Of Capgras and Cranes," review of The Echo Maker, p. 48.

New Statesman, July 5, 1996, review of Galatea 2.2, p. 45.

New Statesman & Society, February 24, 1995, review of Operation Wandering Soul, p. 54.

New Yorker, January 27, 1992, review of The Gold Bug Variations, p. 84; August 21, 1995, John Updike, review of Galatea 2.2, pp. 105-114; December 25, 1995, review of Galatea 2.2, p. 144; July 3, 2000, review of Plowing the Dark, p. 83; January 13, 2003, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 85.

New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001, John Leonard, review of Plowing the Dark, p. 42; December 21, 2006, Margaret Atwood, "In the Heart of the Heartland," review of The Echo Maker, p. 58.

New York Times, June 20, 2000, review of Plowing the Dark, p. 8.

New York Times Book Review, September 1, 1985, Marco Portales, review of Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, p. 14; March 13, 1988, pp. 15-16; September 10, 1989, Ursula Hegi, review of Prisoner's Dilemma, p. 42; August 25, 1991, Louis B. Jones, review of The Gold Bug Variations, pp. 9-10; July 18, 1993, Meg Wolitzer, review of Operation Wandering Soul, p. 19; July 3, 1994, review of Operation Wandering Soul, p. 20; December 3, 2000, review of Plowing the Dark, p. 72; January 26, 2003, Daniel Mendelsohn, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 12.

O, the Oprah Magazine, October, 2006, Vince Passaro, "Inward Bound: An Injured Mind Jolts and Journeys Its Way Back in a Rich, Intriguing New Novel," review of The Echo Maker, p. 237.

Partisan Review, spring, 1992, Pearl K. Bell, review of The Gold Bug Variations, pp. 282-295.

Publishers Weekly, August 16, 1991, John F. Baker, "PW Interviews: Richard Powers," pp. 37-38; April 17, 1995, review of Galatea 2.2, p. 37; April 13, 1998, review of Gain, p. 50; April 17, 2000, review of Plowing the Dark, p. 48; October 7, 2002, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 50; July 10, 2006, review of The Echo Maker, p. 48.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, fall, 1990, Brooke K. Horvath, review of Prisoner's Dilemma, pp. 221-222; spring, 1992, Joseph Tabbi, review of The Gold Bug Variations, p. 145; summer, 2000, Charles B. Harris, review of Plowing the Dark, p165.

Spectator, March 8, 2003, G.E. Armitage, "The Sound of Music," review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 42.

Time, September 2, 1991, Paul Gray, review of The Gold Bug Variations, p. 68; July 19, 1993, John Skow, review of Operation Wandering Soul, pp. 62-63; June 12, 1995, John Skow, review of Galatea 2.2, p. 72; December 25, 1995, review of Galatea 2.2, p. 148.

Times Literary Supplement, March 11, 1988, John Clute, review of Three Farmers on Their Way to aDance, p. 276; April 21, 1989, Jane Sutherland, review of Prisoner's Dilemma, p. 436; May 8, 1992, Roy Porter, review of The Gold Bug Variations, p. 20.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), December 5, 1993, review of Operation Wandering Soul, p. 1; May 15, 1994, review of Operation Wandering Soul, p. 8; July 16, 1995, review of Galatea 2.2, p. 6; December 7, 2003, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 1.

Wall Street Journal, July 13, 1993, Lee Lescaze, review of Operation Wandering Soul, p. A14; July 5, 1995, Merle Rubin, review of Galatea 2.2, p. A7.

Whole Earth Review, winter, 1995, Michael Stone, review of Galatea 2.2, p. 102.

Wilson Library Bulletin, December, 1993, review of The Gold Bug Variations, p. 30.

World Literature Today, January-April, 2005, W.M. Hagen, review of The Time of Our Singing, p. 91.

ONLINE

Boston Review,http://bostonreview.net/ (February 21, 2008), Tom Bissell, review of Plowing the Dark.

NPR,http://www.npr.org/ (November 15, 2006), Neda Ulaby, "Echo Maker Wins National Book Award for Fiction."

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Department of English Web site,http://www.english.uiuc.edu/ (February 21, 2008), biographical sketch of author.