Rating: 
Summary: Powers' worst by far
Review: For most authors I might have given this book 3 stars, but knowing what Powers is capable of makes this very middling effort that much more disappointing. Powers' books in the past have worked on multiple levels, with intriguing ideas meshed with an interesting plot, together with well-realized characters. Parallel plots with interesting cross-links provide food for interpretation and Powers' high-flying prose made reading interesting and fun.This book has none of these merits. First, and most glaringly, the book has no plot. There is no dramatic tension at all. In fact, not until page 250 was there even a challenge or a problem to be solved by the characters. And at that point, it simply felt like an afterthought, and not one that was particularly interesting, either. It's hard to criticize without spoilers, but I found the conclusion to be shallow and silly. I thought the exaggerated character reactions caused by an extremely distant and tenuous military connection to be completely unbelievable. I didn't think the two parallel plots really cross-fertilized and enriched each other in the way they have in Powers' better works. In this book, they seemed like two seperate stories tacked together, as if Powers was "writing by numbers," lacking any more original structure for a novel. Powers' strength has never been his characters, but in this novel they seemed shallower than usual. And they were described almost exclusively in terms of what they had experienced, and not by their actions in the present. (This is related to the lack of plot mentioned earlier.) This gave the characters a two-dimensional feel. Lastly, I didn't find the ideas in the novel to be grand or gripping. Virtual reality seems to me to be a neat little technology, not the monumental, existence changing advance that Powers tries to make it out to be. It just doesn't have the shoulders to support grand ideas and musing that, say, the discovery of the DNA-protein link or game theory do. VR's main application is in making neat video games, which I find it hard to get too worked up about. The above makes it sound like I hated the book, which I didn't. It was a decent read and was a way to enjoyably pass a few evenings. I'm probably overcompensating because of the effusive praise the book has gotten here. But it was an average book at best, and one which left me completely unsatisfied.
Rating: 
Summary: I waited several days prior to writing about this book.
Review: I don't think it matters how long you wait, general thoughts are the best people seem to do with this Author. This is the first book of his I have read, and I agree with those that say it is unlike anything they have read before. I have never read prose that is so frenetic in it's pace, and to make the experience more interesting, each sentence is so engorged with words, that are carefully even artfully chosen, that dense does not begin to describe this Author's use of language. Once you become accustomed to the pace and richness of what he writes, he becomes readable. Umberto Eco comes to mind, but this Author is not as burdensome, you participate as a reader more quickly. I also love Mr. Eco's work; I just never find the reading comfortable. His knowledge of his material is encyclopedic. He creates characters that are as unique and varied and sometimes eccentric, as any other Author I have read. And what does he create with this? There is a group building "The Cavern", think of it as a very early Beta version of the Holodeck on The Enterprise. This is not a place for recreation; their goals are varied and constantly evolving. This room of no time, that is supposed to eventually be the perfect VR World, the perfect forecaster of whatever you like. Or for others an apocalyptic place, it's potential too horrible to imagine. All of this plays with another story in the background that superficially could not be less related, and this is probably the genius of the book. There are a number of Authors writing that try to be clever and original, they fail with the former as they lack the latter. Their stories don't hold up because you know the end, halfway or even less into the book. This time even when you think you know, even after the end has revealed itself, the book stays with you and you continue to sort out the dozens of thoughts and philosophies, that the characters from Countries as different as Armenia, and Ireland, and Korea bring to the story. The book pulls all of your emotional strings, and most of your moral and ethical ones as well. If you find yourself immersed in this Author's writing you are in for one very enigmatic, puzzling, fantastical ride. Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: Overly Dramatic Characters Detract from Story
Review: I found that the story while interesting was full of people who had no concept of perspective. Each character was full of "If I do this wrong then humanity will change for the worse", "I have to work hard to create the future in my vision". How often do people working on special projects ever feel that their personal contributions will affect humanity's use of some technology? Some editorial reviews remarked about the brilliant characters hatching ideas, you may find that the ideas aren't really all that brilliant and the characters are self-involved savants (at best, I'd consider them morons). Each one seems to be striving for martyrdom. If it were a real story then maybe there would be some interest in the characters, but as it stands the characters seem to be overly gothic and flat.
Rating: 
Summary: A Reluctant Thumbs Down
Review: I really want to like Richard Powers. You couldn't pick a richer or more relevant set of themes than the ones he weaves together in this book. But, for me the writing itself fails to live up to the subject matter. To start with, I find Powers' language terrifically overblown. His prose is flamboyantly, self-conciously "poetic" at every possible turn. The same goes for his dialogue. Every character here is so clever, so insightful and articulate that they all blended into one big aphorism-spouting bore. This is a novel of ideas, and ultimately it's the shallowness of the ideas that really kills this book. I found myself cringeing over and over again at the sophmoric level of Powers' insights into his subject matter. His thinking about Art is highly conventional and never really penetrates beyond cliches about beauty and representation. And his approach to technology is clouded by mystifying, gee-whiz, half-digested metaphysics. It's a little like Aesthetics for Dummies meets the Mondo 2000 Guide to Fractals on the set of Frazier. I liked the part about the hostage, though. Makes you think what Powers could do if he tightened his focus and got rid of the conceptual tinkertoys that clutter the rest of the book.
Rating:
Summary: PLOWING THE DIRT
Review: i was really looking foward to read this book,after reading about the plot.but was not happy with the charters at all.its seems to me that mr.powers was threading in waters to deep,and alas sunk.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking, but hard to get into
Review: It took me three tries over the course of a year to get started reading this book; each time I'd get a few dozen pages in and then give up. But the concept - paralleling the stories of the creators of a virtual reality system in Seattle with that of a man held hostage in Beirut, with liberal doses of Yeats, Byzantium and personal angst thrown in - was so intriguing I kept giving it another try, and eventually it took. Still, it's a dense book, full of half-explained concepts and obscure literary references, and it's not for everyone. Sometimes you can get several paragraphs into a chapter before you figure out who's speaking; given the subject matter, I'm sure the resulting sense of disorientation is intentional on Powers' part. "Plowing" explores the world of the internal - everything that happens in the outside world, from failed love affairs to Tianamen Square, has an internal side effect on the characters. Even some of the dialog between people is in italics, like thoughts rather than words. Powers weaves together several stories that illustrate his themes of immersion and isolation: the brilliant mind trapped in a crumbling body, the blind-folded hostage, the computer programmers working day and night to create virtual reality while losing track of the real reality. In all the characters, the hidden internal world, with its past injustices and hurts, has to work itself out before the person can rejoin the outside world. To really appreciate this book, I think you have to be able to step back and look at what Powers is doing. Trying to enjoy it for plot alone could be frustrating and confusing. By the end you have a pretty full sketch of each character, but Powers doesn't lay it all out for you - you have to piece things together as you go along. As an English major, I enjoyed doing the detective work, but it's not for everyone. Knowing a bit about Yeats' life and themes before you begin would enhance understanding of this book. It also helps to have a general knowledge of world events in 1989-90 (Tianamen Square, Beirut, the Berlin Wall), because while Powers does a great job of capturing how it felt to watch these iconic events unfold on television, he doesn't always explain what he's talking about. Overall, "Plowing" was challenging but intriguing. It wasn't always engrossing, but it felt good to finish it, like I had figured out something rather than just been entertained.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking, but hard to get into
Review: It took me three tries over the course of a year to get started reading this book; each time I'd get a few dozen pages in and then give up. But the concept - paralleling the stories of the creators of a virtual reality system in Seattle with that of a man held hostage in Beirut, with liberal doses of Yeats, Byzantium and personal angst thrown in - was so intriguing I kept giving it another try, and eventually it took. Still, it's a dense book, full of half-explained concepts and obscure literary references, and it's not for everyone. Sometimes you can get several paragraphs into a chapter before you figure out who's speaking; given the subject matter, I'm sure the resulting sense of disorientation is intentional on Powers' part. "Plowing" explores the world of the internal - everything that happens in the outside world, from failed love affairs to Tianamen Square, has an internal side effect on the characters. Even some of the dialog between people is in italics, like thoughts rather than words. Powers weaves together several stories that illustrate his themes of immersion and isolation: the brilliant mind trapped in a crumbling body, the blind-folded hostage, the computer programmers working day and night to create virtual reality while losing track of the real reality. In all the characters, the hidden internal world, with its past injustices and hurts, has to work itself out before the person can rejoin the outside world. To really appreciate this book, I think you have to be able to step back and look at what Powers is doing. Trying to enjoy it for plot alone could be frustrating and confusing. By the end you have a pretty full sketch of each character, but Powers doesn't lay it all out for you - you have to piece things together as you go along. As an English major, I enjoyed doing the detective work, but it's not for everyone. Knowing a bit about Yeats' life and themes before you begin would enhance understanding of this book. It also helps to have a general knowledge of world events in 1989-90 (Tianamen Square, Beirut, the Berlin Wall), because while Powers does a great job of capturing how it felt to watch these iconic events unfold on television, he doesn't always explain what he's talking about. Overall, "Plowing" was challenging but intriguing. It wasn't always engrossing, but it felt good to finish it, like I had figured out something rather than just been entertained.
Rating:
Summary: Blinkered intelligence
Review: Mr.Powers possesses grand ambition. He chooses to write about large and potentially profound topics. In this novel he gestures towards the potential use and abuse of the human imagination - the image he chooses is that of a blank white room, suggesting the interior of a human skull along with the proverbial bare page confronting a budding author. In one strand of the novel, this room is filled with borrowed art and other worldly concerns, imaginatively re-invented through recent computer technology. In the other strand, an isolated mind first covers the walls with memories, focused upon a former lover, and later partly disintegrates through lack of contact with the outside world. Salient to each situation is the idea of how much effort should be devoted to representing the world, and how much to living in it - while not a simple moralist, Powers seems to be warning against representation divorced from any heed to social and political realities, be these personal or global; that is to say, he at least complicates the notion of art for art's sake. The danger of becoming obsessed with the image, and forgetting the reality, is explored through the ultimate use made of the beauty of the virtual room, and through references to religions', particularly Islam's, prohibitions on representation. Powers also seems to be making a plea that we all need each other, for in high-tech Seattle, a team of people must work together in order to succeed, while in the hostage's cell in Lebanon, a mind atrophies when denied company.
*
At the end of the book, Powers acknowledges a debt to the memoirs of Western hostages held in Lebanon. His research certainly gives realism to this part of the story. He also uses literary techniques favoured by bestselling authors, such as Stephen King, to grasp the readers' attention. Thus, the protagonist, Taimur Martin, is quickly placed in jeopardy, he experiences pain and humiliation, and the entire tale relies on the tension in waiting for his potential release or escape. In a sense, this is all legitimate and engaging storytelling, but it does have a cliched and manipulative aspect. The depiction of the suffering mind is partly convincing, but pales when compared to, say, Solzhenitsyn, or Primo Levi (very high standards, admittedly). A weakness is also revealed in Power's ability to create characters - Taimur's thinks and converses with his captors much like he does with his remembered lover and, what is more, much like the way Adie and Steve and the all others in Seattle deal with each other. Prime among the conversational strategies of all these characters is a recourse to weak humour - weak puns, irony, and benign sarcasm - in Seattle this is merely annoying, but in the context of horrible depravation in Lebanon it is distracting, unconvincing, and inappropriate.
*
The Seattle strand of the book makes up its bulk - around three quarters of its pages. It is structured as a quest. This exact same structure is used by Powers in 'The Gold Bug Variations' and in 'Galatea 2.2'. Again, it is a proven way to co-opt a reader's interest, but in this novel the mechanism is obvious, and the quest itself of questionable appeal - consequently it feels rather crude. There are a large number of characters - they are differentiated by quirks and mannerisms, yet in conversation they blend, in part due to the failed humour mentioned previously, and also due to the relentless parading of references to works of art, literature, and music. This parade is especially galling as there seems to be an implicit thesis that in order to be part of the club of 'intelligent', 'interesting' people, one must be familiar with a canon of 'great works' - the works chosen are very conservative, as in other of Powers' books, and can not legitimately be said to be simply alerting the reader to the existence of works otherwise unknown. Another shared characteristic, both within this novel and across Powers' other books, is the attitude taken towards, and the depiction of, love. Every character adopts a nostalgic stance to love. Love largely occurs in the past; love is passive and motivates few actions; when love does bear consequences, as in the birth of a child, then this is rendered in a perfunctory, almost abstract way. It is as if Powers' wants love to be important, but is unskilled in actually embodying it living within his story. His characters are emotional adolescents. The core of this problem lies in his refusal to address the darker currents in human nature. If his characters have sins, then they are ones of omission. Malice, hate, true envy, jealousy, are not genuinely present; consequently his characters 'do' very little to each other. If they are reprehensible, it is for their lack of constancy or lack of passion. They are bland and, at the very least, half empty. Powers is never going to create a Macbeth, or a Hamlet, or an Iago. You might think that those holding and abusing Taimur in Lebanon embody darker forces, but they are hardly characters, being inarticulate and skeletal, and so their malice is not embodied but abstract.
*
Powers' language deserves special comment. I am baffled by those who call it poetic or beautiful. To me, it is ungainly, approximating the abbreviated rhythms heard in technical gatherings, conferences, or in recent journalism. It reads more like an introductory paragraph in 'New Scientist' or in 'Wired' than a poem. There is a laziness to his insistence of adding an extra clause, or several, when a single, well-crafted one would be far more potent and graceful (to some extent Don Delillo shares this failing, and he too is revered by some for his style). For beauty in prose I would turn to John Hawkes, or Samuel Beckett, or Denis Johnson.
*
Overall, it is hard to recommend this book. Powers has strengths, and these are probably best showcased in 'The Gold Bug Variations'. He has glaring deficiencies too. I doubt he will overcome them, since his writing, in its detail and in its overall structure, has not progressed from that novel to this. To read him is to come into contact with an 'encyclopedic' mind, as widely said, but, for mine, it is a mind in many ways immature.
Rating:
Summary: Blinkered intelligence
Review: Mr.Powers possesses grand ambition. He chooses to write about large and potentially profound topics. In this novel he gestures towards the potential use and abuse of the human imagination - the image he chooses is that of a blank white room, suggesting the interior of a human skull along with the proverbial bare page confronting a budding author. In one strand of the novel, this room is filled with borrowed art and other worldly concerns, imaginatively re-invented through recent computer technology. In the other strand, an isolated mind first covers the walls with memories, focused upon a former lover, and later partly disintegrates through lack of contact with the outside world. Salient to each situation is the idea of how much effort should be devoted to representing the world, and how much to living in it - while not a simple moralist, Powers seems to be warning against representation divorced from any heed to social and political realities, be these personal or global; that is to say, he at least complicates the notion of art for art's sake. The danger of becoming obsessed with the image, and forgetting the reality, is explored through the ultimate use made of the beauty of the virtual room, and through references to religions', particularly Islam's, prohibitions on representation. Powers also seems to be making a plea that we all need each other, for in high-tech Seattle, a team of people must work together in order to succeed, while in the hostage's cell in Lebanon, a mind atrophies when denied company.
*
At the end of the book, Powers acknowledges a debt to the memoirs of Western hostages held in Lebanon. His research certainly gives realism to this part of the story. He also uses literary techniques favoured by bestselling authors, such as Stephen King, to grasp the readers' attention. Thus, the protagonist, Taimur Martin, is quickly placed in jeopardy, he experiences pain and humiliation, and the entire tale relies on the tension in waiting for his potential release or escape. In a sense, this is all legitimate and engaging storytelling, but it does have a cliched and manipulative aspect. The depiction of the suffering mind is partly convincing, but pales when compared to, say, Solzhenitsyn, or Primo Levi (very high standards, admittedly). A weakness is also revealed in Power's ability to create characters - Taimur's thinks and converses with his captors much like he does with his remembered lover and, what is more, much like the way Adie and Steve and the all others in Seattle deal with each other. Prime among the conversational strategies of all these characters is a recourse to weak humour - weak puns, irony, and benign sarcasm - in Seattle this is merely annoying, but in the context of horrible depravation in Lebanon it is distracting, unconvincing, and inappropriate.
*
The Seattle strand of the book makes up its bulk - around three quarters of its pages. It is structured as a quest. This exact same structure is used by Powers in 'The Gold Bug Variations' and in 'Galatea 2.2'. Again, it is a proven way to co-opt a reader's interest, but in this novel the mechanism is obvious, and the quest itself of questionable appeal - consequently it feels rather crude. There are a large number of characters - they are differentiated by quirks and mannerisms, yet in conversation they blend, in part due to the failed humour mentioned previously, and also due to the relentless parading of references to works of art, literature, and music. This parade is especially galling as there seems to be an implicit thesis that in order to be part of the club of 'intelligent', 'interesting' people, one must be familiar with a canon of 'great works' - the works chosen are very conservative, as in other of Powers' books, and can not legitimately be said to be simply alerting the reader to the existence of works otherwise unknown. Another shared characteristic, both within this novel and across Powers' other books, is the attitude taken towards, and the depiction of, love. Every character adopts a nostalgic stance to love. Love largely occurs in the past; love is passive and motivates few actions; when love does bear consequences, as in the birth of a child, then this is rendered in a perfunctory, almost abstract way. It is as if Powers' wants love to be important, but is unskilled in actually embodying it living within his story. His characters are emotional adolescents. The core of this problem lies in his refusal to address the darker currents in human nature. If his characters have sins, then they are ones of omission. Malice, hate, true envy, jealousy, are not genuinely present; consequently his characters 'do' very little to each other. If they are reprehensible, it is for their lack of constancy or lack of passion. They are bland and, at the very least, half empty. Powers is never going to create a Macbeth, or a Hamlet, or an Iago. You might think that those holding and abusing Taimur in Lebanon embody darker forces, but they are hardly characters, being inarticulate and skeletal, and so their malice is not embodied but abstract.
*
Powers' language deserves special comment. I am baffled by those who call it poetic or beautiful. To me, it is ungainly, approximating the abbreviated rhythms heard in technical gatherings, conferences, or in recent journalism. It reads more like an introductory paragraph in 'New Scientist' or in 'Wired' than a poem. There is a laziness to his insistence of adding an extra clause, or several, when a single, well-crafted one would be far more potent and graceful (to some extent Don Delillo shares this failing, and he too is revered by some for his style). For beauty in prose I would turn to John Hawkes, or Samuel Beckett, or Denis Johnson.
*
Overall, it is hard to recommend this book. Powers has strengths, and these are probably best showcased in 'The Gold Bug Variations'. He has glaring deficiencies too. I doubt he will overcome them, since his writing, in its detail and in its overall structure, has not progressed from that novel to this. To read him is to come into contact with an 'encyclopedic' mind, as widely said, but, for mine, it is a mind in many ways immature.
Rating:
Summary: I agree: well-written, BUT....
Review: My comments here will be mostly questions, as that is what this book left me with. Questions like: why did Powers choose a period ten years ago to focus on? Why focus on technology ten years old? If there was a group developing VR to the degree shown in this book, where is it now (or is that the Point, that the military en-Gulfed it?) I kept having to remind myself that the story was happening in 1990, not 2000, despite the level of sophistication of the Cavern. Was that technology really around back then? I tried very hard but failed to see the connection between the hostage story and the VR story. Best I could come up with was the Nature of Perception, how our view of the world and reality is affected by circumstances. Perhaps my perception of this book is colored by the science fiction I have read, and my work as an artist and computer programmer. I wanted this book to be a different one. I wanted it to be Galatea meets VR. I wanted it to be about the current day, and current technology, and what it means to us now and to our future. There must have been some point to writing an "historical" novel about a time period so very recent, but I did not see it. I enjoyed the book quite a bit. I appreciated the references to art history mixed in with computer science. But I found myself wondering just how many people happen to have a background in both? If he had been making off-hand remarks about some other arcane areas I'd have been pretty bored, I think. Lost, at least. My favorite by Powers is still Goldbug. There was a book where it made sense to go back in (fairly) recent time, and to mix music with computer science. The characters were more alive in Goldbug. I found it hard to relate or empathize with those in Plowing the Dark. I, too, have turned my back on the world of Fine Art, and endevor to find a life with computers, but I couldn't quite figure out Klarpol's problem. I found a recent interview with Powers, but these questions remain unsolved. I'd appreciate other readers' input. Thanks - Bob (renolin@adelphia.net)
|
