Rating: 
Summary: Goldberg or Humbug?
Review: Approaching the moment of four decades of exposure to Bach's Goldberg Variations and two decades of daily practice in cellular biology and information technology, having read all of Poe's works, having spoken Dutch since the beginning of consciousness and seen all of de Bles' works, it was just a matter of time before stumbling over this book.While the current rating of 4.5 after 38 reviews suggest a high approval rating, dissenters mostly opt for 1 star. Although I gave the likes of Gaddis' Recognitions, Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest the maximal score, both my personal taste and background keep me from singing Hosanna here. Before going in particulars, I would explain my score as: 4-5 for ambition, 3 for scope, and 1-2 for execution. Like Cannes 2000, I think that Powers is his own worst enemy in this book. This valiant attempt at a contrapunctal novel, emulating Bach's masterpiece by interweaving the stories of three characters (voices/themes), is completely undermined by Power's consistent violation of established rules. One might quote the slogan "no rules, just right", but that requires technical skills -Bach, Beethoven in music, Pynchon, Wallace in literature-, that poor Richard lacks almost completely. For a contrapunctal piece to work the building blocks need to be simple and versatile and all acts of composition need to be geared towards generating tension by interaction and simultaneous development of the themes. Good examples of success are the mid-period episodes of Seinfeld that Jerry co-wrote with Larry David. Each of the characters is just beyond ok, their individual adventures are arcane, but their simultaneous development leads to a result (Gestallt) that is infinitely funnier than the sum of the ingredients. While the fact that the three main characters in this book are as three dimensional as card-board cutouts and that their individual storylines are bland can make for good counterpoint, Powers proves no reincarnation of Bach, Bruckner or Reger, but rather of good old Sorabji. As such, this book could be subtitled "Opus Novicembalisticum". At the onset of the book, just the first hundred pages took me longer than the three post-modern masterpieces mentioned above combined, Powers not only showers you with a style best described as raw sewage, but also leaves you completely in the dark and cold, why o' why Agnes Deigh's far cousin would throw her whole life upside down to spend her nights with the wrestler and the toddler. On top of that we get an overly long, murky and amateurish introduction to molecular biology and a romantization of doing bench work that is clearly not based on professional first person experience. While things do improve along the way and the last 300 pages contain passages that sometimes approach the point of being readable, clunkiness rules throughout. Looking back at the story from the book's conclusion, that took the likes of Richard Feynman approximately 638 less pages to describe, it is just painful to see how both the quest for the triplet code and Bach's 30 variations have been little more than odd props, and how shallow a cause Janet Koss has been. On top of that, I would like to add a small note on Powers' Joycian tendencies. In weaving his webs of puns at the detriment of story and reader that require knowledge of molecular biology, Bach, Glenn Gould and the Dutch language, just to name a few, Powers does not display erudition, but a compulsive onanistic need to blind by a rather faint light. Although I have to acknowledge a sense of ambition and desire for architecture throughout this book, thinking of that most notorious of works entirely written in "triplet code", Ludwig's Opus 57 Appassionata, one can only conclude: "Dicky boy, you ain't no Beethoven"!
Rating: 
Summary: Here are two possibilities
Review: Firstly, contrary to a recent book that documented the trip that Einstein's Brain took cross-country, said brain is still functioning and is writing novels. Secondly, that whatever "intelligence" created this book, were it to be compared to IBM'S "Deep Blue" computer, would find the aforementioned blue computer is comparatively a silicon moron. "The Gold Bug Variations" if the reviews are the reference point, is the best work that Mr. Richard Powers has written, as judged by his readers. For me this was one of the more astonishing pieces of literature I have read. I have one more book that I have yet to experience, but while I dare say nothing can top this I would be thrilled were he to surpass what his talents produced here. I do not believe he has received the attention that is his due as an Author, neither by those who hand out awards, nor does he seem to be widely read. In the past I have stated this could be that his work was an acquired taste. That is not only a comment I wish to retract, but also to label as tentative at best, and cowardly at worst. The subjects this man uses as the frameworks for his dazzling stories are difficult, they are extremely complex, they are intimidating, and in my unmitigated opinion require an activity that most of what appears as best selling books require none of, and that is thought. An arrogant statement? nonsense. I read my fair share of entertainment, light reading, the proverbial "quick read", but I do not mistake these for literature that will be read a century or more from now. Powers' command of his subject, of general knowledge is remarkable. His prose is not not cocktail party throwaway banter passing for understanding, nor as some suggest are his books a variation on a theme. To the extent there can be a comparison, it is to show how much more the original could have been. For those of you who saw the movie "Amadeus" please recall the "trifle" that the Emperor botched, and Salieri wrote. Mozart then sat and improvised "variations" that did not so much build on the original as lay waste to it and then assemble what the original composer could only recognize, only envy, but never create. Knowing and understanding are distant relations at best, that the Author can bring a degree of insight to these subjects to anyone with an inquiring mind, is one of his many talents. This time around the Author is doing variations on the basis of life as we do not understand it, or how some mistakenly believe they do. "Ressler knew how incalculably unlikely it was that a molecular duplication trick could hit upon a structure complex enough to probe its own improbability..." The "duplication trick" is the activity that DNA performs, a function is has been performing for about 3 billion years, a trick we still know little about, dangerously little. Powers almost seems to predict the future with the statements or queries he offers of what is to come. This was written over a decade ago, however the "mapping" of the Human Genome was noted at a White House ceremony only weeks ago. And 2 weeks ago on the cover of The New York Times we were given a glimpse of what this knowledge could mean to us as a race. A "performance artist" together with some who only have the physical skills and not the requisite intelligence to ask, whether we should, rather just do it because we can, produced a rabbit. Not your typical Easter Bunny this fella. You see by playing with Nature, by manipulating the gene that makes a certain Jellyfish glow in the dark, this "artist" now has a funny bunny that glows bright green in the dark when under "black light". No longer limited to Rock Posters that glow when that deep purple is turned on as a light, now we have a living creature manipulated for absolutely no reason other than one person had the money, and the other folks the means, and neither were encumbered by judgment. Harmless? Sorry, it is many things, but harmless it is not. It is a perfect example of what this book tries to teach, not the only issue, but I believe the main point. As a species we do, once we can, to date we have been comparatively lucky. The splitting of the Atom allowed for one display that like the soldier who says, "I am not afraid" prior to a battle, is a person you want to be far from when the battle begins. The same can be said for those who were not frightened at some level when they witnessed what they unleashed, not what they completely understood, just what they could do. This man's work is extraordinary for the level of competence with which he shares it, the relevance it has even though "only" a novel, and finally for the eerie prescience that Mr. Powers appears to have. No one is this lucky. He is not the first to be under appreciated in his time, and I have no desire that this continue. Even if his work remains comparatively unknown when matched against the sales of the most recent stream of courtroom boredom, he is in good company. There was a time when another artist could not give away his work, and later, his "Portrait Of Dr. Gachet" when last made available brought $82.5 million dollars. This time I hope the genius, the original thinking, the daring, and the courage, are recognized now. An Author he is, but he is also oh so much more.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliantly boring!
Review: I find that I must haltingly agree with a few of the more negative reviews of Powers' work. "The Gold Bug Variations", while at times brilliant and wondrous, is most often boring, needlessly confusing, and even at times completely nonsensical. I won't bother with a rehash of the plot (what little plot there is), but I will mention that I found it to be dry and underwhelming. Not much happens plot-wise to get the reader interested, and although Powers tries to flesh out his characters to the best of his ability, they all draw from the same vocabulary and end up sounding the same. I understand that this sprawling post-modernist work isn't "just" supposed to be about plot, but at least Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest had plenty of it to keep the reader caring. Instead, Gold Bug Variations drags you along with an uninspiring plot that doesn't twist or turn but instead remains immediately obvious from the very beginning. Powers injects lengthy passages (another reader described them as "sermons", which isn't far off) that deal with the nature of the genetic code, computer programming, music and even obscure Flemish painters. At first I found this stuff incredibly interesting, but around page 300 or so I realized that the writing was dry, uninformative and (worst of all) boring. Powers tries to stay above the technical jargon that you inevitably descend into when trying to treat a subject such as the genetic code seriously, but he makes an equally fatal error. Whilst treating the subject he becomes turgid and unnecessarily confusing. Pages 317 through 353 are a prime example of the problems he encounters--what interesting information he offers is obscured by his own tedious style. This problem only gets worse as you read on. Around page 400, Powers starts inserting meaningless strings of (what appears to be) computer code into the book, and his reflections about the genetic code become even more confusing and annoying. In my opinion, comparing "The Gold Bug Variations" to "Godel, Escher, Bach" is unfair to the latter in several respects, not the least of which is that Hofstadter takes pains to keep his writing accessible and interesting. Powers makes no such effort. Obviously this book has been met with a large amount of positive response, and I can respect that. Some portions of the book *are* interesting, and Powers certainly appears to know his stuff. But in the end I was left confused about what to admire about this book-- as a piece of fiction it's poorly written and the plot moves excruciatingly slowly. As a meditation on the problems of genetic coding I found it turgid and uninteresting.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant but unfulfilling
Review: I had not heard of Richard Power before I picked up a copy of The Goldbug Variations, so I didn't have much of a preconceived idea of what to expect. First thing I did was open up the book randomly to a few pages and read some sentences to get the authors general style. First I noticed the density of the style. I'm ok with that. I tend to like dense and even write that way some times. But then I noticed that as far as I could tell the sentences didn't really mean anything. Well they would probably mean something in context. Right off the bat I must praise Richard Powers. He is brilliant. His mind grasps language structure, word choice, and metaphor in unique and deep ways. Several sentences evoked awe at his ability to craft them. I cannot but hope that someday I can posses some small measure of his skill. Though he possesses an astounding ability at word craft, Richard Powers has written a bad book. Except for the crafting of individual sentences and word usage, he has failed in every facet of novel writing. To be honest even the writing mechanics themselves are flawed in several points. Richard Powers seems to be confused that the point of writing is to communicate [I am aware of and embrace several other purposes for writing. But at its core writing is about communicating]. Reading this book one gets the impression that he thinks writing is to obfuscate and show off his brain. The style is dense with pretension and his attempts to foster wonder and beauty are stilted and mechanistic. From the very beginning he loves to tell us how someone's cells yearn for something or describe blushing as a long complex string of physiological details. It's as if he is a man who has lost all concept of how beauty actually feels. With his effuse mechanistic descriptions he has sapped all the beauty from the universe and then tries to put it back. He fails. This is a book utterly devoid of beauty or wonder, for Powers has reduced all transcendences to attempted mechanistic explanations. Powers' density is weight without substance. The inane verbosity doesn't add beauty just more obscurity. Its like he is a stroke victim who thinks he has a very important message to get across. He tries multiple ways to express it. Pilling word upon word, unintelligible sound on sound, but after all the gasping and huffing, all the loud clamoring and he still has not said anything. This leads to another alarming, if minor point. About five percent of the sentences in this book mean nothing. There is no way around this fact. You read the sentence, look for clues in the context, try alternate definitions and after all that work the sentence is gibberish. This annoyed me. Powers seems to think that because he is 'literary' he can write gibberish and we should conclude its brilliance. Well sorry, but to me gibberish is gibberish no matter how well it reads. Most, but by no means all, of the obscurity occurs during the long pompous narrative sermons that fill the book. The book would be about three hundred pages shorter if he had cut out all the sections that prattle on and on in inane verbosity about evolution and music. Even during these tirades, he slips track into entire meaningless paragraphs. How aggravating I found these sections cannot be underestimated. What plot exists is driven by a cast of incomprehensible characters. No actual people live, think, act, or talk like these people. And most nauseating, they all talk the exact same way. Every character speaks with Richard Powers' dense pompous verbiage. Conversations are filled with bizarre metaphors and over intelligent quips. On top of this, they act in completely unexpected ways incongruent with previous actions or statements about their character. People fall in and out of love without any rhyme or reason. An intrinsic character quality is suddenly mentioned after two hundred pages of interaction with that character. Interestingly that trait was absent or even contradicted for the previous actions and descriptions of the character. Except for bits awe felt here or there for a particularly well-crafted sentence, this book is a thoroughly un-enjoyable read. You will be pulled through page after page not knowing what is being said and expecting that nothing has really been said. This book will not draw you into a higher appreciation of anything. If this book accomplishes anything, it will more likely confuse or depress. It will not change you. In many ways this book is similar to the piece of music off of which the title is based. They are both masterful in creation but devoid of any real heart or emotion. No one will be driven to new heights of passion through this or the Goldburg variations.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: I have read this book twice, and will probably read it again (I reread my favourite books - Anna Karenina 4x, War and Peace 2x, Lord of the Rings 4 or 5x - it is like taking a favourite walk - you always see something new and it never seems boring, even though you know what to expect).It is a challenging book and difficult to follow at times but well worth the effort. I would love to have met Jan O'Deigh or Stuart Ressler in real life. I am looking forward to reading Powers' other books.
Rating:
Summary: But will they be reading this book 100 years from now?
Review: I honestly don't know what to make of this novel.
Quite a while ago I was watching "Book TV" on CSPAN2 (I admit it, I'm a nerd - I should have been watching a basketball game like everybody else) and saw a group of book critics discussing contemporary literature. One of the critics was complaining about the poor quality of the reviews on Amazon.com - and I'm certain this review will be a perfect example of that claim. Then he was asked what novelists, writing today, will people be reading 100 years from now. He said Richard Powers. I was embarrassed because I wasn't even familiar with this writer but I wanted to get with the program and read some of his books. I think I bought four of his books, started them all, and this is the only one I finished.
Okay - this book is both amazing and as boring as hell. I am fortunate to have a background in molecular biology so that part wasn't too confusing. It was remarkable how the writer blended all the components of music, biology, painting, librarianship, cryptography, and romance. That part was great. The bad part is that the characters weren't really what I called likeable. The only one I cared about was Ressler as a young man. The one that narrated the most, the librarian - I can't even remember her name - was annoying! I cannot imagine what those two saw in each other, or why they gave a rat's %&# about Ressler's life story. The librarian was so obsessed with the Ressler story and her humdrum love affair that she quit her job!
Yes, this novel was chore (like doing sit-ups) but I guess it was worth it. I often listened to *The Goldberg Variations* while I read it hoping that that would somehow unleash some sort of passion in me that would help me enjoy the final four hundred pages. No dice. Reading Richard Powers is like reading Nabokov where Nabokov is really trying to show off and drop the readers "who move their lips while they read" by the wayside, but I have to say Nabokov is more fulfilling - he has genuine passion and humor in his novels.
I'd like to give Powers another chance. Two questions for readers of this (hopefully not too dreadful) Amazon review: which Powers novel should I read next, and do you think readers and students will really be reading *The Gold Bug Variations* in 100 years? Email me.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly boring!
Review: It took me three trys to crack this thing. The first was ten years ago, in a triumphant mood, after successfully making my way through The Name of the Rose (which, at the time, I was terribly proud of). I read about a hundred pages, and put it aside.
Flash forward 8 years. I had the notion to go back and finish all the books I'd started and abandoned - this was the first on the list. Again, about a hundred pages in, I stalled and moved onto something easier.
So my record, when I picked the thing up for the third time, last month, wasn't good. But I was determined. And I stuck with it. And, I should say that it took a lot of determination to stick with it after that first fatal hundred pages. This is a dense book, both in terms of information, and in terms of the actual style. Actually, especially in terms of the style.
The style is dense, clumsy, overwritten in every sense of the word, vague, diffuse, and every damn character sounds exactly like the narrator. The plot then, becomes this sort of vague cloud of related events, drifting, in a leisurely sort of way, through time. And occasionally interrupted by digressions on music and genetics and information theory.
Yes, it's frustrating. Very frustrating. And then, after pushing on past that 100 page mark, I began to get used to it. To like it even. There's a certain ponderousness to the story: the interactions of three main characters possessing varying degrees of social ineptitude coupled with a tale of (perhaps) scientific failure. And the style, flailing and digressing and getting really, really excited about this random little scientific tangent (look at this! Ain't this just sooo cool!) fits both the vagueries of the story and the personal failings of the characters to a T.
And, ultimately, I found myself, despite myself, caring for these characters a great deal. Like another reviewer, I finished the last 200 pages in a fever, desperate to know the end (despite the fact that, virtually the whole tale is predeteremined from the beginnning), terrified that something terrible will befall the characters, just needing to know the fate of all these ideas.
24 hours later, I can't get the book out of my head. I can't say, for sure, what it means just yet. I can say that it profoundly effected me. I can also say that it joins the short list of books - Infinite Jest, JR, Gravity's Rainbow, Dhlagren (the usual suspects) - that I will be reading and re-reading throughout my life.
As a postscript, regarding the comparisons that some have drawn between this work and Godel, Escher, Bach (another book that I have enjoyed). I find them to be accurate, but shallow. Both books treat the same general field. Godel, Escher, Bach, however, is, pretty pictures and clever dialogues aside, an oversimplification that leaves the reader (myself, at age 17 included) convinced that (s)he knows a great deal about a number of rather technical and complex fields, leading to inevitable embrassament when one encounters anyone with actual knowledge of said fields. The Goldbug Variations, on the other hand, leaves one exactly as confused as one ought to be.
Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: The Instinct for Code-Breaking
Review: Reminiscent of James Joyce's "Ulysses," The Gold Bug Variations (which has 32 chapters) loosely parallels the structure of Bach's Goldberg Variations while echoing the code-breaking imperatives which drive Poe's short story "The Gold Bug." Powers, like Joyce, uses erudite wordplay and arcane allusions not for their own sake, but to create vivid, three-dimensional characters and to explore the nature of interpretation. The Gold Bug Variations is a thoroughly engaging study of three vital and complex characters whose lives become entangled in a Gordian Knot of a narrative which challenges the reader who would solve it. A former pioneer in genetics research (Stuart Ressler -- aka "wrestler") is the book's protagonist, and his attempts to decipher the DNA code in the 1950s shape the motivations/desires of his two present-day friends, a quirky fine-arts doctoral candidate and a reclusive librarian.The introductory chapter is a poetic microcosm (a seed-germ) of the entire book, and evokes a sense of wonder which is fully commensurate with Power's vision. If you've ever wondered how an entire encyclopedia can be contained on a CD, or how many angels can stand on the head of a pin, I believe that you will find some answers in this incredible book.
Rating:
Summary: Being Human
Review: This book is one of the most elegant statements of what it means to be a human being that I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: I have a love-hate relationship with this book
Review: This book was at the top of my AlexLit recommendation list, and I have to admit that Hypatia hit a home run with this book. It took me a long time to finish, mostly due to never being able to give it all of my attention, instead having to catch a chapter here and there when I could amongst all the moving plans, preparations, and actual occurrence. While reading it, I could not help myself from remarking to several people how it was the best science fiction book I had read in 10 years. The book is two stories: the first is that of Jan O'Deigh, a reference librarian at a branch in New York City who finds herself caught up by Franklin Todd in discovering just who is this mysterious Dr. Stuart Ressler, whom Todd works with on the graveyard shift for a computer processing firm. The other story is that of Stuart Ressler, a young PhD who sets out in 1957 to crack the genetic code and falls in love with a member of his research team. The two stories are quickly revealed as love stories--but not just sexual love between the two couples, but an extended love of discovery, of knowledge, and of friendship. "Science Fiction?" you ask. This sounds like one of those mainstream literature books that's all about adultery and real life. It all depends on how you define science fiction. I've been accused by Jill that I'm the worst hypocrite when it comes to defining science fiction by limited it to what I like. For example, I despise David Brin's The Postman so much that I refuse to call it science fiction. To me, The Postman is a warmed over western, and not even a very good western at that. I was not surprised that Kevin Costner wanted to film that book--its politically jingoistic nature and focus on the strong individual overcoming all was just the kind of role that he would have written for himself, and often does. The background to The Postman may imply science fiction for those who let anything about a possible future be defined as such, but I maintain that science fiction is fiction that contains a strong element of science to it. The Postman is a fantasy, albeit [1] a depressing, end-of-the-world sort. Which brings me back to the book at hand, which is so consumed with science that it nearly overloads the reader. The Gold Bug Variations is not set in the future, though, and that's why most people would question its SF credentials. Instead, it is set in the most recent past--the present of when it was published. A reader that comes to The Gold Bug Variations without a scientific back- ground, or at least some basic knowledge of genetics, will soon find themselves drowning within the terms that infuse the book, but it works because the viewpoint character is a reference librarian who has fallen deeply for a geneticist. There are constant references to cracking the code of the central mystery, items occurring in genus and phyla. Even beyond my personal definition of science fiction, it even matches that broader definition of SF as fiction about worlds that are not. In the end of this book, an action occurs using ATM and other financial devices that did not occur (and I question whether it could ever have occurred) in our world. For the book at hand, it is believable, a strong evidence for a writer creating a self- consistent world-view. This is all beside the point that I really want to make, and that this is simply the best book I've read since I finished A.S. Byatt's Possession, discussed long ago in Installment #7, I think. I still remember the thrill of ending Byatt's novel, of the hair of my arms sticking up in a static reaction because of how everything in the book just came out "right." How I kept reading slower and slower, trying to make Byatt's world last just a moment longer, trying to delay arriving at that last word. Powers' novel affected me differently, but just as powerfully. I picked it up one night around 8pm. I was around page 400, I recall, and started reading, and kept reading, and continued reading. I knew it was getting late, but I could not stop; I needed to finish this book. I was propped up in bed, Jill fast asleep beside me as I sped through the pages. I had to know what happened to these people. As the end got nearer and nearer, tears rolled down my cheeks. I had gotten to know these people so well in 600+ pages that I was entirely sympathetic to their agony and joy. That's powerful stuff, folk. I can not recommend this book too highly. It shares a lot of my feelings about literature--that it can be intellectually rewarding and emotive at the same time, that it need not be an adventure to be engaging, that it be about individuals and about the world. I need to find out if Powers' other novels achieve this same intensity, but I guess it will have to wait until I have the time to read the rest of Byatt's oeuvre as well.
|
