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Five Novels by Richard Powers
Requirements: EPUB Viewer, 2.71 MB,
Overview: Powers's characters themselves shift between the impulse to connect and its inevitable crash and burn; between the Emersonian urge to embrace the difficult ad-lib of the world and the Dickinsonesque need to recoil from its evident bruising into the supple sanctuary of the aesthetic enterprise, to withdraw into the secured refuge of a novel, a piece of music, a movie house, a museum, even cyberspace. Although long reluctant to encourage the distraction of biography, Powers has lived--like his characters--sustained within a curiously similar geography; never quite at home, never quite comfortable with belonging, shifting between engagement and escape. Powers was born 18 June 1957 in Evanston, Illinois, the fourth of five children, two older sisters and a brother and one younger brother. Early on, in the mid-1960s, his father, a high school principal with a working-class background, moved the family to the north Chicago suburb of Lincolnwood, an older neighborhood, Powers recalls, that was heavily Jewish. "My sisters and brothers and I would be just about the only kids in school for the high holy days."
Genre: General Fiction/Classics
The Gold Bug Variations
First released in 1991, the novel intertwines the discovery of the chemical structure of DNA with the musicality of Johann Sebastian Bach's harpsichord composition, the Goldberg Variations. A similar theme is explored by Douglas Hofstadter in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. The title also alludes to Edgar Allan Poe's 1843 short story "The Gold-Bug", which is also incorporated in the plot of the novel.
Galatea 2.2
The novel is pseudo-autobiographical: the narrator is named Richard Powers and there is discussion of the four novels he wrote before Galatea 2.2 along with other references to his real biography. Richard Powers creates a version of himself for the novel that is not always flattering. It is not completely clear which specific events are true, and which are not, but it is clearly based on Powers' life.
Plowing the Dark
The novel follows two narrative threads; one of an American teacher turned Lebanese prisoner of war, the other the construction of a high-tech virtual reality simulator.
The Time of Our Singing
The novel tells the story of two brothers involved in music, dealing heavily with issues of prejudice. Their parents met at Marian Anderson's concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after she had been barred from any other legitimate concert venue. The story goes back and forth between the generations describing the unusual coupling of a German-Jewish physicist who has lost his family in the holocaust and a black woman from Philadelphia both of whom have strong musical backgrounds. They impart their love of music to their family. Their two boys go on to study music and become professional musicians. One a singer, the other a pianist.
Operation Wandering Soul
Set in the pediatric ward of a big L.A. hospital in the apparently near future, it is a vast, impassioned fantasy-allegory about the plight of the world's children in a time of cynicism, corruption and easy destruction of life. The only recognizable adults are surgical resident Richard Kraft, desperately weary of trying to patch up the shattered lives and bodies of innocents, and therapist Linda Espera, who tries to instill hope through storytelling and play-acting. The two are deeply involved with a band of patients led by a precociously wise but hopelessly crippled Thai girl and a cynical, commanding boy whose rare disease has withered his body into that of an old man. Richard and Linda evoke for the children, or share with the reader, various factual and fabulous accounts of endangered children through the centuries: England during the blitz, the Pied Piper legend rendered amazingly contemporary, the abortive medieval Children's Crusade portrayed by a comic book, flashes of Peter Pan. As always with Powers, the verbal dexterity is amazing, but ultimately exhausting. He is quite capable of fluent sequential narrative, and readers will be relieved when he lapses into it after all the self-conscious brilliance and endlessly impressive allusion. Powers has a remarkable, virtuoso voice and much to say with it, but he desperately needs to curb his apparent need to show it off.
Download Instructions:
Dropgalaxy
Mirror:
Mediafire
Generosity: An Enhancement is here: http://forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?f=1293&t=490325
Requirements: EPUB Viewer, 2.71 MB,
Overview: Powers's characters themselves shift between the impulse to connect and its inevitable crash and burn; between the Emersonian urge to embrace the difficult ad-lib of the world and the Dickinsonesque need to recoil from its evident bruising into the supple sanctuary of the aesthetic enterprise, to withdraw into the secured refuge of a novel, a piece of music, a movie house, a museum, even cyberspace. Although long reluctant to encourage the distraction of biography, Powers has lived--like his characters--sustained within a curiously similar geography; never quite at home, never quite comfortable with belonging, shifting between engagement and escape. Powers was born 18 June 1957 in Evanston, Illinois, the fourth of five children, two older sisters and a brother and one younger brother. Early on, in the mid-1960s, his father, a high school principal with a working-class background, moved the family to the north Chicago suburb of Lincolnwood, an older neighborhood, Powers recalls, that was heavily Jewish. "My sisters and brothers and I would be just about the only kids in school for the high holy days."
Genre: General Fiction/Classics
The Gold Bug Variations
First released in 1991, the novel intertwines the discovery of the chemical structure of DNA with the musicality of Johann Sebastian Bach's harpsichord composition, the Goldberg Variations. A similar theme is explored by Douglas Hofstadter in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. The title also alludes to Edgar Allan Poe's 1843 short story "The Gold-Bug", which is also incorporated in the plot of the novel.
Galatea 2.2
The novel is pseudo-autobiographical: the narrator is named Richard Powers and there is discussion of the four novels he wrote before Galatea 2.2 along with other references to his real biography. Richard Powers creates a version of himself for the novel that is not always flattering. It is not completely clear which specific events are true, and which are not, but it is clearly based on Powers' life.
Plowing the Dark
The novel follows two narrative threads; one of an American teacher turned Lebanese prisoner of war, the other the construction of a high-tech virtual reality simulator.
The Time of Our Singing
The novel tells the story of two brothers involved in music, dealing heavily with issues of prejudice. Their parents met at Marian Anderson's concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after she had been barred from any other legitimate concert venue. The story goes back and forth between the generations describing the unusual coupling of a German-Jewish physicist who has lost his family in the holocaust and a black woman from Philadelphia both of whom have strong musical backgrounds. They impart their love of music to their family. Their two boys go on to study music and become professional musicians. One a singer, the other a pianist.
Operation Wandering Soul
Set in the pediatric ward of a big L.A. hospital in the apparently near future, it is a vast, impassioned fantasy-allegory about the plight of the world's children in a time of cynicism, corruption and easy destruction of life. The only recognizable adults are surgical resident Richard Kraft, desperately weary of trying to patch up the shattered lives and bodies of innocents, and therapist Linda Espera, who tries to instill hope through storytelling and play-acting. The two are deeply involved with a band of patients led by a precociously wise but hopelessly crippled Thai girl and a cynical, commanding boy whose rare disease has withered his body into that of an old man. Richard and Linda evoke for the children, or share with the reader, various factual and fabulous accounts of endangered children through the centuries: England during the blitz, the Pied Piper legend rendered amazingly contemporary, the abortive medieval Children's Crusade portrayed by a comic book, flashes of Peter Pan. As always with Powers, the verbal dexterity is amazing, but ultimately exhausting. He is quite capable of fluent sequential narrative, and readers will be relieved when he lapses into it after all the self-conscious brilliance and endlessly impressive allusion. Powers has a remarkable, virtuoso voice and much to say with it, but he desperately needs to curb his apparent need to show it off.
Download Instructions:
Dropgalaxy
Mirror:
Mediafire
Generosity: An Enhancement is here: http://forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?f=1293&t=490325