Just a Little Update

I just began reading this book. I am like 175 pages into the 326 pages. This book is amazing. If you remember I loved the other Richard Powers book I reviewed for this blog, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, and I like this one even more. Powers is amazing at weaving several different stories together so fluidly. He and Paul Auster are the most interesting authors writing today. They are both very good and taking several stories and arranging them so that they intersect.

In this work, Powers is investigating the nature of memory. This book is seemingly autobiographical with the protagonist being a fictional "Richard Powers." However, it is less than straight forward, and at one point he even mentions that in Three Farmers (I am paraphrasing here because I don't have the copy of the book at hand) that "it was important for a reader to separate the "real story" from the simulated stories."

In this work the fictional powers and a researcher at U., a fictional university that the fictional Powers attended (I would guess the University of Illinois at Urbana because that is where he attended college in real life but we all know the dangers of making assumptions about works of fiction based on the author's "Real" life) are trying to replicate memory in a computer system. Actually they are trying to teach it "the canon" so it could pass the same master's comprehensive exam that Powers passed years ago. However, interwoven throughout the story are Powers own memories, and through these memories Powers investigates the nature of memory, and how memory helps shape who we are.

I cannot adequately put into words how much I like this book. I have been dragging my feet and rereading pages because it is so interesting and well done. To be honest I don't want to finish reading it because it is so good. I truly think this book is one of the most interesting and best written books I have ever read, and that Richard Powers is one of the best young novelists America has produced in a long time.