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Powers is such a smart writer, one always learns so much in his novels. This, his debut, doesn't always cohere but it's a great read nevertheless.
I am setting out on a re-read of all 12 of Powers' novels. I plan to read them in chronological order (unlike the first time I read them) so that I can simultaneously watch Powers' development as a novelist. This one does feel like a first novel: there are times, especially at the start, where it reads like someone showing off a bit - later in the story, the narrative seems to settle down and concentrate on the business of story telling rather than demonstrating the author's cleverness and delig...
The best-laid plans: I fully intended to love this book, guided by Richard Powers as he led me on a tour of new ideas and fresh observations. I thought The Overstory was transformative and extraordinarily powerful. I enjoyed Generosity, though it wasn't anything close to the former. So I was eager to dig into Powers' earlier work, and you can't get earlier than his debut novel. Three Farmers is frustrating. At times, the author's tangential essays are simply boring. Sometimes they're just rubbis...
Some interesting segments with a lot of hot air in between.
This book was lent to me by a friend.It almost seems that if a book is hailed by the literary critics, there is about a 50% chance it is nothing more than post-modernist bullshit. The outstanding achievement of this one however, is that not only does the author succeed at making you hate what he wrote, but goes all the way to make you hate him as well. His name dropping of supposedly important people from philosophers to basketball players, together with his spewing of esoteric facts about arcan...
CRITIQUE:Confessions of a Late ModernistIn an interview with Jeffrey Williams that took place in 1998 and was published the following year, Richard Powers admitted that his "extended and overwhelming love affair was with European modernism - Proust, Mann, Joyce, Musil, Kafka - the stuff that transformed the world in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century. That influence has stayed with me throughout my career." The Essayistic and Imaginative NovelistIn this, his first novel (publis...
I am quite intrigued about stories that have or are based on real esoteric themes as an overarching element, especially anything scientific. Any good literary meat stuffed with interesting scientific or art motifs looks very appetizing. It seems delectable because you get a good entertainment with some trivia blended with a good measure. One such lookout led me to Richard Powers who supposedly draws his stories around science and technology ......And so I purchased this book hoping to add to my
Powers is good enough to at least lay claim to the possibility of being the best among contemporary novelists. For me, he is always cerebral, intellectual, and profoundly moving, emotionally. Not every reader agrees. I always argue that an entire undergraduate degree program could be taught by having students simply research the references that Powers’ novels make. I don’t know that there is an academic discipline upon which he never touches. This one is his debut, and foreshadows just about all...
A strange but fascinating novel centred around a photograph taken on the eve of the first world war. I believe this is the author's first novel which makes it all the more impressive. Three storylines are interwoven in a clever way, all centred around the characters in the photograph. But the best thing about it is the style and quality of the writing. And the frequent paragraphs where the author steps back from actual event and speculates philosophically about their significance. Highly recomme...
This is my fourth Powers novel after Orfeo, The Time of Our Singing and The Echo Maker. All of those three were very impressive, so when I saw this one in a second hand shop I couldn't resist picking it up even after buying 12 books earlier the same day.This is Powers' debut novel and it does have a few more rough edges, but it was still a very interesting book. It takes inspiration from a real photograph, Three Farmers by August Sander, which also appears on the cover. This picture was taken in...
Three story lines, each with its distinctive voice, two in the novelistic present (early 1980s) and one running from 1 May 1914 to some time in 1917, with ambiguous hints of later development embedded in the other two stories. An unnamed “I” (in the “present”) thinks he recognizes himself in the August Sander photo and tracks down every bit of information he can about these three young Dutch farmers, dressed in their finest and jauntily strolling through fields, on the eve of World War I. Most i...
