He has an article in this month’s Believer: “A Brief Take on Genetic Screening” (with an all too brief excerpt on the Believer site). (via Chekhov’s Mistress)
Category / Powers, Richard
The Powers of Celebrity
A fun thread over at I Love Books about coming face-to-face with authors. The most interesting one:
Richard Powers was at the University of Illinois when I was there (he might still be down there, not sure) and he subbed in for a couple of my creative writing classes one year, and came to speak to a film class I was taking that dealt with artificial intelligence- talked about Galatea 2.1, and kept grinning about being a character in his own book. Completely normal, down to earth guy, friendly, etc., but obviously smarter than anyone you’ve ever met. I had to read one of my stories for the creative class at one point, and the thing was just horrible. I couldn’t even read the story out loud for the class, it was so bad; I had a friend read it for me. And Powers was great- very generous, and somehow acknowledged the fact that the story “needed work” without being condescending or making me feel bad about it.
Large Books: A Peremptory Spiritual Quest?
Richard Powers: “I like your formulation: the largeness of the novel does depend in part upon a reader’s willingness to exercise largeness of spirit upon it. Readerly renarration involves the reader in retelling not only the printed story but also her own life’s story, in the presence of a story that did not originate with her. And I like, too, the idea that this active reader somehow recapitulates the similar, active rereading that the novel’s writer has performed on the writer’s historical moment The tale of the private life becomes a way of voicing the chaotic public sphere that did not yet even know it was a tale. But at the same time, I have balked, throughout my career, at the contemporary American aesthetic bias that decrees that the public narrative space can only be gotten to through a metaphorical correlation with the private story.”
This statement is particularly apt as I consider my feelings on Elliott Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity, which I am almost done with and which I am strangely obsessed with reading, despite the book’s many problems. I’ll have more to say on this sensation once I get to the inevitable 75 Books update.
(via Wood S Lot)
Richard Powers on Mozart’s Skull
As regular readers may or may not know, we are mad about Richard Powers. I mean, we’re talking mad to the level of reading all of his books (two of them twice) and having a very special Richard Powers section on our stacks. So it was with considerable embarassment that one Tayari Jones snickered at us (wholly deserved!) for missing this New York Times article that the Goldbug Man wrote on Mozart’s skull a few weeks ago. We pledge to keep more vigilant on the Powers front.
Incidentally, Powers has a new book coming out in October called The Echo Maker. When we aren’t trying to produce five podcasts for the LBC (along with several others), we will begin thorough investigation to atone for our sins.
In the meantime, Radioactive Banana is on the case.
[UPDATE: Kirstin writes in to let me know that Richard Powers is contributing editor to A Public Space, a new magazine of “fiction that matters” put together by former Paris Review editor Brigid Hughes. There doesn’t appear to be a table of contents for Issue No. 1, but Kelly Link has a story and this definitely looks promising!]
A Supposedly Simple Pairup Not Likely To Happen Again
At the Lannan Archives, there’s an audio interview with David Foster Wallace interviewed by Dalkey’s John O’Brien. What’s crazy is that he interviews Richard Powers in the same sitting. I wonder how crazy things would have been if they got Vollmann to show up.
More Fun with Amazon
Amazon has recently instituted “text stats,” which measures a book by Fleish-Kincaid index (the higher you go, the more difficult it is to read), percentage of complex words and words per dollar. Now if this is the basis for why one should read, let’s see how the thickass literary heavy-hitters stand up:
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Fleisch-Kincaid Index: 9.3
Complex Words: 11%
Words Per Dollar: 25,287
The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Fleisch-Kincaid Index: 7.3
Complex Words: 9%
Words Per Dollar: 24,553
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
Fleisch-Kincaid Index: 8.4
Complex Words: 9%
Words Per Dollar: 25,458
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Fleisch-Kincaid Index: 9.5
Complex Words: 10%
Words Per Dollar: 24,086
The Royal Family by William T. Vollmann
Fleisch-Kincaid Index: 6.6
Complex Words: 9%
Words Per Dollar: 31,532
Ulysses by James Joyce
Fleisch-Kincaid Index: 6.8
Complex Words: 10%
Words Per Dollar: 16,777
The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers
Fleisch-Kincaid Index: 8.5
Complex Words: 14%
Words Per Dollar: 20,944
And here are the winners.
Best Words Per Dollar Value: William T. Vollmann
Author You’ll Need Your Dictionary For: Richard Powers
Most Difficult to Read: Thomas Pynchon (w/ David Foster Wallace a close second)
Easiest to Read: William T. Vollmann (w/ James Joyce a close second)
Quick
Stephen Hawking is under round-the-clock suveillance. Apparently, his family fears that someone is planning to sabotage the stuff that keeps Hawking alive.
John Barth writes about university readings. (via Maud)
Just after Fahrenheit 451 was selected for an “Everyone Reads” library program, Ray Bradbury says that “the people have lost control” and that “bigger and stupider” entertainment has deadened intellectual curiosity.
The National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced. The big surprises: Richard Powers’ The Time of Our Singing and William T. Vollman’s Rising Up and Rising Down. Both are very long books (and in Vollman’s case, we’re talking seven volumes). How many critics honestly read all of the nominees?
And Jack Kerouac’s On the Road manuscript, composed on an endless sheet of paper, is touring the States for the next three years. (via Moorish Girl)