Customer Reviews

Plowing the Dark: A Novel

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"This room is never anything o'clock." That's the first line of this marvelous tale about two rooms a world apart--a virtual reality lab in Seattle and the room in Beirut where a man is held in solitary confinement by fundamentalist terrorists. What ties those two rooms together is the power of imagination both to destroy and to save. Powers manages to create a forward-rushing tale using such poetic language that one has to force oneself to slow down and savor his slightly quirky but always evocative prose. Two passages picked literally at random (I closed my eyes and pointed my finger) from page 11: "They drove out to his lair in the silence of small talk." "She did well around black. She understood it: one of the big two, not a true color, yet fraternizing with the deepest maroons, hoping to smuggle itself back over hue's closely guarded border."

Powers is one of that group of young American writers who are so imaginative, so stylish, so knowing that their prose snaps like a flag in a gale. Yet he's not a smart aleck like some of the others. You care about his characters. You care "how it turns out."

His previous novel, "Gain", seemed a bit flaccid to me. In "Plowing the Dark" he's back in top form.

An extraordinary novel full of the clash of light and dark. Two people in two separate and very different rooms: one is a solitary hostage in Lebanon, who fills his room with memories and the wanderings of his mind: the other is in Seattle designing a virtual reality room, filled with colour, making 'real' the creations of her imagination. Though their experiences couldn't be more different they share a great deal, not least their discovery of the way war and the needs of the militant can intrude on so-called ordinary life. I found myself thinking about this book long after I put it down - wonderful stuff.

This book just swept me away. Richard Powers is one of my favorite writers of all time and Plowing the Dark shows Powers in prime form. Like his other novels, this one is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally rich. And yet -- how does he do it? -- this book is an absolute orginal! It provides all the expected pleasures of a Powers novel, yet it reminds me of nothing I've ever read before (by Powers or any other writer). Plowing is an absorbing story told in gorgeous prose. A must read!

A friend gave me this book to read because I once worked in Beirut. I had never read any of Richard Powers's work before, and didn't know what to expect. I ended up reading the book in almost one full sitting and have not been able to stop thinking about it since. Powers is amazing. I've never read anything that so successfully combines lyricism with significicant intellectual content. I loved this book!

Richard Powers is well named; for this is a powerful book. Every page just slams your head with a combination of punches that just does not stop. While incredibly impressive, at times you wish the bell would ring and you could go back to your corner to catch your breath.

I've lived in the world described in the book, doing research in computer graphics for the last 22 years; and in weaving his tapestry he does not drop many stitches. Every detail of the hardware, and almost everybody I know in the field can be found here. Still, the arcaneness of some of his references (Cornell boxes, please!) go over the line that separates authenticity from pedantry.

In the end, this is a very good book. By packing so much into each page Powers can explore a huge number of subjects. Some characters are two dimensional, perhaps; but between them they span the limits of human experiential space. The book soars breathtakingly then in crashes despairingly in a few pages; it's a remarkable ride.

This book reminded me at times of Asimov's Foundation; and at other times of Stephenson at his best. It's a book that I wish I had read more slowly -- Powers demands that the reader work hard to digest fully all the courses in this feast...and I'm sorry I pushed through to the end so quickly. This is a book for savoring. Maybe next time.

Mr.Powers possesses grand ambition. He chooses to write about large and potentially profound topics. In this novel he gestures towards the potential use and abuse of the human imagination - the image he chooses is that of a blank white room, suggesting the interior of a human skull along with the proverbial bare page confronting a budding author. In one strand of the novel, this room is filled with borrowed art and other worldly concerns, imaginatively re-invented through recent computer technology. In the other strand, an isolated mind first covers the walls with memories, focused upon a former lover, and later partly disintegrates through lack of contact with the outside world. Salient to each situation is the idea of how much effort should be devoted to representing the world, and how much to living in it - while not a simple moralist, Powers seems to be warning against representation divorced from any heed to social and political realities, be these personal or global; that is to say, he at least complicates the notion of art for art's sake. The danger of becoming obsessed with the image, and forgetting the reality, is explored through the ultimate use made of the beauty of the virtual room, and through references to religions', particularly Islam's, prohibitions on representation. Powers also seems to be making a plea that we all need each other, for in high-tech Seattle, a team of people must work together in order to succeed, while in the hostage's cell in Lebanon, a mind atrophies when denied company.
*
At the end of the book, Powers acknowledges a debt to the memoirs of Western hostages held in Lebanon. His research certainly gives realism to this part of the story. He also uses literary techniques favoured by bestselling authors, such as Stephen King, to grasp the readers' attention. Thus, the protagonist, Taimur Martin, is quickly placed in jeopardy, he experiences pain and humiliation, and the entire tale relies on the tension in waiting for his potential release or escape. In a sense, this is all legitimate and engaging storytelling, but it does have a cliched and manipulative aspect. The depiction of the suffering mind is partly convincing, but pales when compared to, say, Solzhenitsyn, or Primo Levi (very high standards, admittedly). A weakness is also revealed in Power's ability to create characters - Taimur's thinks and converses with his captors much like he does with his remembered lover and, what is more, much like the way Adie and Steve and the all others in Seattle deal with each other. Prime among the conversational strategies of all these characters is a recourse to weak humour - weak puns, irony, and benign sarcasm - in Seattle this is merely annoying, but in the context of horrible depravation in Lebanon it is distracting, unconvincing, and inappropriate.
*
The Seattle strand of the book makes up its bulk - around three quarters of its pages. It is structured as a quest. This exact same structure is used by Powers in 'The Gold Bug Variations' and in 'Galatea 2.2'. Again, it is a proven way to co-opt a reader's interest, but in this novel the mechanism is obvious, and the quest itself of questionable appeal - consequently it feels rather crude. There are a large number of characters - they are differentiated by quirks and mannerisms, yet in conversation they blend, in part due to the failed humour mentioned previously, and also due to the relentless parading of references to works of art, literature, and music. This parade is especially galling as there seems to be an implicit thesis that in order to be part of the club of 'intelligent', 'interesting' people, one must be familiar with a canon of 'great works' - the works chosen are very conservative, as in other of Powers' books, and can not legitimately be said to be simply alerting the reader to the existence of works otherwise unknown. Another shared characteristic, both within this novel and across Powers' other books, is the attitude taken towards, and the depiction of, love. Every character adopts a nostalgic stance to love. Love largely occurs in the past; love is passive and motivates few actions; when love does bear consequences, as in the birth of a child, then this is rendered in a perfunctory, almost abstract way. It is as if Powers' wants love to be important, but is unskilled in actually embodying it living within his story. His characters are emotional adolescents. The core of this problem lies in his refusal to address the darker currents in human nature. If his characters have sins, then they are ones of omission. Malice, hate, true envy, jealousy, are not genuinely present; consequently his characters 'do' very little to each other. If they are reprehensible, it is for their lack of constancy or lack of passion. They are bland and, at the very least, half empty. Powers is never going to create a Macbeth, or a Hamlet, or an Iago. You might think that those holding and abusing Taimur in Lebanon embody darker forces, but they are hardly characters, being inarticulate and skeletal, and so their malice is not embodied but abstract.
*
Powers' language deserves special comment. I am baffled by those who call it poetic or beautiful. To me, it is ungainly, approximating the abbreviated rhythms heard in technical gatherings, conferences, or in recent journalism. It reads more like an introductory paragraph in 'New Scientist' or in 'Wired' than a poem. There is a laziness to his insistence of adding an extra clause, or several, when a single, well-crafted one would be far more potent and graceful (to some extent Don Delillo shares this failing, and he too is revered by some for his style). For beauty in prose I would turn to John Hawkes, or Samuel Beckett, or Denis Johnson.
*
Overall, it is hard to recommend this book. Powers has strengths, and these are probably best showcased in 'The Gold Bug Variations'. He has glaring deficiencies too. I doubt he will overcome them, since his writing, in its detail and in its overall structure, has not progressed from that novel to this. To read him is to come into contact with an 'encyclopedic' mind, as widely said, but, for mine, it is a mind in many ways immature.

The novel is set in the late 1980's and early 90's, and has as its backdrop the astonishing worldwide events of those years--the Berlin Wall, Tianneman Square, etc. The main plot concerns a group of people working on a virtual reality project, and the team consists of everyone from stereotypical anti-social geeks to a crochety mathmetician, from a wannabe poet turned programmer to a former painter turned logo designer turned graphical designer. Though it doesn't sound like much of a plot, their struggles with what they are creating, set against the political background and motivated by their personal interactions is very compelling. The descriptions of what they are trying to create are breathtaking--Powers' writing is more beautiful in these sections than I can imagine "real" VR will be for decades.

There is a parallel plot that has as little "action," but is more harrowing--it is the story of a man taken hostage by middle-eastern extremists. What he goes through is still resonating in my mind. I won't tell you how these plots work together, but to my mind, Powers succeeds in bringing them together.

Having praised this book so much--and it is one of the best new novels I've read in a long time--I should say that it probably isn't for everyone. While it isn't extremely "post-modern" (there are no characters named "Richard Powers;" no extended discussion about textuality; the only idiosyncracy of printing is the placing of quotations in italics), it certainly is in a post-modern mode. The book isn't terribly depressing, but it is gut-wrenching at times, so I wouldn't read it if you are looking for a pick-me-up. That said, though, I highly recommend it.

It took me three tries over the course of a year to get started reading this book; each time I'd get a few dozen pages in and then give up. But the concept - paralleling the stories of the creators of a virtual reality system in Seattle with that of a man held hostage in Beirut, with liberal doses of Yeats, Byzantium and personal angst thrown in - was so intriguing I kept giving it another try, and eventually it took.

Still, it's a dense book, full of half-explained concepts and obscure literary references, and it's not for everyone. Sometimes you can get several paragraphs into a chapter before you figure out who's speaking; given the subject matter, I'm sure the resulting sense of disorientation is intentional on Powers' part.

"Plowing" explores the world of the internal - everything that happens in the outside world, from failed love affairs to Tianamen Square, has an internal side effect on the characters. Even some of the dialog between people is in italics, like thoughts rather than words.

Powers weaves together several stories that illustrate his themes of immersion and isolation: the brilliant mind trapped in a crumbling body, the blind-folded hostage, the computer programmers working day and night to create virtual reality while losing track of the real reality. In all the characters, the hidden internal world, with its past injustices and hurts, has to work itself out before the person can rejoin the outside world.

To really appreciate this book, I think you have to be able to step back and look at what Powers is doing. Trying to enjoy it for plot alone could be frustrating and confusing. By the end you have a pretty full sketch of each character, but Powers doesn't lay it all out for you - you have to piece things together as you go along. As an English major, I enjoyed doing the detective work, but it's not for everyone.

Knowing a bit about Yeats' life and themes before you begin would enhance understanding of this book. It also helps to have a general knowledge of world events in 1989-90 (Tianamen Square, Beirut, the Berlin Wall), because while Powers does a great job of capturing how it felt to watch these iconic events unfold on television, he doesn't always explain what he's talking about.

Overall, "Plowing" was challenging but intriguing. It wasn't always engrossing, but it felt good to finish it, like I had figured out something rather than just been entertained.

I don't think it matters how long you wait, general thoughts are the best people seem to do with this Author. This is the first book of his I have read, and I agree with those that say it is unlike anything they have read before.

I have never read prose that is so frenetic in it's pace, and to make the experience more interesting, each sentence is so engorged with words, that are carefully even artfully chosen, that dense does not begin to describe this Author's use of language. Once you become accustomed to the pace and richness of what he writes, he becomes readable. Umberto Eco comes to mind, but this Author is not as burdensome, you participate as a reader more quickly. I also love Mr. Eco's work; I just never find the reading comfortable.

His knowledge of his material is encyclopedic. He creates characters that are as unique and varied and sometimes eccentric, as any other Author I have read. And what does he create with this?

There is a group building "The Cavern", think of it as a very early Beta version of the Holodeck on The Enterprise. This is not a place for recreation; their goals are varied and constantly evolving. This room of no time, that is supposed to eventually be the perfect VR World, the perfect forecaster of whatever you like. Or for others an apocalyptic place, it's potential too horrible to imagine.

All of this plays with another story in the background that superficially could not be less related, and this is probably the genius of the book. There are a number of Authors writing that try to be clever and original, they fail with the former as they lack the latter. Their stories don't hold up because you know the end, halfway or even less into the book. This time even when you think you know, even after the end has revealed itself, the book stays with you and you continue to sort out the dozens of thoughts and philosophies, that the characters from Countries as different as Armenia, and Ireland, and Korea bring to the story.

The book pulls all of your emotional strings, and most of your moral and ethical ones as well. If you find yourself immersed in this Author's writing you are in for one very enigmatic, puzzling, fantastical ride.

Good luck!

For most authors I might have given this book 3 stars, but knowing what Powers is capable of makes this very middling effort that much more disappointing. Powers' books in the past have worked on multiple levels, with intriguing ideas meshed with an interesting plot, together with well-realized characters. Parallel plots with interesting cross-links provide food for interpretation and Powers' high-flying prose made reading interesting and fun.

This book has none of these merits. First, and most glaringly, the book has no plot. There is no dramatic tension at all. In fact, not until page 250 was there even a challenge or a problem to be solved by the characters. And at that point, it simply felt like an afterthought, and not one that was particularly interesting, either.

It's hard to criticize without spoilers, but I found the conclusion to be shallow and silly. I thought the exaggerated character reactions caused by an extremely distant and tenuous military connection to be completely unbelievable.

I didn't think the two parallel plots really cross-fertilized and enriched each other in the way they have in Powers' better works. In this book, they seemed like two seperate stories tacked together, as if Powers was "writing by numbers," lacking any more original structure for a novel.

Powers' strength has never been his characters, but in this novel they seemed shallower than usual. And they were described almost exclusively in terms of what they had experienced, and not by their actions in the present. (This is related to the lack of plot mentioned earlier.) This gave the characters a two-dimensional feel.

Lastly, I didn't find the ideas in the novel to be grand or gripping. Virtual reality seems to me to be a neat little technology, not the monumental, existence changing advance that Powers tries to make it out to be. It just doesn't have the shoulders to support grand ideas and musing that, say, the discovery of the DNA-protein link or game theory do. VR's main application is in making neat video games, which I find it hard to get too worked up about.

The above makes it sound like I hated the book, which I didn't. It was a decent read and was a way to enjoyably pass a few evenings. I'm probably overcompensating because of the effusive praise the book has gotten here. But it was an average book at best, and one which left me completely unsatisfied.