Customer Reviews

Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

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In 1910, Richard Powers relates in "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance," the German photographer August Sander came upon the idea of an epic photographic collection to be called "Man of the Twentieth Century." Sander went on, during the next several decades, to take thousands of photographs of everyday life, "a massive, comprehensive catalog of people written in the universal language-photography."

One of Sander's photographs, taken in May, 1914, depicts three German farmers standing in a muddy road, their heads turned to the camera. The three farmers are dressed in their best suits, white shirts, ties, hats, and walking sticks. They are on their way to a dance. As Powers' first person narrator writes, "the date sufficed to show that they were not going to their expected dance. I was not going to my expected dance. We would all be taken blindfolded into a field somewhere in this tortured century and made to dance until we'd had enough. Dance until we dropped."

From this intriguing beginning, Richard Powers tells three stories, each of them connected through the photograph and through time. The first is that of the narrator, who stumbles upon Sander's photograph at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He becomes obsessed with the haunting aura of the photograph and spends the next several months trying to find out more about the photographer and the three men in the photograph. The second is that of the three farmers themselves-Hubert, Peter and Adolphe-and what happens to each of them when the Great War breaks out in Europe. The third story is that of Peter Mays, a writer for a computer trade magazine in 1980s Boston, who also becomes obsessed-not with the photograph, but with a beautiful red haired woman dressed in early twentieth century period costume that he sees on the street following a Veterans' Day Parade-and ultimately finds out that he has a connection to one of the men in the picture and to the events of the Great War.

To say that "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" tells three stories is misleading, however, insofar as the novel is dominated not by plot, but, rather, by a range of discursive narratives on how the world has changed between the Great War, when Sander's photograph was taken, and the present day. Plot does not drive the action of Powers' densely intellectual novel; rather, it provides a touchstone for the narrator to explore certain events and fundamental ideas of the Twentieth Century. For example, when the office cleaning woman shows the narrator artifacts from the Great War, it strikes an intellectual cord that leads to a long discourse on Charles Peguy, the French thinker who, in 1913, made the subsequently oft-quoted remark that "the world had changed less since the death of Jesus than it had in the last thirty years," and the ideas "hidden" in Peguy's formulation. Similarly, the narrator's obsessive study of the 1914 photograph leads to an historical investigation of Sander's life and works. It also leads to speculations on the nature of photography and on how photography changed conceptions of art that derive closely from Walter Benjamin's classic essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."

Ideas and intellectual referents are ubiquitous in this novel; simply read the epigraphs to each chapter to get a feel for the intellectual gyroscope that orients "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance". It is a remarkable work that demands a great deal from the reader. It is also a work that will disappoint anyone who is looking for a straightforward plot or a mere "page turner."

If you're interested in ideas, in novels with intellectual density, in narratives that force you to think deeply and reflectively about the world, "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" is the perfect novel. Read it, enjoy it, and move on to the rest of Richard Powers' remarkable list of fictions.

Richard Powers is probably the most accessible of contemporary "literary" novelists. In this, his first book, he weaves the stories of three farmers on the eve of WWI with the lives of contemporary characters. The "glue" of the story is the photograph that is run across at a Detroit exhibit showing the three farmers in 1914. It's a well written and thoughtful piece on obsession, change and the 20th century. Better in some ways, than even his more highly praised later books.

Powers does a masterful job of integrating several characters into his storyline and integrating several discourses throughout. Especially interesting is his discourse on the work of photographer August Sander. I frankly had never heard of him and now find myself looking for pieces of his work in libraries and online. It's always a good sign when a piece of writing whether fiction or non-fiction spurs interests into directions you'd never have gone into.

There is a connection with the characters that I get when I read Powers that I don't get with DeLillo, Franzen or other "PoMo" writers. That's not a criticism of them but rather a praising of Powers writing.

This book consists of three intertwined sagas, all revolving around a picture of three farmers taken in 1914. The main idea behind this book, as I see it, is the interconnectedness of observer and observed. The lives of people who see this picture are irrevocably changed, but the prospect of having their picture seen by generations of future viewers, changes the lives of the three farmers as well. This is a recurring motif in the book.

After reading this book, I discovered two amazing facts. The first is that this is Richard Powers' first novel and as such the virtuosity and craftsmanship that Powers' exhibits in this book are truly incredible. The second incredible fact is that the picture around which the novel revolves is a real one. Had I known these facts before reading the book, I would have enjoyed it even more.

On the down side, this book is not an easy read. The story itself never really gripped me, and there are a lot of dead spots. In addition, while the prose is beautiful it demands concentration and close attention to every word and sentence. Bottom line, I will definitely read Powers' other works, but I cannot recommend this one to the casual reader.

In 1910, Richard Powers relates in "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance," the German photographer August Sander came upon the idea of an epic photographic collection to be called "Man of the Twentieth Century." Sander went on, during the next several decades, to take thousands of photographs of everyday life, "a massive, comprehensive catalog of people written in the universal language-photography."

One of Sander's photographs, taken in May, 1914, depicts three German farmers standing in a muddy road, their heads turned to the camera. The three farmers are dressed in their best suits, white shirts, ties, hats, and walking sticks. They are on their way to a dance. As Powers' first person narrator writes, "the date sufficed to show that they were not going to their expected dance. I was not going to my expected dance. We would all be taken blindfolded into a field somewhere in this tortured century and made to dance until we'd had enough. Dance until we dropped."

From this intriguing beginning, Richard Powers tells three stories, each of them connected through the photograph and through time. The first is that of the narrator, who stumbles upon Sander's photograph at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He becomes obsessed with the haunting aura of the photograph and spends the next several months trying to find out more about the photographer and the three men in the photograph. The second is that of the three farmers themselves-Hubert, Peter and Adolphe-and what happens to each of them when the Great War breaks out in Europe. The third story is that of Peter Mays, a writer for a computer trade magazine in 1980s Boston, who also becomes obsessed-not with the photograph, but with a beautiful red haired woman dressed in early twentieth century period costume that he sees on the street following a Veterans' Day Parade-and ultimately finds out that he has a connection to one of the men in the picture and to the events of the Great War.

To say that "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" tells three stories is misleading, however, insofar as the novel is dominated not by plot, but, rather, by a range of discursive narratives on how the world has changed between the Great War, when Sander's photograph was taken, and the present day. Plot does not drive the action of Powers' densely intellectual novel; rather, it provides a touchstone for the narrator to explore certain events and fundamental ideas of the Twentieth Century. For example, when the office cleaning woman shows the narrator artifacts from the Great War, it strikes an intellectual cord that leads to a long discourse on Charles Peguy, the French thinker who, in 1913, made the subsequently oft-quoted remark that "the world had changed less since the death of Jesus than it had in the last thirty years," and the ideas "hidden" in Peguy's formulation. Similarly, the narrator's obsessive study of the 1914 photograph leads to an historical investigation of Sander's life and works. It also leads to speculations on the nature of photography and on how photography changed conceptions of art that derive closely from Walter Benjamin's classic essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."

Ideas and intellectual referents are ubiquitous in this novel; simply read the epigraphs to each chapter to get a feel for the intellectual gyroscope that orients "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance". It is a remarkable work that demands a great deal from the reader. It is also a work that will disappoint anyone who is looking for a straightforward plot or a mere "page turner."

If you're interested in ideas, in novels with intellectual density, in narratives that force you to think deeply and reflectively about the world, "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" is the perfect novel. Read it, enjoy it, and move on to the rest of Richard Powers' remarkable list of fictions.

I agree with the other customer reviewers of this novel when they state that it is a "difficult" work. In many ways, reading Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance is not even like reading a novel. The book uses its main stories as a clothesline to hang an astonishing number of meditations on history, culture, technology, and memory.

While the other customer reviews to a wonderful job of touching on most of the topics described above, the one area I would add is that the novel serves as an excellent explanation of the principles underlying the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: that it is impossible to study anything or anyone without bringing the researcher's bias into the study. In this novel, the reader is treated to discussions on the subjectivity of history, as well as of the seemingly concrete art of photography, that will cause the reader not to be able to view either discipline in the same way after completing the book.

Hopefully, readers will not find all of the discussion of the more challenging aspects of the novel as a reason to find the book too intimidating to read, as it is a work that surely rewards the efforts necessary to read it.

I like Richard Powers, in fact, I'd rate his "Galatea 2.2" as one of my top ten novels of all time.

But "Three Farmers" (which I read _after_ "Galatea" and "The Goldbug Variations" and "Gain") was a bit of a let down. Sure, it had all the intellectual stimulation that I expected. And yes, it had some great quotes (both from Powers and from others that he cites ... such as "The world has changed less since the death of Jesus than it has in the past 30 years").

What went wrong? Maybe I was just not in the mood. Maybe it was the lack of a compelling love interest (so powerful in his other novels). Maybe it was that his historical lectures (on Ford, WW I, Sarah Berndhart, and photography) were a bit too pedantic.

But what really bothered me was the gimmicky ending: in the final two pages, one of the protagonists (who is on the verge of continuing a relationship with a female character) abruptly stops and asks (the reader? the author?) "So does he [I] get the girl?" ... and he walks out of her life forever. Huh?

Okay, so Powers has just finished a lecture on how (in photography, at least) there is a fascinating relationship between photographer, subject, and viewer. They fulfill each other, they create each other, they cannot exist without each other. I get it: this same relationship exists between author, characters, and reader. But to take a 350 page narrative and have it end on this cheesy metaphysical note .. a bit of a let down. I'm not even sure what is happening: is the character stepping out of the novel and into the readers reality? If this is so important to Powers, why not at least develop it for a few pages rather than tack it on in the last page?

This device reminds me of Pirandello's "Seven Characters in Search of an Author" ... but in that case it was a successful device because it was clear what was happening, and gave the audience something to chew on.

Try one of Power's other books.

I really had to force myself through the opening 20 pages to attune to the various narratives. I like the book without being enraptured, and, like other reviewers granting this as Power's initial outing as well as my relationship to his work, I'd pursue his ouvre. If nothing else, he has a firm grip on the cultural development since the First WW. And I, at least, hadn't linked Henry Ford, the Futurists, Sandler, Deigo Rivera, and cultural theorist, Walter Benjamen etc in such a beguiling chain. And I like those connexions! The academic quality of Power's research into the writings and biographies of the aforementioned are the attraction here. I felt like I was getting a more punchy, poetic, review of Barthe's, Camera Lucida, Rudolph Arnheim's,writing on visual perception but with a similar broad reach of Rebecca Solnit's wonderful book on Muybridge, River of Dreams. In fact, the treatise aspect of the book outweighs the fictional meta-narratives, but this is not a deterrance given the food on offer. Readers might look at Tasmanian ex-pat, Peter Conrad's, Modern Places: Modern Times for similar summations.

Witty but complex. Spend some time early on getting a handle on the characters because the book jumps from one to another - a lot. You can read the Amazon description for the details. The male characters run the gamut of personality types (I won't spoil it by describing them). Some you will like; some you won't. Each plays a key part in the development of the story.

This is the first of Power's books I have read and I will be going after more. If, as other reviewers have indicated, the others show Power's growth from this first novel, I am looking forward to several good reads.

Although Powers requires his readers to "bring something" to their reading of his works, I find the effort well worth it. This is probably his third best book--closely behind Galatea 2.2 and well behind his best one--The Gold Bug Variations. I only wish he were more prolific

Powers' tackles how we look at ourselves, at others, and at history in this wonderful novel. Using the inception of photography, and one photograph in particular, as a reference point, he winds three separate tales that culminate not only in a varied cast of characters but in a fine understanding of how 'image' and the twentieth-century have become synonymous. A galley-full of historical references makes this not only a wonderful read but a lesson in the meantime. One of his finest