It should not be so hard to write both poetry and fiction. Both arts, after all, make use of the same materials, words and punctuation. Poems...
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With The Echo Maker and now Generosity: An Enhancement, Powers has moved from being an intriguing formulaic-author to perhaps my favorite American author.
For some reason I expected Generosity to be a minor effort, but really it is amazingly multifaceted and extremely well written. It is the writing and overall structure, and what seems to be a greater emotional connection to his characters and storyline that makes these two most recent books stand out. I was mightily impressed by The Echo Maker, but I was really blown away by Generosity. This is a meditation on American culture, genetic research, science and art, truth and fiction, identity, and America's insulation from the world at large. Thought-provoking and very nearly pitch-perfect, this is world class literature.
I do have my own peculiar tastes in fiction, and I'm certainly not rushing to read Franzen's new offering so you can write me off on that score if you will, but you really should be reading Powers.
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Matthiessen's reconstructed trilogy improved upon what I had already considered a great American novel. Nothing from the last decade really comes close to the level of writing found here. As with my original reading of the individual books, I still favor the first part, but the following parts hold together much stronger here.
Honorable mention has to go to Richard Powers', The Echo Maker; Vikram Chandra's, Sacred Games; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's, Half a Yellow Sun; Louis De Berniéres', Birds without Wings; Kiran Desai's, Jnheritance of Loss; Colson Whitehead's, John Henry Days; and Orham Pamuk's, Snow.
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omichael has commented on (2) products.
Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers
omichael, December 11, 2010
With The Echo Maker and now Generosity: An Enhancement, Powers has moved from being an intriguing formulaic-author to perhaps my favorite American author.For some reason I expected Generosity to be a minor effort, but really it is amazingly multifaceted and extremely well written. It is the writing and overall structure, and what seems to be a greater emotional connection to his characters and storyline that makes these two most recent books stand out. I was mightily impressed by The Echo Maker, but I was really blown away by Generosity. This is a meditation on American culture, genetic research, science and art, truth and fiction, identity, and America's insulation from the world at large. Thought-provoking and very nearly pitch-perfect, this is world class literature.
I do have my own peculiar tastes in fiction, and I'm certainly not rushing to read Franzen's new offering so you can write me off on that score if you will, but you really should be reading Powers.
(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
Shadow Country: A New Rendering of the Watson Legend by Peter Matthiessen
omichael, January 2, 2010
Matthiessen's reconstructed trilogy improved upon what I had already considered a great American novel. Nothing from the last decade really comes close to the level of writing found here. As with my original reading of the individual books, I still favor the first part, but the following parts hold together much stronger here.Honorable mention has to go to Richard Powers', The Echo Maker; Vikram Chandra's, Sacred Games; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's, Half a Yellow Sun; Louis De Berniéres', Birds without Wings; Kiran Desai's, Jnheritance of Loss; Colson Whitehead's, John Henry Days; and Orham Pamuk's, Snow.
(4 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)