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.
