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'Richard Powers' (born June 18, 1957) is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology.

Contents

Life and Work

Critical Responses

Bibliography

Notable Awards & Recognitions

References

External links

Life and Work

Powers was born in Evanston, Illinois, and his family later moved a few miles south to Lincolnwood, where his father was the principal at a local school. When Powers was 11, his family moved again, this time to Bangkok, Thailand, where his father had accepted a position at International School Bangkok. In his time outside the United States, Powers developed a love of music, with notable skill in vocal music as well as proficiency in cello, guitar, saxophone, and clarinet. He also became an avid reader, enjoying classics such as The Iliad and The Odyssey, but primarily works of non-fiction.
At age 16, Powers moved back to the U.S., and following graduation from high school enrolled as a physics major at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his first semester, however, he switched his major to English literature, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1978. He continued his education at Illinois, and in 1980 received his MA in literature. He decided not to pursue a PhD in the field because of (a) his aversion to strict specialization, which was also one of the reasons for his earlier transfer from physics to English, and (b) the apparent absence of ''pleasure'' in the reading and writing that graduate students and their professors do (see his novel ''Galatea 2.2'').
After receiving his master's degree, he worked in Boston, Massachusetts, as a computer programmer until an encounter with the 1914 photograph "Young Farmers" by August Sander, at the Museum of Fine Arts, inspired him to quit his job and spend the next two years writing his first novel, ''Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance'', which was published in 1985. The novel contains two parallel stories. The first is a fictional story about the three young men in the picture during World War I. The second is about Peter Mays, an editor for a technology magazine, who is obsessed with the photograph.
Powers then moved to the Netherlands, where he wrote ''Prisoner's Dilemma'', a work that juxtaposes Disney and nuclear warfare, and then his best-known work to date, ''The Gold Bug Variations'', a story that ties together genetics, music, and computer science. Powers has said that he moved to the Netherlands to avoid the publicity and attention generated by his first novel. When asked about his reclusive tendencies, he responded, "All that sort of thing [author publicity] just creates confusion about the nature of the book, deflects attention from what you've done. That's what always seems to happen in this culture; you grab hold of a personality and ignore the work."
''Operation Wandering Soul'', a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1993, is about a young doctor dealing with the ugly realities of a pediatrics ward. It was mostly written during a year's stay at the University of Cambridge, and completed when Powers returned to the University of Illinois in 1992 to take up a post as writer-in-residence.
''Galatea 2.2'' (1995) is a Pygmalion story, about an artificial intelligence experiment gone awry.
''Gain'' (1998) is a look at the history of a 150-year-old chemical company, interwoven with the story of a woman living near one of its plants and succumbing to ovarian cancer.
''Plowing the Dark'' (2000) is another novel with parallel narratives, this time of a Seattle research team building a groundbreaking virtual reality, while at the same time an American teacher is held hostage in Beirut.
''The Time of Our Singing'' (2003) is a story about the musician children of an interracial couple who met at Marian Anderson's legendary concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939. Powers displays his knowledge of music and physics in this exploration of race relations and the burdens of talent.
Powers's latest novel, ''The Echo Maker'' (2006), won a National Book Award^[1] and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.^[2]
He was a MacArthur Fellow in 1989 and received a Lannan Literary Award in 1999. He currently teaches a graduate course in multimedia authoring, as well as an undergraduate course on the mechanics of narrative, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is the Swanlund Professor of English.

Critical Responses

Reviewer William Deresiewicz has written critically of Powers's oeuvre; in his review of ''The Echo Maker'', published in ''The Nation'', he writes that "what's missing from the novel is, well, a novel. The characters are idealized, the love stories mawkish and clichéd, the emotions meant to ground the scientific speculations in lived experience announced rather than established. The thinnest of devices are introduced to allow Powers to suspend the plot for dozens of pages at a stretch." But Deresiewicz also noted that his "is hardly the standard view of Powers's work. Over the past two decades, Powers has established himself as one of our most praised as well as one of our most prolific writers of fiction." ^[3]

Bibliography

★ 1985 ''Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance'', HarperCollins ISBN 0-688-04201-5

★ 1988 ''Prisoner's Dilemma'', McGraw Hill ISBN 0-07-050612-4

★ 1991 ''The Gold Bug Variations'', HarperCollins ISBN 0-688-09891-6

★ 1993 ''Operation Wandering Soul'', HarperCollins ISBN 0-688-11548-9

★ 1995 ''Galatea 2.2'', Farrar Straus & Giroux ISBN 0-374-19948-5

★ 1998 ''Gain'', Farrar Straus & Giroux ISBN 0-312-20409-4

★ 2000 ''Plowing the Dark'', Farrar, Straus & Giroux ISBN 0-374-23461-2

★ 2003 ''The Time of Our Singing'', Farrar, Straus & Giroux ISBN 0-374-27782-6

★ 2006 ''The Echo Maker'', Farrar, Straus & Giroux ISBN 0-374-14635-7

Notable Awards & Recognitions

★ 1985 Rosenthal Award of American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters

★ 1985 PEN/Hemingway Special Citation

★ 1989 MacArthur Fellowship

★ 1991 Time Magazine Book of the Year

★ 1993 Finalist, National Book Award

★ 1996 Swanlund Professorship, University of Illinois

★ 1998 Business Week Best Business Books of 1998

★ 1998 Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

★ 1999 James Fenimore Cooper Prize, American Society of Historians

★ 1999 Lannan Literary Award

★ 2000 Vursell Award, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters

★ 2000 Elected Fellow, Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois

★ 2001 Corrington Award for Literary Excellence, Centenary College

★ 2001 Author of the Year, Illinois Association of Teachers of English

★ 2003 Pushcart Prize

★ 2003 Dos Passos Prize For Literature, Longwood University

★ 2003 W. H. Smith Literary Award (Great Britain)

★ 2004 Ambassador Book Award

★ 2006 National Book Award for Fiction

★ New York Times Notable Book, 2003, 2000, 1998, 1995, 1991

★ Best Books of 2003: Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, London Evening Standard, Time Out ( London), San Jose Mercury News

★ Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award, 2003, 1995, 1991, 1985

★ Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2006

References

1. A Powers-ful Presence
2. "The Pulitzer Prizes: Nominated Finalists 2007"
3. "Science Fiction" by William Deresiewicz

External links

★ Richard Powers faculty page at UIUC

★ David Dodd's Richard Powers website with a biography, bibliography, and further resources

★ "Surprising Powers: Richard Powers' Scientific Humanism" by Stephen Burt from ''Slate''

★ "The Last Generalist: An Interview with Richard Powers" by Jeffrey Williams from ''The Minnesota Review''

★ Richard Powers talks with Alec Michod in ''The Believer''

★ Richard Powers page on the National Book Award website