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THE SALON INTERVIEW: RICHARD POWERS | PAGE 1, 2
You write a distinctive kind of fiction that shows fascination with systems. I'm wondering where that comes from. I would say the flip side to my fascination with systems is a fascination with components. So many of my books are dialogues between little and big. There's this desire to see how the parts of the whole can see the whole, come to know it, suffer the consequences of it. Fiction may do that -- implicitly, anyway. There's always a way of reading a book -- however minimal, however well behaved, however domestic -- as a consequence of systems that lie just offstage in the lives of the people whose tragedies you're being caught up in. What may make my books my own is this desire to bring those offstage elements on, and make them characters. There are books by my contemporaries in which the protagonist is a mathematician or a physicist and may do things that are supposed to be vaguely mathematical or physical, but these are just used to invoke a theme. Look, the world isn't simply taking place at eye-level view, there's lots going on above us and below us. And why not make those levels part of the dramatic structure or the narrative structure? Some readers resist that. I don't know if it can always succeed. We learn how to read by what we've read and by what exists, and I suspect that most people probably find that desire to bring in levels above or below an individual character difficult to engage emotionally. We have this sense that structure is inimical to emotion or that systems are inimical to individuals, you know, that a book can either be a heart book or a head book. And my desire, of course, is to write something that's like us, namely an all-in-one. Has how you do that changed for you? You follow a journey that grows organically from what you've been able to do and realize. After "The Goldbug Variations," I thought, well, I could now write a 1,200-page book about cosmology ... or not. Maybe there's another way to go. Maybe having learned how to write a book where molecular genetics is the hero, I could learn how to write a book where a 42-year-old divorced mother of two could be the hero. I don't know if I've learned how to do that yet. You grow outward into places where you aren't yet and the cerebral is an invitation to explore those things it can't understand yet. That has to involve a kind of denunciation, leaving behind things that are dear to you. It's funny that you use that regretful language because in "Galatea" and "Goldbug," the characters, while likable, are so bereft and mopey. They think of themselves as old, when they're actually quite young, and they behave as if they've used up their last chance in life. Laura Bodey is very different, even though she's the one with Big Trouble. She doesn't seem to feel that she's walking around with a big hole in the middle of her. Yeah, that's right. I liked this woman. Within the limits of her circumstances, she does a great deal -- in some way because her drama is more real, more pressing, more banal, more mundane. It will be interesting to see how she's read. You always take a little bit of a chance when you do the cross-gender thing. And in some ways, my desire to make a real, palpable, American woman of this moment was thematically driven, because I think of the company as a man. And, I somehow wanted this showdown to be a couple. I would also like to think that she is who she is as a consequence of my being fairly patient and listening to see which way she wanted to go. There's this sense of wanting to get the big picture. Wanting to really see, get the aerial view. And see the implication and the grandeur and the movements. The huge arcs that we don't see in our own lives. That's a monumental thing that fiction can do and that's the kind of fiction that I often seek out. But I think what we really want to do is link our own lives to those emotions and see how they intersect and see how they conflict and negate each other. We want the sense of our own story -- the beginning, middle and end -- to somehow make sense inside this bigger story. I'm going to change our tack a little bit because in addition to thinking of you as an intellectual novelist, and a novelist interested in science, to me you're also a Midwestern novelist. And I'm wondering how that has shaped your work? I was born in Chicago, moved away to Bangkok at the age of 11, came back to the United States at 16, finished high school in a rural Illinois town, went to college in a rural Illinois town, moved to Boston, moved back to a rural Illinois town, moved to the Netherlands, lived for many years there, moved back to a rural Illinois town. The Midwest is such a tabula rasa. Turning the prairie into agribiz is the apotheosis of this drive for control and mastery and efficiency that describes what we are. My books are not Midwestern in the sense that they plumb the Midwestern psyche in the way that Southern writers get to a real precise regional sense of their culture. Or New Yorkers do for their culture. Or the western does for another whole American narrative. I don't know what the Midwestern narrative is really. It's definitely diffident, it's definitely deferential, it's definitely Protestant, it's definitely a great believer in progress, it's maybe the last bastion of enlightenment, misguided enlightenment thought. I don't know. But it's also -- I know it feels exotic to you, it just feels like a baseline to me. I'm curious about what it means to be a Midwestern novelist and to write the kinds of books that you do. I guess the clichéd image that people have of the Midwest is that it's not a place intellectuals are necessarily drawn to. Go ahead, say it! What do I know? I've been in Chicago only, and just for a few days. Which both is the capital and, as all capital cities, does not belong to the country. The Midwest is useful to me for a lot of reasons. One is that it does seem the apotheosis of normative bourgeoisie behavior to me. And that's very useful. Make yourself invisible, don't break the rules and all will be well. And of course, that's subverted and played off against in a couple of my books. It's useful to me as a kind of Everyman setting. There is that sense of omnipotential, unwritten, blank page to it. How do you think your work fits into the larger scale of fiction today? I think it's an amazing time to be alive for many reasons. One is the utter technological transformation that we're working in a matter of years. And nobody can know what that is. And we'll speculate endlessly about it until it stops, which is probably never. But the other is the incredible turmoil that these technological revolutions are working on us. The turmoil is creating a kind of artistic renaissance too. That is testified to by the strength of our bad-mouthing it. I mean, we're always saying, "Ah, literary fiction hasn't succeeded since 1900." Well, in fact it is, I mean it's succeeding all over the map. American fiction is unprecedented in its breadth and its eclecticism, its inventiveness. It's much more common for me to feel overwhelmed than to feel disappointed. What I want to use my contemporaries for is to remind me of how much there is to know and do and how little of the map I've explored so far. I sometimes despair when I read somebody who's really good, who does something that I'm completely incapable of doing, and I say, Oh, I'll never get there. Who was the last person who made you feel that? I get that a lot from people from very different corners. Toni Morrison makes me feel like that. Pynchon makes me feel like that. But also writers of great simplicity and delicacy. I always feel so ham-handed in comparison with people who can just tell a story and get on the way. That's the great thing about that kind of despair, it's always disguised pleasure. You're always saying, yeah, it hurts to grow. It hurts to take a look at something from another perspective. It hurts good. One thing your readers seem to really like is how much they learn from your books. Do you start out thinking that you want people to walk away from your work knowing all about, say, genetics? It's instruct and delight, right? You gotta give them both. Often there isn't that much of a difference between those two things. Not for the right readers. But a lot of people want to split those into inalienable categories. "I can't get delight if I'm getting instruct, and I feel instruct so bye-bye." But you know the reverse can happen too, and I'm thinking about what I might do to learn how to become a writer who can really seduce a reader without them knowing they're being seduced. To get all those good implications and connections in there with the cod-liver oil slipped in somehow. This is the first time you'll be doing a book tour. Is that just for logistical reasons, because I know you were living out of the country? I suppose that protected me from some of the more difficult aspects of publishing. I do feel a lot of loyalty toward the publisher, who's taken very good care of me, and is publishing serious books in a tough time. I suppose there's also the irony: After all, how can you write a book about business and not be expected to promote it somewhat? Maybe part of it's personal, too. I've written five novels and almost entirely avoided that whole process. Maybe I can learn something from it. I'll perhaps get a sense of who likes books, and for what reason. I think by nature I would like to be completely independent of those concerns. Maybe for some writers that's the payoff. I think it is.
I'm trying to avoid any didactic categories that I might have made for
myself or that might have been imposed on me from the outside. There seems
some virtue in doing things that don't appeal to you automatically, some
virtue in changing your perspective and remaining flexible. It's all an
experiment, right? I mean, the minute you know what you're after, the
temptation to do what you've already done sets in, to rewrite the book that
you've already written. And whether it's an actual novel or your own life.
Obviously, if it's a nightmare, I'll know that for book No. 7.
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Richard Powers books:
GAIN
| FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX | 355 PAGES
GALATEA 2.2
| HARPERPERENNIAL | 336 PAGES
THE GOLDBUG VARIATIONS
| HARPERPERENNIAL | 640 PAGES
OPERATION WANDERING SOUL
| HARPERPERENNIAL | 352 PAGES
THE PRISONER'S DILEMMA
| HARPERCOLLINS | 352 PAGES
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