Awesome Powers

Hidden Valley Lake, Calif.

I am so grateful to William Deresiewicz for enabling me to see how deluded I have been ["Science Fiction," Oct. 9]. I'm tempted, even, to sue Richard Powers for the roughly 250 to 300 hours of my life I have spent reading his deeply flawed novels. Strange to say, I have actually experienced--obviously due to my "sentimentalism"--rather profound emotions in novel after novel. I was always puzzled that such an intellectually rich author could stimulate sobs from what I believed to be the depth of my soul. Clearly Powers is a charlatan, if we are to accept Dr. Deresiewicz's insightful critique. Coveting a MacArthur "genius" award myself, I rush to agree that these folks, too, must be deluded.

For instance, Dr. D says of The Echo Maker, "It won't tell you much about what its laboriously accumulated information and elaborately constructed concepts have to do with what it means to be alive at a particular time and place, or what it feels like." Simple me! Sentimental me! One of my inappropriate breakdowns occurred while reading of the meeting of Delia David and David Strom at the Marian Anderson concert in The Time of Our Singing. I sob even as I write, remembering what I imagined to be the glory of Powers's writing.

Subscriber Login

User Name

Password

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.