Of course I’m not absolutely certain of how Powers wishes to be read; I can’t read his mind, only his books. And from those books, of which I’ve read 4, I see a writer who very earnestly, often excitingly, attempts to express the relevance of complex scientific concepts to our everyday lives. He frequently does this, I think we can all agree, by concocting interpersonal plots that show “normal” people engaging with scientifically-minded types. And with all due respect to the very thoughtful graf you excerpt from the interview, I don’t always see evidence of his claims on the page. I don’t know what else to say other than his language occasionally bores me, his plot mechanics seem fairly rote, and his dialogue can feel terribly contrived. For all your belief that Powers is somehow doing something thematically or representationally subversive with his language, his books, particularly the new one, never give me that sense.

I am surprised, however, to see how many people seem to agree with this. I thought Powers was more widely revered coming off “The Echo Maker.”

John: Are you absolutely certain that’s the way Powers would wish his fiction to be read? (And does any author abdicate his rights when a book goes out? That’s one of the larger points of Generosity.) But it’s been there all along. From a 1988 Powers interview:

My idea is that successful writing advances as its own, complex, living hierarchy, one that mirrors the kind of complex hierarchy that we living beings are. We exist at the cellular level or even the nucleic or chemical level, at the level of organs and systems, at the level of the complete organism, and at the social level. All of these different levels have their analogies in a good story, levels from diction on up to meaning, and in a good story, all these levels advance simultaneously, in concert. We may not even be aware of these phenomena as we read, but in great fiction, all the parts and subassemblies of creation are integral and mutually supporting.

So reading Powers exclusively for character and story, as Wood has clearly done here, and not seeking out this “complex, living hierarchy” is more than just a misread. It reflects a decidedly limited definition of how fiction might work (assuming that you make the mistake of approaching it in a functionalist manner). If your scope of fiction is limited to character and realist/modernist fiction and you profess to fully understand a field outside the yoke, then I’d say the critiques against the reviewer are warranted.

Wood certainly has blind spots (I expect he’d not have much good to say about the new Lethem, which I liked a lot), but his “realist” ideal is a lot more flexible than he’s usually given credit for. The best parts of How Fiction Works, I thought, were when he was showing how the best “realist” fiction is intensely self-reflexive and self-aware.

Thanks for the salient info.

But some of your attacks are unwarranted. You accuse Wood of expecting too much “traditional” character building of idea-obsessed Powers, but I think this is how Powers would prefer to be read. Under the science and essayistic portions of his novels, his characters and human plots are still drawn rather conservatively. I think Wood is correct when he accuses Powers of middlebrow-dom; the meta, authorial interjections throughout, which Wood indeed should have at least mentioned, are among the blandest use of that trope I’ve ever read. Why should he get a free pass just for his thematic reach when he so obviously wants to engage us emotionally in his character-based sections?

As a long time reader, I must say you are a, on the whole, perspicacious reader of most fiction. But, as a fiction writer, and having read multiple RP novels (Prisoner’s Dilemma, Plowing the Dark, The Echo Maker), I have to say that RP does have a tin ear for dialogue and a sort of unbelieveable tendency to create flat and uninteresting characters. This isn’t to say that he doesn’t imbue them with amazing facts or put them into tough, morally chewy situations. I feel the problem with RP is not that his novels are idea-based, but that the ideas are so far-reaching and more developed than the characters who are supposed to carry these ideas through the narrative. As a reconciliation, if one wanted to grant RP a compliment, I’d have to say that not many novelists are able to weave together such disparate plot strands like he does, to the point that they are absolutely unrelatable until the final page.