{"id":5603,"date":"2006-11-16T15:40:24","date_gmt":"2006-11-16T20:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5603"},"modified":"2022-03-21T09:25:54","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T13:25:54","slug":"congrats-to-richard-powers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5603","title":{"rendered":"Richard Powers Just Won the National Book Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

2006 National Book Award Details here.<\/a> Richard Powers just won for The Echo Maker<\/a>\"\"<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I have only read 2 others of his books – The Gold Bug Variations<\/a><\/i> and Galatea 2.2: A Novel<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. I tried to read his other books and got kind of stopped by them. The language was opaque. Or I flat out didn’t get it. Especially Operation Wandering Soul<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. That book stopped me dead in my tracks, man. But I gave them all a shot because Goldbug Variations<\/i> is one of my favorite novels. It is nearly impossible to describe (plot-wise), and also nearly impossible to describe why the damn thing just got so under my skin. It is one of THOSE books. I can’t be objective about it, nor do I want to be. It got under my skin and has stayed there. I have read it again – since that first time – and it is just as good as I remembered. I’ve recommended it to people who then read it – and weren’t wacky about it – but then I recommended it to my friend Ted, and the damn book changed his whole life. Ha!! I don’t recommend it anymore – it’s too specific a book. If you’re into that kind of thing, you’ll love it. If you’re not, then you won’t. So I guess you just never know. I don’t mind so much if Richard Powers writes big hard books that sometimes I can’t get into. I love to know he’s out there. A real writer. Someone not trying to just repeat his Gold Bug<\/i> success. A guy who hit the jackpot with a huge sprawling difficult novel like Gold Bug<\/i> – and who has continued to push himself – even sometimes pushing himself away from his core audience. That’s his right to do that. I’ll stick with him. He’s certainly a writer to follow. He’s too good to ignore.<\/p>\n

Since the masterpiece of Gold Bug<\/i> (and seriously – I hate to even give a brief plot description – it’s too daunting) – I read Galatea 2.2<\/i> – and I remember where I was in my life when I read that odd little book – a book with some of the most wistful yearning passages about love that I have ever read in my life. He’s so heady, so cerebral – but then, on the flipside, he so gets that part of human existence. Yearning. The fleeting quality of connection. The sadness, the joy. This shows up in Gold Bug<\/i> and it’s what the whole story is about in Galatea<\/i>. Finding someone who … clicks with you … fits <\/i>with you … cosmically, psychically … those moments of connection that seem to be outside of time. And how difficult it is to walk away from those moments, especially if you are in love with that person. But the way HE writes about it is lyrical, elegiac. I read it in 1996 which I remember as being a rather difficult year. Someone I was madly in love with got married to somebody else that year. I don’t know – and I was in grad school – and I was alone – and yet – this guy was marrying someone else … the girl he chose instead of me … and it just burned<\/i> inside of me. The hurt burned<\/i>. And I read Galatea<\/i> during that time. The book – with its odd vision of unrequited love – or even a wistful looking back on a type of love you will ever yearn for for the rest of your life … I ached reading it. It’s this highly technical novel, about robots, and the English language, and circuitry, and technology … but what I remember about it is the heartfelt ACHE in some of the language. Powers does that sort of ache really really well.<\/p>\n

But Gold Bug<\/i> is the one to read.<\/p>\n

Echo Maker<\/i> is also on my “to read” list … but I have to be in just the right mood for Powers. I need to be in the mood for challenging myself. For a book that does not just reveal its secrets, or make it easy on the reader. For a book that insists that you meet it halfway. I do love books like that (uhm – ya ever been around my blog on Bloomsday? Yeah.) – but not always.<\/p>\n

Congratulations, Richard Powers. It’s always kind of encouraging to know that an author like him – a difficult challenging beat-of-own-drummer author – has found success.<\/p>\n

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