Plowing the Dark

by Richard Powers

Book Overview

A dazzling new novel by the author of Galatea 2.2 and Gain In a digital laboratory on the shores of Puget Sound, a band of virtual-reality researchers races to complete the Cavern, an empty white room that can become a jungle, a painting, or a vast Byzantine cathedral. In a war-torn Mediterranean city, an American is held hostage, chained to a radiator in another empty white room. What can possibly join these two remote places? Only the shared imagination,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374234612
• ISBN13: 9780374234614
• Release Date: June 2000
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

I waited several days prior to writing about this book.

I don't think it matters how long you wait, general thoughts are the best people seem to do with this Author. This is the first book of his I have read, and I agree with those that say it is unlike anything they have read before.I have never read prose that is so frenetic in it's pace, and to make the experience more interesting, each sentence is so engorged with words, that are carefully even artfully chosen, that dense does not begin to describe this Author's use of language. Once you become accustomed to the pace and richness of what he writes, he becomes readable. Umberto Eco comes to mind, but this Author is not as burdensome, you participate as a reader more quickly. I also love Mr. Eco's work; I just never find the reading comfortable.His knowledge of his material is encyclopedic. He creates characters that are as unique and varied and sometimes eccentric, as any other Author I have read. And what does he create with this?There is a group building "The Cavern", think of it as a very early Beta version of the Holodeck on The Enterprise. This is not a place for recreation; their goals are varied and constantly evolving. This room of no time, that is supposed to eventually be the perfect VR World, the perfect forecaster of whatever you like. Or for others an apocalyptic place, it's potential too horrible to imagine.All of this plays with another story in the background that superficially could not be less related, and this is probably the genius of the book. There are a number of Authors writing that try to be clever and original, they fail with the former as they lack the latter. Their stories don't hold up because you know the end, halfway or even less into the book. This time even when you think you know, even after the end has revealed itself, the book stays with you and you continue to sort out the dozens of thoughts and philosophies, that the characters from Countries as different as Armenia, and Ireland, and Korea bring to the story.The book pulls all of your emotional strings, and most of your moral and ethical ones as well. If you find yourself immersed in this Author's writing you are in for one very enigmatic, puzzling, fantastical ride.Good luck!

the most thought-provoking novel I've read in years

A friend gave me this book to read because I once worked in Beirut. I had never read any of Richard Powers's work before, and didn't know what to expect. I ended up reading the book in almost one full sitting and have not been able to stop thinking about it since. Powers is amazing. I've never read anything that so successfully combines lyricism with significicant intellectual content. I loved this book!

A cracking good tale in crackling prose

"This room is never anything o'clock." That's the first line of this marvelous tale about two rooms a world apart--a virtual reality lab in Seattle and the room in Beirut where a man is held in solitary confinement by fundamentalist terrorists. What ties those two rooms together is the power of imagination both to destroy and to save. Powers manages to create a forward-rushing tale using such poetic language that one has to force oneself to slow down and savor his slightly quirky but always evocative prose. Two passages picked literally at random (I closed my eyes and pointed my finger) from page 11: "They drove out to his lair in the silence of small talk." "She did well around black. She understood it: one of the big two, not a true color, yet fraternizing with the deepest maroons, hoping to smuggle itself back over hue's closely guarded border." Powers is one of that group of young American writers who are so imaginative, so stylish, so knowing that their prose snaps like a flag in a gale. Yet he's not a smart aleck like some of the others. You care about his characters. You care "how it turns out." His previous novel, "Gain", seemed a bit flaccid to me. In "Plowing the Dark" he's back in top form.

Gorgeous, Stunning

This book just swept me away. Richard Powers is one of my favorite writers of all time and Plowing the Dark shows Powers in prime form. Like his other novels, this one is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally rich. And yet -- how does he do it? -- this book is an absolute orginal! It provides all the expected pleasures of a Powers novel, yet it reminds me of nothing I've ever read before (by Powers or any other writer). Plowing is an absorbing story told in gorgeous prose. A must read!

a stunner

An extraordinary novel full of the clash of light and dark. Two people in two separate and very different rooms: one is a solitary hostage in Lebanon, who fills his room with memories and the wanderings of his mind: the other is in Seattle designing a virtual reality room, filled with colour, making 'real' the creations of her imagination. Though their experiences couldn't be more different they share a great deal, not least their discovery of the way war and the needs of the militant can intrude on so-called ordinary life. I found myself thinking about this book long after I put it down - wonderful stuff.