Will: Powers

[Jhildt at aol.com]

Will Lyman -

I'll address this to you since I apparently started reading _Operation
Wandering Soul_ right after you.  But if any other Richard Powers readers are
listening, please pipe in.  I think Powers is very relevant to Pynchon as an
example of a next generation of Pynchon-influenced writer.   And I can't
believe either would object to that - it's a compliment to them both.

I was wondering how you were coming and what you think.  (I only ask that you
not to ruin any of the pleasant surprises I still expect with about 100 pages
to go.)

I'll say straight out (and admittedly in medias res) that I think it's a
breathtaking book.  (What DID win the National Book Award in '93?  I'm
beginning to think he wuz robbed.)

I find the comparison with Pynchon interesting.  _Wandering Soul_ is indeed
VERY Pynchonesque, much more so than _Galetea 2.2_, RP's latest.  (Also a
very good book, but clever where OWS is deep, both intellectually and
emotionally.)  It's his writing, in particular, that's a chip off old TP's
block.  So many "flights" of gorgeous prose, similar in many ways, but not
all, to the Christmas passage in GR recently discussed. While Powers' writing
is dense (even more so in OWS than G2.2), unlike Pynchon he is not obscure.
 Powers passages leave me smiling, not guessing, and often reveal themselves
more with each reading.  As with TP, I find myself rereading pages two and
three times just to enjoy them before moving on.

To be specific . . .

the opening 6 or 7 pages is the best sustained take on the LA freeway system
I've ever read.  (It recalls R. M. Zhlubb of Orpheus Theater fame on the
freeway in the next to penultimate section of GR.)  Then there's Joy's
history report, where a true wandering soul stuns her 6th (?) grade class
with an oral report tying together examples of man's compulsion to move
throughout time, beginning with the "Lost Colonists" of Roanoke Island's
disappearance into the wilderness, back to the "first" Americans crossing the
land bridge from Asia, to tails of European-speaking strangers in the "New
World" 300 years before Columbus, to..., to... and this from a little
boat-person who's barely managed to survive, yet understands more about life
than most adults ever will.  Or the "Children's Crusade" across medieval
Europe told in the glowing imagery of a Classics comic book,  or... , or...
 the description of a "near-perfect" city on the Mediterranean Sea where an
uprooted young boy finally feels at home only to be yanked away once again
(the city is Beirut, and we mourn its passing still), or... , or... .   You
get the idea.  This is mind-filling fiction.

While Powers' writes of many things, like Pynchon his work is always, it
seems, first about good  writing.

Any other true believers out there? (I have miles to go before I sleep.)

                                                Jeff

And Will, if you tell me nothing else, what is the "JAZZ" in WLKJAZZ all
about?
(Ah, the rightness of honest music.  You can always tell the difference.)