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Title: Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance by Richard Powers ISBN: 0060975091 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67
Rating: 5
Summary: Intelligent and accessibilly written novel
Comment: Richard Powers is probably the most accessible of contemporary "literary" novelists. In this, his first book, he weaves the stories of three farmers on the eve of WWI with the lives of contemporary characters. The "glue" of the story is the photograph that is run across at a Detroit exhibit showing the three farmers in 1914. It's a well written and thoughtful piece on obsession, change and the 20th century. Better in some ways, than even his more highly praised later books.
Powers does a masterful job of integrating several characters into his storyline and integrating several discourses throughout. Especially interesting is his discourse on the work of photographer August Sander. I frankly had never heard of him and now find myself looking for pieces of his work in libraries and online. It's always a good sign when a piece of writing whether fiction or non-fiction spurs interests into directions you'd never have gone into.
There is a connection with the characters that I get when I read Powers that I don't get with DeLillo, Franzen or other "PoMo" writers. That's not a criticism of them but rather a praising of Powers writing.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Intelligent, Complex Novel of Ideas
Comment: In 1910, Richard Powers relates in "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance," the German photographer August Sander came upon the idea of an epic photographic collection to be called "Man of the Twentieth Century." Sander went on, during the next several decades, to take thousands of photographs of everyday life, "a massive, comprehensive catalog of people written in the universal language-photography."
One of Sander's photographs, taken in May, 1914, depicts three German farmers standing in a muddy road, their heads turned to the camera. The three farmers are dressed in their best suits, white shirts, ties, hats, and walking sticks. They are on their way to a dance. As Powers' first person narrator writes, "the date sufficed to show that they were not going to their expected dance. I was not going to my expected dance. We would all be taken blindfolded into a field somewhere in this tortured century and made to dance until we'd had enough. Dance until we dropped."
From this intriguing beginning, Richard Powers tells three stories, each of them connected through the photograph and through time. The first is that of the narrator, who stumbles upon Sander's photograph at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He becomes obsessed with the haunting aura of the photograph and spends the next several months trying to find out more about the photographer and the three men in the photograph. The second is that of the three farmers themselves-Hubert, Peter and Adolphe-and what happens to each of them when the Great War breaks out in Europe. The third story is that of Peter Mays, a writer for a computer trade magazine in 1980s Boston, who also becomes obsessed-not with the photograph, but with a beautiful red haired woman dressed in early twentieth century period costume that he sees on the street following a Veterans' Day Parade-and ultimately finds out that he has a connection to one of the men in the picture and to the events of the Great War.
To say that "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" tells three stories is misleading, however, insofar as the novel is dominated not by plot, but, rather, by a range of discursive narratives on how the world has changed between the Great War, when Sander's photograph was taken, and the present day. Plot does not drive the action of Powers' densely intellectual novel; rather, it provides a touchstone for the narrator to explore certain events and fundamental ideas of the Twentieth Century. For example, when the office cleaning woman shows the narrator artifacts from the Great War, it strikes an intellectual cord that leads to a long discourse on Charles Peguy, the French thinker who, in 1913, made the subsequently oft-quoted remark that "the world had changed less since the death of Jesus than it had in the last thirty years," and the ideas "hidden" in Peguy's formulation. Similarly, the narrator's obsessive study of the 1914 photograph leads to an historical investigation of Sander's life and works. It also leads to speculations on the nature of photography and on how photography changed conceptions of art that derive closely from Walter Benjamin's classic essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."
Ideas and intellectual referents are ubiquitous in this novel; simply read the epigraphs to each chapter to get a feel for the intellectual gyroscope that orients "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance". It is a remarkable work that demands a great deal from the reader. It is also a work that will disappoint anyone who is looking for a straightforward plot or a mere "page turner."
If you're interested in ideas, in novels with intellectual density, in narratives that force you to think deeply and reflectively about the world, "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" is the perfect novel. Read it, enjoy it, and move on to the rest of Richard Powers' remarkable list of fictions.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Intelligent, Complex Novel of Ideas
Comment: In 1910, Richard Powers relates in "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance," the German photographer August Sander came upon the idea of an epic photographic collection to be called "Man of the Twentieth Century." Sander went on, during the next several decades, to take thousands of photographs of everyday life, "a massive, comprehensive catalog of people written in the universal language-photography."
One of Sander's photographs, taken in May, 1914, depicts three German farmers standing in a muddy road, their heads turned to the camera. The three farmers are dressed in their best suits, white shirts, ties, hats, and walking sticks. They are on their way to a dance. As Powers' first person narrator writes, "the date sufficed to show that they were not going to their expected dance. I was not going to my expected dance. We would all be taken blindfolded into a field somewhere in this tortured century and made to dance until we'd had enough. Dance until we dropped."
From this intriguing beginning, Richard Powers tells three stories, each of them connected through the photograph and through time. The first is that of the narrator, who stumbles upon Sander's photograph at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He becomes obsessed with the haunting aura of the photograph and spends the next several months trying to find out more about the photographer and the three men in the photograph. The second is that of the three farmers themselves-Hubert, Peter and Adolphe-and what happens to each of them when the Great War breaks out in Europe. The third story is that of Peter Mays, a writer for a computer trade magazine in 1980s Boston, who also becomes obsessed-not with the photograph, but with a beautiful red haired woman dressed in early twentieth century period costume that he sees on the street following a Veterans' Day Parade-and ultimately finds out that he has a connection to one of the men in the picture and to the events of the Great War.
To say that "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" tells three stories is misleading, however, insofar as the novel is dominated not by plot, but, rather, by a range of discursive narratives on how the world has changed between the Great War, when Sander's photograph was taken, and the present day. Plot does not drive the action of Powers' densely intellectual novel; rather, it provides a touchstone for the narrator to explore certain events and fundamental ideas of the Twentieth Century. For example, when the office cleaning woman shows the narrator artifacts from the Great War, it strikes an intellectual cord that leads to a long discourse on Charles Peguy, the French thinker who, in 1913, made the subsequently oft-quoted remark that "the world had changed less since the death of Jesus than it had in the last thirty years," and the ideas "hidden" in Peguy's formulation. Similarly, the narrator's obsessive study of the 1914 photograph leads to an historical investigation of Sander's life and works. It also leads to speculations on the nature of photography and on how photography changed conceptions of art that derive closely from Walter Benjamin's classic essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."
Ideas and intellectual referents are ubiquitous in this novel; simply read the epigraphs to each chapter to get a feel for the intellectual gyroscope that orients "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance". It is a remarkable work that demands a great deal from the reader. It is also a work that will disappoint anyone who is looking for a straightforward plot or a mere "page turner."
If you're interested in ideas, in novels with intellectual density, in narratives that force you to think deeply and reflectively about the world, "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" is the perfect novel. Read it, enjoy it, and move on to the rest of Richard Powers' remarkable list of fictions.
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Title: Prisoner's Dilemma by Richard Powers ISBN: 0060977086 Publisher: HarperCollins (paper) Pub. Date: April, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers ISBN: 0060975008 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: January, 1994 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Galatea 2.2: A Novel by Richard Powers ISBN: 0060976926 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Gain by Richard Powers ISBN: 0312204094 Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: 26 May, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers ISBN: 0374277826 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 22 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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