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Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance |
Author: Richard Powers
Published: 1992-09-09 |
List price: $14.99
Our price: $11.18
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As of: January 06th, 2009 12:50:37 AM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Good 1st novel
Witty but complex. Spend some time early on getting a handle on the characters because the book jumps from one to another - a lot. You can read the Amazon description for the details. The male characters run the gamut of personality types (I won't spoil it by describing them). Some you will like; some you won't. Each plays a key part in the development of the story.
This is the first of Power's books I have read and I will be going after more. If, as other reviewers have indicated, the others show Power's growth from this first novel, I am looking forward to several good reads.
 More educational than engrossing
I like Richard Powers, in fact, I'd rate his "Galatea 2.2" as one of my top ten novels of all time.
But "Three Farmers" (which I read _after_ "Galatea" and "The Goldbug Variations" and "Gain") was a bit of a let down. Sure, it had all the intellectual stimulation that I expected. And yes, it had some great quotes (both from Powers and from others that he cites ... such as "The world has changed less since the death of Jesus than it has in the past 30 years").
What went wrong? Maybe I was just not in the mood. Maybe it was the lack of a compelling love interest (so powerful in his other novels). Maybe it was that his historical lectures (on Ford, WW I, Sarah Berndhart, and photography) were a bit too pedantic.
But what really bothered me was the gimmicky ending: in the final two pages, one of the protagonists (who is on the verge of continuing a relationship with a female character) abruptly stops and asks (the reader? the author?) "So does he [I] get the girl?" ... and he walks out of her life forever. Huh?
Okay, so Powers has just finished a lecture on how (in photography, at least) there is a fascinating relationship between photographer, subject, and viewer. They fulfill each other, they create each other, they cannot exist without each other. I get it: this same relationship exists between author, characters, and reader. But to take a 350 page narrative and have it end on this cheesy metaphysical note .. a bit of a let down. I'm not even sure what is happening: is the character stepping out of the novel and into the readers reality? If this is so important to Powers, why not at least develop it for a few pages rather than tack it on in the last page?
This device reminds me of Pirandello's "Seven Characters in Search of an Author" ... but in that case it was a successful device because it was clear what was happening, and gave the audience something to chew on.
Try one of Power's other books.
An audacious novel
Mr Powers begins his novel by following a narrator travelling by train from Chicago to Boston. He has to change trains in Detroit and since he has several hours at his leisure, he decides to visit the Detroit Institute of Arts. There, he is puzzled by a photograph taken by Augustus Sander in 1914 showing three farmers on their way to a dance. The reader follows the narrator's progress as he tries to find answers to the questions that preoccupy him about the photograph: who took it, why was it taken, who are the three farmers appearing in the picture.
On another level, Mr Powers gives a fictional account - or it may also be the result of the narrator's research, it is not explicit in the text - of the action taking place at the time the photograph was taken and also what happens subsequently. And so the reader gets to know the three farmers Hubert, Peter and Adolphe.
Yet on another level, the author introduces various contemporary characters working in the Powell Building for a magazine called "Micro Monthly News": Mays, Moseley, Delaney. After having at first the impression that the events at this level are unrelated to the two other levels, the reader soon realises that there is a connection indeed.
What makes Mr Powers's novel interesting are his many reflections on various topics. These range from the situation of a small Belgian village called Petit Roi during the First World War, the part that Henry Ford played in that war, various personalities like Darwin, Freud, Gödel, Planck or Sarah Bernhardt, to the Industrial Revolution and the changes that mechanisation brought to our civilisation. And because the main protagonist so to speak of the novel is a photograph, Mr Powers also deals in detail in the history of photography.
A very instructive novel, plenty of interesting points of view that show Mr Powers's broad knowledge.
A Most Interesting Meta-Fiction
I agree with the other customer reviewers of this novel when they state that it is a "difficult" work. In many ways, reading Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance is not even like reading a novel. The book uses its main stories as a clothesline to hang an astonishing number of meditations on history, culture, technology, and memory.While the other customer reviews to a wonderful job of touching on most of the topics described above, the one area I would add is that the novel serves as an excellent explanation of the principles underlying the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: that it is impossible to study anything or anyone without bringing the researcher's bias into the study. In this novel, the reader is treated to discussions on the subjectivity of history, as well as of the seemingly concrete art of photography, that will cause the reader not to be able to view either discipline in the same way after completing the book. Hopefully, readers will not find all of the discussion of the more challenging aspects of the novel as a reason to find the book too intimidating to read, as it is a work that surely rewards the efforts necessary to read it.
Impressive First Novel. Not for Casual Readers.
This book consists of three intertwined sagas, all revolving around a picture of three farmers taken in 1914. The main idea behind this book, as I see it, is the interconnectedness of observer and observed. The lives of people who see this picture are irrevocably changed, but the prospect of having their picture seen by generations of future viewers, changes the lives of the three farmers as well. This is a recurring motif in the book.After reading this book, I discovered two amazing facts. The first is that this is Richard Powers' first novel and as such the virtuosity and craftsmanship that Powers' exhibits in this book are truly incredible. The second incredible fact is that the picture around which the novel revolves is a real one. Had I known these facts before reading the book, I would have enjoyed it even more. On the down side, this book is not an easy read. The story itself never really gripped me, and there are a lot of dead spots. In addition, while the prose is beautiful it demands concentration and close attention to every word and sentence. Bottom line, I will definitely read Powers' other works, but I cannot recommend this one to the casual reader.
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