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"Generosity:
An Enhancement" by
Richard Powers
; A Frances Coady Book/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (296
pages,
$25
)
———
No other
major American novelist places science front and center
in his fiction more often than
Richard Powers
.
His
protagonists include a self-doubting molecular biologist
("The Gold Bug Variations") and an inspired
artificial intelligence researcher ("Galatea
2.2"). In his previous novel, the National Book
Award-winning "The Echo Makers," a
neurological condition in which victims believe their
loved ones are impostors kick-starts a story about the
odd permutations of identity. For this novelist, science
is not only a source of wonder and an engine of
progress, but a Pandora's box of ethical dilemmas.
At the
heart of Powers' new novel lies another syndrome,
hyperthymia, a temperament marked by extreme, chronic
happiness. "Generosity: An Enhancement" opens
with a writing instructor at a
Chicago
art college falling under the spell of one of his
students.
Russell Stone
can't quite believe that Algerian refugee Thassadit
Amzwar is as blissfully content as she seems.
After
all, the 23-year-old's father was assassinated in his
country's endless civil war, and her mother has
succumbed to cancer. Yet there Thassa is, seemingly
hard-wired to shrug it off and focus on the upbeat.
She's the polar opposite of Russell's too-bored-to-care
other students. They ironically dub her "Miss
Generosity."
In the
plot's other major thread, scientist Thomas Kurton
claims to have discovered a genetic basis for happiness,
while TV science journalist
Tonia Schiff
piggybacks on his fame to boost her own. Eventually, a
media scramble to cover what is inaccurately called
"the happiness gene" expands to ensnare Thassa.
Her meeting with Kurton and appearance on an
"Oprah"-like TV show will doom any possibility
of life outside the fishbowl.
The novel
tosses out lots of themes, perhaps too many. The nature
of happiness, nature versus nurture, the ethical
consequences of scientific advance, information
overload, loss of privacy in a world of social
networking — all these jostle for our attention.
Then
Powers adds the question of whether fiction itself can
survive in such a media free-for-all. His narrator's
intrusive interruptions to lament the novelist's
inability to be heard or to tell the truth seem
ham-handed and unnecessary — especially since this
novel demonstrates otherwise. It keeps the reader glued
to the page, eager to see whether Thassa survives the
spotlight, whether Russell casts aside his fears and
embraces love. What's unusual for Powers is that Kurton
and Tonia shade into stereotype. The other, more
important, characters grip us, and won't let us go.
In
"Generosity," Powers fuses riveting narrative
and spot-on dialogue with thought-provoking social
analysis. Amid the hoopla over Thassa's bliss, he
highlights a crucial debate about what makes us human.
If genetic engineering could make us happier, should we
permit it? Are we with Kurton, who asserts that
"technology changes what we think is
intolerable"? Or do we side with Russell, who
rebuts: "Nothing as complicated as feeling can
possibly reduce to genetics"?
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