Powers' opus now consists of:
His books often contain at least two intertwining stories -- separated
by time and/or space but yet in some way influencing one another (Farmers,
Goldbug, Gain, Plowing) . Often, one of these stories revolves around scientific
discovery (Goldbug -- the genetic code, Galatea -- modeling the human brain
with neural networks, Gain -- curing cancer, Plowing -- perfecting 3D virtual
reality). And sometimes the bizarre causality by which one story affects
the other is the key to the story's resolution and total impact.
In Plowing the Dark, one thread of narrative focuses on a development team in Seattle working on 3D virtual reality; and the other follows an individual kidnapped and held hostage by terrorists in Lebanon. The time-lines of the two stories overlap -- late 1980s to early 1990s. But the people in the different stories do not know one another, do not know anyone who knows one another, and never communicate with one another using real-world technology. But on some other plain of being, the imaginative experiences of Adie Karpol, an artist who becomes immersed in a 3D world she has helped to build -- a detailed computer model of the Hagia Sophia cathedral/mosque in Constantinople/Istanbul -- and Taimur Martin, who struggles to maintain his sanity and survive in conditions of prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation, intersect -- with Adie inspiring Taimur at a critical moment and Taimur's influence leading to a sudden change in Adie's life.
The intersection and its interpretation occur in the final pages of the book, in scenes that defy scientific explanation, but that are presented so delicately and yet powerfully and with such convincing psychology that you willingly suspend your disbelief and enjoy the emotional impact. In the final few pages, where you at last are shown the critical moment from the perspective of Taimur, give you a feeling of emotional closure and completeness, and leave you with a sense that there might, in fact, be another realm of reality.
"At the first interrogation, they go easy. But already they ask you: How is it you can still be here, after the years of where you've been?
"You do not tell them now, though in time you'll have to. They won't be able to make out what you have to say. How you gave in to the final abyss, how you dropped into the darkness beneath your permanent blindfold. How in the moment that you broke and fell, you never hit. How you saw, projected in a flash upon that dropping darkness, a scene lasting no longer than one held breath. A vision that endured a year and longer. One that made no sense. That kept you sane. A glimpse of the transfer-house of hostage. Of the peace that the world cannot give.
"You'll have to say, someday: how the walls of your cell dissolved. How you soft-landed in a measureless room, one so detailed that you must have visited it once. But just as clearly a hallucination, the dementia of four years of solitary. A mosque more mongrel than your own split life, where all your memorized Qur'an and Bible verses ran jumbled together. A temple on the mind's Green Line, its decoration seeping up from awful subterranean streams inside you, too detailed to be wholly yours."
The "Cavern", which was the research facility, becomes Plato's cave; and the other reality is not some high-tech fifth dimension but rather is "a truth only solitude reveals," a truth that in some sense is God.
"For God's sake, call it God. That's what we've called it forever, and it's so cheap, so self-promoting to invent new vocabulary for every goddamned thing, at this late date. The place where you've been unfolds inside you."
And Taimur, finally a free man, returns to his family like a dead man returning to the world of the living.
"For a little while, you are that angel. Ephemeral saintliness hangs on you. It will not last. Already, irritations seep into your fingertips. You feel yourself slipping bakc to the conditions of living. But for a time, briefer than your captivity, and only because of it, you are burned pure, by everything you look upon."
You can buy this book at Amazon.com, Plowing
the Dark
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by Richard Seltzer
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MA 02132-002. 617-469-2269 seltzer@samizdat.com
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