THREE FARMERS ON THEIR WAY TO A DANCE

by Richard Powers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 20, 1985

First-novelist Powers has produced an obsessive, witty, moving, sometimes tedious, often electrifying whale of a book about nothing less than the 20th century. Although the long work reveals traces of the mixture of documentary and fiction developed by John Dos Passos, the ruminative, digressive essays of Marcel Proust, the magic realism of the Latin Americans and the humor with a deadly sting to its tail of Joseph Heller, Powers writes in his own strong voice. And though the central preoccupation of the novel--that the mechanical reproduction of images is somehow a key to our age--is derived from Marxist philosopher-critic Walter Benjamin, the way Powers reworks it, worrying it like a cat with a mouse, is distinctly his. The key image he employs is August Sander's (Austrian photographer, 1876-1964) haunting photograph of ""Three Farmers On Their Way to a Dance,"" taken of three young German men on the eve of WW I, unknowing that May evening of the guns of August. One of the threads of the book is a first-person narrative by a contemporary American who becomes obsessed with that photograph. Another strand is the story of the three Germans and what became of them. Yet a third is the story of a present-day microchip trade-magazine journalist who first becomes infatuated by a woman who looks like Sarah Bernhardt, and then, too, finds in Sander's photograph a mystery to be solved. Intermixed with these strands are capsule biographies of real people like Sander, Bernhardt and Henry Ford, and the author's thoughts about our bloody century. Obviously, Powers is asking a lot of a reader, who may grow impatient with his elaborations. But he gives a lot in return: crafty humor and sharp insights into people and milieus. In fact, his contemporary scenes with quirky Americans are so pungent that he tempts a reader to race through his theorizing to get to another one. This is an auspicious debut.

Pub Date: Aug. 20, 1985

ISBN: 0060975091

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1985

Categories: FICTION