Generosity (Mīkstie vāki)

A "NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW" NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
The National Book Award-winning author of "The Echo Maker "proves yet again that "no writer of our time dreams on a grander scale or more knowingly captures the zeitgeist." ("The Dallas Morning News").
What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments? Funny, fast, and magical, Generosity celebrates both science and the freed imagination. In his most exuberant book yet, Richard Powers asks us to consider the big questions facing humankind as we begin to rewrite our own existence.
Richard Powers is the author of ten novels, including "Generosity," "Gain," "The Time of Our Singing," "Galatea 2.2," and "Plowing the Dark." "The Echo Maker "won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Powers has received a MacArthur Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Award. He lives in Illinois.

Winner of the National Book AwardA "New York Times Book Review "Notable Book of the Year in 2009A "Washington Post "Notable Book of the Year in 2009
A Society for Midland Authors Fiction Award Finalist
What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments? Funny, fast, and magical, "Generosity "celebrates both science and the freed imagination. In his most exuberant book yet, Richard Powers asks us to consider the big questions facing humankind as we begin to rewrite our own existence. " Powers'] cerebral new novel offers a chilling examination of the life we're reengineering with our chromosomes and brain chemistry . . . Powers sticks so closely to the state of current medical science and popular culture that this isn't so much a warning as a diagnosis. And as with any frightening diagnosis, you'll be torn between denial and a desperate urge to talk about it . . . With "Generosity," Powers has performed a dazzling cross-disciplinary feat, linking the slippery nature of 'creative nonfiction' to the moral conundrums of genetic engineering. Although you might expect a novel so weighted with medical and philosophical arguments to flatten its characters into brittle stereotypes, ultimately that's the most impressive aspect of this meditation on happiness and humanness. As "Generosity" drives toward its surprising conclusion, these characters grow more complex and poignant, increasingly baffled by the challenge and the opportunity of remaking ourselves to our heart's content."--Ron Charles, "The Washington Post Book World"

"For the past 20 years or so, Richard Powers seems to have been engaged in a prodigious attempt to redress the imbalance of knowledge that was the subject of C. P. Snow's famous 'Two Cultures' lecture. That, you will recall, was the one in which Snow, a British scientist and novelist, bemoaned the breakdown of communication between the sciences and the humanities. Unlike most of his novelistic peers, Powers speaks fluent science and technology. As a longtime reader of the mostly rapturous reviews of his novels, written by humanists who seemed deeply intimidated by his mastery of arcane branches of scientific knowledge, I managed--until recently--to avoid cracking any of them. As it turns out, his new novel, "Generosity," is an excellent introduction to Powers's work, a lighter, leaner treatment of his favorite themes and techniques. The new novel is certainly more buoyant than Powers's last, the National Book Award-winning "Echo Maker" . . . While that book revolved around a young man who suffers serious brain damage, the central figure of "Generosity" is a woman ostensibly afflicted with hyperthymia--an excess of happiness. The new book poses the question, What if there were a happiness gene? Curiously enough it features a public debate between the two cultures, in which a tortured, charisma-challenged Nobel- winning novelist fares badly against a glibly articulate scientist arguing the case for genetic engineering . . . A third narrative, actually a meta-narrative, is woven through these pages, and is basically the story of the telling of the story. 'Over date pudding, she tells him about negativity bias. I'm not really sure if she tells him this over date pudding, of course, or even if she tells him at this lunch at all. But she tells him, at some point, early on. That much is nonfiction: no creation necessary.' Actually, of course, the whole passage is fiction, written by Richard Powers--who surely knows that a narrator professing incomplete knowledge of his own creations, or drawing arbitrary lines between fiction and nonfiction, risks violating his contract with his readers . . . The novel really kicks into gear when one of Thassa's fellow students, temporarily unhinged by her goodness, attempts to rape her, then turns himself in. The story might have died after 60 seconds on the local news if not for the fact that Russell Stone uses the word 'hyper-thymia' in trying to explain his exotic student to the police. Powers is especially effective at illustrating the way the story of the girl with the happiness gene spreads across the Internet and, only slightly less rapidly, the traditional media . . . But Powers is, when he chooses to be, an engaging storyteller (though he would probably wince at the word), and even as he questions the conventions of narrative and character, "Generosity" gains in momentum and suspense. In the end, he wants to have it both ways, and he comes very close to succeeding."--Jay McInerney, "The New York Times Book Review
""When written by Dostoevsky, Dickens, or Richard Powers at his best, one may feel that the novel] can contain every facet of teh world."--Michael Dirda, "The New York Review of Books"
" Powers'] cerebral new novel offers a chilling examination of the life we're reengineering with our chromosomes and brain chemistry. Although it's tempting to call "Generosity" a d