65 Review: Richard Powers' "The Echo Maker" << Prev Next >>
by: ColonelZen	IP: 86.18	rated: 0-0	posted: 2009-06-28 01:30:52
The Echo Maker,   by Richard Powers.       I'm not much on character novels generally, or mystery novels which is one of the minor threads of this story, but Powers can write, and write well. That writing as well as my interest in the mechanisms of phenomenal consciousness, which discussion plays a significant part of the story, are what kept my interest through the first half of the book. Having passed the half way point I bought into the sunk cost fallacy deeply enough to spend the two to three days reading time to finish it even though the last half is conspicuously less interesting.     The focus story is that Mark Schluter, an otherwise uninteresting middle America mechanic at a meat packing plant suffering middle American anomie, overage juvenile dilinquent symptomology, has an accident on a lonely road late night that leaves him with an interesting mental disability, bordering on psychosis. He dosen't "recognise" his sister, dog, and his own house. He "recognises" them in the sense of knowing that they look very similar and in his sister's case know things that only his sister could know, but can't emotionally accept that they are who and what they look like. As the story goes on he suffers a variety of other lesser identity disorders that relate to the unfolding of the story.     The second leg of the story is Mark's sister Karin. A likewise unfocused woman trying to find herself, but who adopted the chameleon technique of defining herself on what she can do for others. Her brother is her last remaining family and the only stable "other" she uses to define herself, ergo her part in the novel is her desparate attempt to help put her brother back together.     The third leg of the tripod, and the least convincing one, is Gerald Weber, a neurophysiologist rather obviously modelled on real world Nobel Prize winning biologist Gerald Edelman. While laying the background material for Weber, his character seems realistic enough, but in the latter parts of the book his character diffuses and becomes as neurotically identity disconnected as Mark and Karin.     Identity is what the book is fundamentally about. Mark's "Capgras syndrome" is the refusal to recognise the identity of certain loved ones. Karin's self identity as her brother's keeper is tested to the edge as his refusal to acknowledge her gnaws at her self identity and throughout the book she flails for other people and ideals to latch upon to anchor her own identity. Many of the lesser characters have their own identity issues, one of which is the keystone of the mystery thread. Weber begins as a renowned scientist ("Famous Gerald") devoted to his wife and through a midlife crisis, and in context a devolution through which I simply could not maintain verisimilitude, becomes something of a self doubting psychological wretch, for which the author's failure to resolve at the end of the story is perhaps its weakest point.     It's facinating to see how much Powers' reading of consciousness overlaps mine (quite probably he has read much more than I). But "modules" as characterized by Minsky are mentioned several times. Edelman and his physiological approach are obviously represented in the person of Weber. Even Dennett, never actually mentioned is hinted at in a portion of one of "Weber's" books excerpted near the middle of the book which hints of multiple drafts so plainly as to be transparent, as well as discussion of the synthesis of the whole from competing modules which screams aloud "fame in the brain".     The title of the book comes from the cranes which are the little Nebraska town's claim to fame as they stop in their annual migrations to rest in the mud of the Platte river. One of the names for cranes in an indian language is "Echo Maker". The town depends on the cranes for its fame and tourist sustenance, the cranes rely on the mud flats, all the characters show a connectedness with the cranes even while Powers shows us that the identity of everyone in the story is in some way dependent upon their echos of themselves in their relations with others, This thematic reflection from the title, otherwise having little direct connection with the story, is more interesting than the story itself.     Like the birds, individuals with their own separate relations, yet bound together, travelling the same repeated migration year after year, and facing an uncertain future as much as a whole as separately, Powers' theme, taken from much modern psychology is that we are, none of us, truly a single individual. We have many, many competing ideas and forces in our own brains as well as external echos of ourselves at any instant all vying to reshape us and become part of our identity. Consciousness is then a threadbare damask thrown over this chaos to create the illusion of unity.     I've scanned a couple of reviews last night and this morning, since finishing it. Other reviewers note the references and connection with The Wizard of Oz. That's certainly there, and as they point out there are several direct and many obscure references to it. But in as yet incompletely resolved consideration, this reminds me of that other great piece of identity literature of our culture, Peter Pan. Karin is obviously Wendy, trying to lead her brother back home rather than staying with the Lost Boys. Weber has found his way into Neverland and can't decide whether he wants to return home or to become Peter. Of course any piece of identity literature is going to have resonances with both works.     If you like psychological novels and character studies, you will like this book. As said before, Powers writes well, and there are many interesting ideas presented here. But on the other hand you already know much of what is discussed as ideas, and you have a high confidence in your own ability to find and resolve your own identity (barring physical brain damage, of course!) then, like me you may find that you consider the last half of the book becomes an existential hodgepodge of just trying to follow the threads until they peter out. (In fairness, some of the threads from the first half do resolve - though predictably - and there are some new threads, even an additional mystery and something of an identity related plot twist added, but I found them mundane). I can't decide to *resent* having spent the time on this book - it was too well written, and when first presented the ideas were those I was interested in, sometimes presented in interesting ways, but I do mildly regret it as Powers didn't really "go" anywhere I found interesting with them.     -- TWZ