Fun (car drama) and compelling opening in Detroit with meeting the famous "Three Farmers" =
the Rebel, the Sexy Dude, and the Virgin=
photograph and the amazing photographer.

Richard Powers captures the Grand Trunk Station and Diego Rivera's Mural.
He follows each of the Farmers into World War II, alternating with a truly boring
journalism job, with its later awkward pretense to Henry Ford's fortune.

Boring Stock Brokers. boring Sarah Bernhardt.
Boring red-head quest until Greene begins to speak on stage.
Rampantly boring segue into Henry Ford.

Still evocative at infrequent times yet it is way overly recursive,
with endless coincidences, almost like an English lesson in using coincidence.

Throughout, it oves steadily along to a way over-long plot with mostly unmemorable characters in confusing erudite,

The cover is still amazing. ( )

This book was lent to me by a friend.

It almost seems that if a book is hailed by the literary critics, there is about a 50% chance it is nothing more than post-modernist bullshit. The outstanding achievement of this one however, is that not only does the author succeed at making you hate what he wrote, but goes all the way to make you hate him as well. His name dropping of supposedly important people from philosophers to basketball players, together with his spewing of esoteric facts about arcane subjects, all done in a manner that assumes that if you don't know what he's talking about, then you are just an uncouth, uneducated peasant, come across as a gross insult to the typical reader. He persistently attempts to dazzle you with his own erudition, until you feel like your competing in a rigged game of Jeopardy, where he constantly rings the buzzer and has the right answer every time, while you stand like an intimidated fool.

On top of all that, the various interwoven tales, centered on a photograph, are disjointed and not very interesting, while the prose tends to ramble in the frenetic pretension of a condescending intellectual.

( )

Het uitgangspunt van dit boek is een foto die vlak voor de Eerste Wereldoorlog is genomen in de buurt van Keulen door de fotograaf August Sander. Op de foto zien we drie jongemannen die tiptop gekleed poseren voor de fotograaf. Er is niets bekend over de geportretteerde mannen. Powers geeft de mannen een naam en beschrijft het mogelijke verloop van hun levens. Die beschrijving, de eerste verhaallijn, concentreert zich vooral op de Eerste Wereldoorlog.

Lees verder op deze pagina van mijn boekenblog. ( )

Formidable roman contemporain, déroutant au début, par la multiplication des points de vue, prenant ensuite jusqu'à la dernière page. ( )

N'ai pas pu finir... Je n'arrivais pas entrer dans l'histoire!