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Gain
Richard Powers made his debut in 1985 with Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, a brilliant and almost unbelievably brainy meditation on what he calls "our tortured century." Since then he has produced four more novels, showcasing his mastery of genetics, art history, computer science, theology, aesthetics, and a host of other pointy-headed fields. The author's range--and the meticulous music of his prose, which suggests a considerably less zany Thomas Pynchon--is mind-boggling. Yet his subject remains fairly constant: the acceleration, and consequent dehumanization, of contemporary life.
In Gain, Powers puts our modernity through the wringer once again. This time, though, he points the finger at one villain in particular: rampant, American-style capitalism, as exemplified by a conglomerate called Clare International. His novel, it should be said, is no piece of agitprop, but an intricate lamination of two separate stories. On one hand, Powers describes the rise (and fall and rise) of the Clare empire, beginning in its mercantile infancy: "That family flocked to commerce like finches to morning. They clung to the watery edge of existence: ports, always ports. They thrived in tidal pools, half salt, half sweet." The author's Clare-eyed narrative amounts to a pocket history of corporate America, and a marvelously entertaining one. Lest we get too enamored of this success story, though, Powers introduces a second, countervailing tale, in which a 42-year-old resident of Lacewood, Illinois, is stricken with ovarian cancer. Lacewood happens to be the headquarters of Clare's North American Agricultural Products Division, and lo and behold, it seems that chemical wastes from the plant may be the source of Laura Bodey's illness. The analogy between corporate and cancerous proliferation is pointed--too pointed, perhaps. But no other recent novelist has written so knowingly, and with such splendid indignation, about capitalism and its discontents.
416 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1998
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About the author
Richard Powers
82books5,978followersRichard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His book The Overstory won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.
Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the ŷ database.
Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the ŷ database.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 124 reviews
September 20, 2019
1998, Richard Powers scrive questo libro "Gain" titolo orginale, in Italia arriverà, col titolo "Sporco denaro", solo dopo quasi 10 anni, nel 2007, nella presente edizione. Gain, tradotto letteralmente vuol dire, guadagno, profitto. lucro. Il titolo originale rispecchia meglio ciò che Powers con questo romanzo, ci vuole raccontare.
Due storie parallele e lontane nel tempo, si incontreranno e...
Laura, una quarantenne con 2 figli e separata, conduce una vita nella normalità, lavora, poi un giorno scopre di avere sviluppato un cancro. Così la vita verrà sconvolta e...
La storia di una multinazionale, dallo stato embrionale di inizio Ottocento fino ai giorni nostri, ma...
Nel 1998 io ero appena maggiorenne, in Italia il cancro era ancora poco conosciuto, io nella mia quotidianità non sapevo nemmeno che il cancro sarebbe diventato il problema più grave e presente della società del 21° secolo. C'era l'AIDS, con le siringhe per terra e dovevi starci attento, ma del cancro?
Poi entrammo del nuovo millennio, il 2000. Quand'ero piccolo il 2000 era un tempo così lontano, mi pareva come Plutone per gli scienziati. Eppure arrivò e con esso, pure l'insidia tumorale si espanse a macchia d'olio. Ovviamente parlo dell'Italia, anzi dell'Italia con gli occhi di un ragazzino. In America, il problema cancro era già presente e questo romanzo ci racconta come una società capitalistico-consumista, come ora siamo, lascia uno strascico dietro di sè che cresce ogni anno fino a diventare qualcosa di incontrollabile e che può colpire chiunque.
Ora nel 2019, il cancro è il demone che tutti ci portiamo sulle spalle ogni giorno, chi non si chiede almeno una volta ogni mese/anno, potrei aver delle cellule impazzite dentro di me? Al primo dolore sospetto, ci creiamo delle paranoie, magari inutili. Perchè? Perchè la Terra è ammalata, l'aria sulla Terra è ammalata, anche l'acqua lo è e tutto questo è, anche, colpa di tutta la società accelerata, che abbiamo creato.
Secondo libro che leggo di Powers. Dopo il primo impatto folgorante con "Orfeo", provo questo, dove la trama mi interessava parecchio. Appena leggo la prima pagina, l'empatia è già alle stelle. La scrittura di Powers è stupefacente, una capacità di raccontare così evocativa e densa di sfumature. Per la maggior parte c'è un narratore esterno, Powers stesso, che si siede su una sedia a dondolo, inforca gli occhiali e parte, col camino acceso come sfondo e tra un crepitio di legna ed un altro, la storia scivola via, cullando il lettore attraverso riflessioni sociali.
Un altro capolavoro, scrittura magica!
Consigliatissimo...
Due storie parallele e lontane nel tempo, si incontreranno e...
Laura, una quarantenne con 2 figli e separata, conduce una vita nella normalità, lavora, poi un giorno scopre di avere sviluppato un cancro. Così la vita verrà sconvolta e...
La storia di una multinazionale, dallo stato embrionale di inizio Ottocento fino ai giorni nostri, ma...
Nel 1998 io ero appena maggiorenne, in Italia il cancro era ancora poco conosciuto, io nella mia quotidianità non sapevo nemmeno che il cancro sarebbe diventato il problema più grave e presente della società del 21° secolo. C'era l'AIDS, con le siringhe per terra e dovevi starci attento, ma del cancro?
Poi entrammo del nuovo millennio, il 2000. Quand'ero piccolo il 2000 era un tempo così lontano, mi pareva come Plutone per gli scienziati. Eppure arrivò e con esso, pure l'insidia tumorale si espanse a macchia d'olio. Ovviamente parlo dell'Italia, anzi dell'Italia con gli occhi di un ragazzino. In America, il problema cancro era già presente e questo romanzo ci racconta come una società capitalistico-consumista, come ora siamo, lascia uno strascico dietro di sè che cresce ogni anno fino a diventare qualcosa di incontrollabile e che può colpire chiunque.
Ora nel 2019, il cancro è il demone che tutti ci portiamo sulle spalle ogni giorno, chi non si chiede almeno una volta ogni mese/anno, potrei aver delle cellule impazzite dentro di me? Al primo dolore sospetto, ci creiamo delle paranoie, magari inutili. Perchè? Perchè la Terra è ammalata, l'aria sulla Terra è ammalata, anche l'acqua lo è e tutto questo è, anche, colpa di tutta la società accelerata, che abbiamo creato.
Secondo libro che leggo di Powers. Dopo il primo impatto folgorante con "Orfeo", provo questo, dove la trama mi interessava parecchio. Appena leggo la prima pagina, l'empatia è già alle stelle. La scrittura di Powers è stupefacente, una capacità di raccontare così evocativa e densa di sfumature. Per la maggior parte c'è un narratore esterno, Powers stesso, che si siede su una sedia a dondolo, inforca gli occhiali e parte, col camino acceso come sfondo e tra un crepitio di legna ed un altro, la storia scivola via, cullando il lettore attraverso riflessioni sociali.
Un altro capolavoro, scrittura magica!
Consigliatissimo...
December 3, 2019
I hesitate to say this, but to be honest I found large chunks of this book rather boring. Once again there are two alternating storylines that converge towards the end.
The first follows the history of a chemicals corporation from its start as a local soap and candle manufacturer in early 19th century Boston through to the modern day, and a midwestern town where it is the dominant employer. Powers attempts to liven this account up, with a brother who joins an ill-fated Antarctic expedition and comes back with a souvenir, a fragrant root from a Pacific island which becomes the magic ingredient in a successful soap, and by including the company's advertisements throughout much of his historic account.
The other plot follows the story of a mother's ultimately unsuccessful battle with ovarian cancer, and her part in a law suit against the chemicals giant.
As always Powers' research is impressive, but I have enjoyed some of his other books more.
The first follows the history of a chemicals corporation from its start as a local soap and candle manufacturer in early 19th century Boston through to the modern day, and a midwestern town where it is the dominant employer. Powers attempts to liven this account up, with a brother who joins an ill-fated Antarctic expedition and comes back with a souvenir, a fragrant root from a Pacific island which becomes the magic ingredient in a successful soap, and by including the company's advertisements throughout much of his historic account.
The other plot follows the story of a mother's ultimately unsuccessful battle with ovarian cancer, and her part in a law suit against the chemicals giant.
As always Powers' research is impressive, but I have enjoyed some of his other books more.
April 8, 2019
Book number six in my chronological re-read of Richard Powers� novels (i.e. I am now halfway). For anyone who has read Powers� books in publication order, this one comes as a bit of a surprise: his first five novels gained him a reputation for complexity and difficulty. Here we have just two story strands that weave around one another and the writing style seems to be deliberately dialled back. The first five novels from Powers make it very clear that he is interested in connections, in cause and effect, in the way the past influences the present and the future. We are where we are because of the route we took to get here. (There are echoes here of what Ali Smith is doing in her seasonal quartet where each of the three instalments so far has used historical events as foundations for current states of affairs). Gain is another example of this.
In one strand of the book, Powers traces the history of a fictional American company, but he places that fictional company in very factual American history. One of the founders of the company, Benjamin Clare, is a participant on the journey of the US Exploring Expedition (1838-1842), meets the real-life Vendovi and acquires a sample of a fictional plant that becomes vital to the success of the company. The company also attends the World’s Fairs held in USA at various points, suffers through the recessions, battles the laws that sometimes seem to oppose its growth etc. etc.. The research required to build this compelling picture of an evolving organisation must have been immense, along with the ability to understand which were the key events and what the implications of those events were for business. It reads a lot like a documentary and it becomes harder and harder to believe that the Clare organisation isn’t real.
Interleaved with the history of Clare, we read about Laura. The book blurb rather gives away to story abut Laura. On my first reading, I was surprised at the spoiler heavy blurb, but my second reading, with a greater understanding of how Powers operates and what I think his goal was in this book, shows that knowing the basics of the plot doesn’t matter for the purposes of the book. You sort of guess, anyway, that when Laura discovers that she has developed ovarian cancer, that she lives in a town dominated by one of Clare’s largest factories, and that there are reports of Clare contaminating the environment with carcinogenic pollutants, then things aren’t going to end well for her. We track the course of her illness.
Some reviews have commented on a lack of emotion in Powers� writing. I have to say that it seems to me that maybe those people haven’t lost a loved one to a prolonged battle with cancer. I have, and I don’t think Powers writes unemotionally.
Also, some reviews suggest it is clear that Powers is laying the blame for Laura’s cancer at Clare’s factory entrance. That may be true, but I think there’s a deeper thing going on here. Why does Powers track Clare’s history in such detail, taking us through what might seem inconsequential decisions or insignificant events alongside the major developments? I think it has to do with the cause and effect I started out with. As Powers tracks the development of Clare, we see how an organisation can go from humble beginnings, from a man with a way to make a quality product, to a vast empire where the product itself has disappeared into the background and “business� has become about how to make money. Business changes from “I have something you want and you have something I want - let’s trade� to:
Times had again changed for business, or rather, business had worked another change upon time. The days of people working for other people were over. The company was no longer a band joined together for a common purpose. The company was a structure whose purpose was to make more of the same.
or
Skill in manufacture, the technology of making things were no longer the issue. The issue was fitting the itch to the scratch: bottling thirst’s salt water.
or
It made no difference how good or useful a product was. What mattered was what the populace thought it needed.
If Clare has polluted the environment, whose fault is that? Or is it a consequence of the myriad small course corrections made over more than 150 years, each decision either forced by circumstances or a means of survival. No one set out to damage the environment or to create a neighbourhood that is toxic to the humans living there. In fact, several times, people in charge look to prevent that happening. But, as often seems to happen in animal conservation, lack of understanding at the time means that a well-meaning decision has serious detrimental effects further down the line than anyone was able to look at the time the decision was made.
It’s the kind of environmental question that Powers will return to 6 books later when he writes The Overstory. Humans live in the present with little or no awareness of the bigger picture, and it seems one thing Powers wants us to think about as we read Gain (and The Overstory) is how easy it is to knock things out of balance, how fragile life is (cf. The Gold Bug Variations, Operation Wandering Soul).
---------------
ORIGINAL REVIEW
---------------
"Better living through chemistry". This is a book of two strands. In one we watch a company grow from meagre beginnings manufacturing a few bars of soap (selling the first ones at a loss) through to being a huge corporation with multiple product lines most of which are based on the wonders of chemistry as it advances through the decades (we travel from the early 1800s through to somewhere around the 1980s).
In the second, a woman battles with a disease that is destroying her life.
In lesser hands, this could turn into a sort of Erin Brockovich sensational story with sick woman taking on huge corporation. But this is Richard Powers and the story is much stronger than that: it doesn't go down the obvious routes and is, because of that, far more interesting. The story of the corporation growing reads almost like a history book. It examines how natural choices made in the middle of events can gradually develop into something far more significant generations later. None of us can know the consequences of decisions we make and this is amplified when talking about a huge corporation. The story of Laura is the exact opposite as it focuses on the human pain and suffering as disease spreads.
If you want a book that prompts you to think about how we got to where we are and what that might mean for the future, then this is the book for you. It's far simpler to read than many of Powers' books because it is straightforward narrative in each story with sentences that make sense with just one read and fewer really obscure words than some of his other books. To me, it felt like he had something he wanted to say and made a deliberate effort to avoid obscuring it with the complexity of his language.
And I'd just like to say that I loved the ending. It felt very "right".
In one strand of the book, Powers traces the history of a fictional American company, but he places that fictional company in very factual American history. One of the founders of the company, Benjamin Clare, is a participant on the journey of the US Exploring Expedition (1838-1842), meets the real-life Vendovi and acquires a sample of a fictional plant that becomes vital to the success of the company. The company also attends the World’s Fairs held in USA at various points, suffers through the recessions, battles the laws that sometimes seem to oppose its growth etc. etc.. The research required to build this compelling picture of an evolving organisation must have been immense, along with the ability to understand which were the key events and what the implications of those events were for business. It reads a lot like a documentary and it becomes harder and harder to believe that the Clare organisation isn’t real.
Interleaved with the history of Clare, we read about Laura. The book blurb rather gives away to story abut Laura. On my first reading, I was surprised at the spoiler heavy blurb, but my second reading, with a greater understanding of how Powers operates and what I think his goal was in this book, shows that knowing the basics of the plot doesn’t matter for the purposes of the book. You sort of guess, anyway, that when Laura discovers that she has developed ovarian cancer, that she lives in a town dominated by one of Clare’s largest factories, and that there are reports of Clare contaminating the environment with carcinogenic pollutants, then things aren’t going to end well for her. We track the course of her illness.
Some reviews have commented on a lack of emotion in Powers� writing. I have to say that it seems to me that maybe those people haven’t lost a loved one to a prolonged battle with cancer. I have, and I don’t think Powers writes unemotionally.
Also, some reviews suggest it is clear that Powers is laying the blame for Laura’s cancer at Clare’s factory entrance. That may be true, but I think there’s a deeper thing going on here. Why does Powers track Clare’s history in such detail, taking us through what might seem inconsequential decisions or insignificant events alongside the major developments? I think it has to do with the cause and effect I started out with. As Powers tracks the development of Clare, we see how an organisation can go from humble beginnings, from a man with a way to make a quality product, to a vast empire where the product itself has disappeared into the background and “business� has become about how to make money. Business changes from “I have something you want and you have something I want - let’s trade� to:
Times had again changed for business, or rather, business had worked another change upon time. The days of people working for other people were over. The company was no longer a band joined together for a common purpose. The company was a structure whose purpose was to make more of the same.
or
Skill in manufacture, the technology of making things were no longer the issue. The issue was fitting the itch to the scratch: bottling thirst’s salt water.
or
It made no difference how good or useful a product was. What mattered was what the populace thought it needed.
If Clare has polluted the environment, whose fault is that? Or is it a consequence of the myriad small course corrections made over more than 150 years, each decision either forced by circumstances or a means of survival. No one set out to damage the environment or to create a neighbourhood that is toxic to the humans living there. In fact, several times, people in charge look to prevent that happening. But, as often seems to happen in animal conservation, lack of understanding at the time means that a well-meaning decision has serious detrimental effects further down the line than anyone was able to look at the time the decision was made.
It’s the kind of environmental question that Powers will return to 6 books later when he writes The Overstory. Humans live in the present with little or no awareness of the bigger picture, and it seems one thing Powers wants us to think about as we read Gain (and The Overstory) is how easy it is to knock things out of balance, how fragile life is (cf. The Gold Bug Variations, Operation Wandering Soul).
---------------
ORIGINAL REVIEW
---------------
"Better living through chemistry". This is a book of two strands. In one we watch a company grow from meagre beginnings manufacturing a few bars of soap (selling the first ones at a loss) through to being a huge corporation with multiple product lines most of which are based on the wonders of chemistry as it advances through the decades (we travel from the early 1800s through to somewhere around the 1980s).
In the second, a woman battles with a disease that is destroying her life.
In lesser hands, this could turn into a sort of Erin Brockovich sensational story with sick woman taking on huge corporation. But this is Richard Powers and the story is much stronger than that: it doesn't go down the obvious routes and is, because of that, far more interesting. The story of the corporation growing reads almost like a history book. It examines how natural choices made in the middle of events can gradually develop into something far more significant generations later. None of us can know the consequences of decisions we make and this is amplified when talking about a huge corporation. The story of Laura is the exact opposite as it focuses on the human pain and suffering as disease spreads.
If you want a book that prompts you to think about how we got to where we are and what that might mean for the future, then this is the book for you. It's far simpler to read than many of Powers' books because it is straightforward narrative in each story with sentences that make sense with just one read and fewer really obscure words than some of his other books. To me, it felt like he had something he wanted to say and made a deliberate effort to avoid obscuring it with the complexity of his language.
And I'd just like to say that I loved the ending. It felt very "right".
August 10, 2016
In this novel, painfully and tentatively, two worlds entwine: the idiosyncratic fabric of an individual’s life and the managed, efficiency-driven footprint of a global company. But the entanglement is more than a mere conflict between powerless consumers and machiavellian corporations.
Because, ultimately, we live in a world that is populated by fallible humans. Also globe-spanning businesses emerge from the entrepreneurial impulse of an individual, or a small group of individuals, with a particular set of skills and beliefs.
One main thread in the narrative is a story about the growth of a modest soap making operation, a family business established in the 19th century, into a diversified, multinational company that seems to produce every fertilizer, food ingredient, hygiene product and cosmetic under the sun.
The development is propelled forward by myriads of interacting forces: regulation, science and technology, competition, war, changing mores. At a certain point the dynamic changes: formal incorporation creates a compound organism that cuts itself loose from the original entrepreneurial energy and starts to behave according to its own, financially driven logic: “The days of people working for other people were over. The company was no longer a band joined together for a common purpose. The company was a structure whose purpose was to make more of the same.�
The company unleashes an endless stream of innovations into the market. And, whether it’s fertilizer or toothpaste, these products� constituent molecules end up in consumers� bodies.
And so Powers zooms in on the life of an average American woman who lives in the town where our global company has its headquarters and a number of production units. As all of us she is busy keeping together the pieces of her and her family’s fractured lives. Obviously, in that process she consumes, and just as the rest of us, she is ‘rationally ignorant� of the dense meshwork of practical and moral implications of her consumer behavior. Time and again she is confronted with dilemmas she is unable to handle.
At one point, the book’s female protagonist is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. There is reason to believe that industrial pollution has triggered the illness. Now the stakes of the entanglement are raised to the existential level. But she realizes that things are not that simple. She has been guilty too, and willingly so:
Because, ultimately, we live in a world that is populated by fallible humans. Also globe-spanning businesses emerge from the entrepreneurial impulse of an individual, or a small group of individuals, with a particular set of skills and beliefs.
One main thread in the narrative is a story about the growth of a modest soap making operation, a family business established in the 19th century, into a diversified, multinational company that seems to produce every fertilizer, food ingredient, hygiene product and cosmetic under the sun.
The development is propelled forward by myriads of interacting forces: regulation, science and technology, competition, war, changing mores. At a certain point the dynamic changes: formal incorporation creates a compound organism that cuts itself loose from the original entrepreneurial energy and starts to behave according to its own, financially driven logic: “The days of people working for other people were over. The company was no longer a band joined together for a common purpose. The company was a structure whose purpose was to make more of the same.�
The company unleashes an endless stream of innovations into the market. And, whether it’s fertilizer or toothpaste, these products� constituent molecules end up in consumers� bodies.
And so Powers zooms in on the life of an average American woman who lives in the town where our global company has its headquarters and a number of production units. As all of us she is busy keeping together the pieces of her and her family’s fractured lives. Obviously, in that process she consumes, and just as the rest of us, she is ‘rationally ignorant� of the dense meshwork of practical and moral implications of her consumer behavior. Time and again she is confronted with dilemmas she is unable to handle.
“Paper or plastic? the fifty-year old bagger asks her. What is she supposed to say? Liberty or death? Right or wrong? Good or evil? Paper or plastic? The one kills trees but is one hundred percent natural and recyclable. The other releases insidious fumes if burned but requires less energy to make, can be turned into picnic tables and vinyl siding, has handles and won’t disintegrate when the frozen yoghurt melts. She panics. “Whatever is easiest,� she tells the bagger, who grimaces.These unresolved dilemmas and dimly articulated desires are sent back into the supply chain where they engage in a murky chemistry with the laws of corporate management, bringing to life a world in which hyper-personal desires and dry accounting rules are inextricably fused into hazy, hybrid ‘actants� (to borrow a term from Bruno Latour).
At one point, the book’s female protagonist is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. There is reason to believe that industrial pollution has triggered the illness. Now the stakes of the entanglement are raised to the existential level. But she realizes that things are not that simple. She has been guilty too, and willingly so:
Who told them to make all these things? But she knows the answer to that one. They’ve counted every receipt, more carefully than she ever has. And wasn’t she born wanting what they were born wanting to give her? Every thought, every pleasure, freed up by these little simplicities, the most obvious of them already worlds beyond her competence.She dimly understands that in innumerable ways her fate is intertwined with the corporate leviathan’s. And so where is the basis for retribution and action?
It makes no difference whether this business gave her cancer. They have given her everything else. Taken her life and molded it in every way imaginable, plus six degrees beyond imagining. Changed her life so greatly that not even cancer can change it more than halfway back.There is no ending, least of all a happy one. At one level there is life that stretches far beyond the law of supply and demand. At another level “there is nothing but a series of chemicals, each distinctly shaped, stretching on forever in the Void.� And at yet another one, there is human energy and purpose, tainted, fallible, prone to confusion and the seductions of greed and security.
“People want everything. That’s their problem.�
October 19, 2018
RP's books ALL rise to a level of excellence, some are more interesting than others depending on a reader's own interests but rest assured you, reader will be entertained, educated, challenged, and rewarded emotionally towards a better humanity for investing the quite hours of moving through his take on whatever mix of themes he chooses to examine within the confines of story. Here it's soap, early Americana and the unfolding history of a country in expansion, the birth of capitalism and corporation, the chemistry of life AND the chemistry of death in the conjoined second storyline that is always the subtext of living in a modern world gone mad with progress. Powers writes with technical prowess, with a sensitivity to the interstices but never overly sentimental, he gleams without glitter. I may not reread ALL his books, but then again I might. Only time will tell.
April 3, 2013
Powers' novels are never about one thing--as a reader you have to take the two or three narratives and twine them together to see the shape he has constructed. in this novel, we watch a corporation grow and a woman wither in twinned narrative.
Clare Soap starts out in 1802 with the first Clare arriving on the US' eastern shore. Laura starts out in May of an unspecified but 1980s-ish year, planting her spring garden. Clare is about to begin a business which will lead his sons to start Clare Soap. Laura is about to discover that she has ovarian cancer. the only things they share in common are life in Lacewood and an inevitable chemical collision course.
in the hands of an inferior novelist, this book would be about the triumph of a lone woman against a monstrous corporation. fortunately, we are in Powers' vastly more capable hands.
how does a corporation get to be what it is? we live and breathe corporate air, now; but the Clares beginning their soap-making venture do not. business was not the only occupation of people at that time--a majority of the US still lived an agrarian life and put their own food (and soap) on the table all by themselves, thank you very much.
so how did we come to be incorporated? i keep thinking about that word's etymology: from Late Latin incorporatus, past participle of incorporare "unite into one body," from Latin in- "into, in, on, upon" (see in- (2)) + corpus (genitive corporis) "body". have we been taken into an amorphous, metastasizing corporate body, or have we taken business into our own selves? the book might surprise you in its answer.
there's a great quote in the book:
some passages of this book are rather tedious--at a certain point Laura's narrative becomes vastly more compelling than Clare's, and it takes (a not-always rewarded) discipline to keep going through the Clare narrative. in general, however, Powers pretty much pulls off the impossible: making the narrative of a corporation as fascinating as the narrative of a person.
highly recommended for anyone interested in how we got where we are, and what it will mean for our future.
Clare Soap starts out in 1802 with the first Clare arriving on the US' eastern shore. Laura starts out in May of an unspecified but 1980s-ish year, planting her spring garden. Clare is about to begin a business which will lead his sons to start Clare Soap. Laura is about to discover that she has ovarian cancer. the only things they share in common are life in Lacewood and an inevitable chemical collision course.
in the hands of an inferior novelist, this book would be about the triumph of a lone woman against a monstrous corporation. fortunately, we are in Powers' vastly more capable hands.
how does a corporation get to be what it is? we live and breathe corporate air, now; but the Clares beginning their soap-making venture do not. business was not the only occupation of people at that time--a majority of the US still lived an agrarian life and put their own food (and soap) on the table all by themselves, thank you very much.
so how did we come to be incorporated? i keep thinking about that word's etymology: from Late Latin incorporatus, past participle of incorporare "unite into one body," from Latin in- "into, in, on, upon" (see in- (2)) + corpus (genitive corporis) "body". have we been taken into an amorphous, metastasizing corporate body, or have we taken business into our own selves? the book might surprise you in its answer.
there's a great quote in the book:
"Business has destroyed the very knowledge in us of all other natural forces except business.--John Jay Chapman
some passages of this book are rather tedious--at a certain point Laura's narrative becomes vastly more compelling than Clare's, and it takes (a not-always rewarded) discipline to keep going through the Clare narrative. in general, however, Powers pretty much pulls off the impossible: making the narrative of a corporation as fascinating as the narrative of a person.
highly recommended for anyone interested in how we got where we are, and what it will mean for our future.
September 13, 2019
Continuing my reading of Richard Powers novels in reverse publication order. Seven read and five to go.
I was worried I would dislike Gain because one of the main characters has cancer, ovarian to be exact. I get squeamish reading "cancer novels" and I did in this one too. However, in classic Powers style, he ties her story in with the carcinogenic impact of toxic waste produced by the cosmetics factory of a huge American company located in this woman's town.
Clare & Company, started by three brothers as a soap manufacturing concern in 19th century Boston, grew into an international consumer products conglomerate (think Proctor & Gamble.) Tracing the growth of this business gives Powers the opportunity to present a history of capitalist business practice in America.
Most of the financial shenanigans went over my head but the rest of it was fascinating as it traces the incredible growth of just about everything in America over three centuries, showing how we got from then to now. Makes your head spin.
I happen to be one who fully believes that the malignant rise of cancer in the world is a direct result of the radiation and chemicals we spew into the environment. That is a downside of all that industrial growth and our luxurious way of life. Don't get me started on the epic fail of medicine to find an even somewhat humanitarian way to treat this scourge. (My apologies to those who have successfully survived the disease.)
Now I find myself reading all the labels on my soaps, cleaners and cosmetic products even more obsessively than I did before.
Once again, Richard Powers took a scenario from which we suffer while we benefit, focused it on the personal human level, and forced me to learn much more than I knew before. Gain is a link from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring to the world we have today.
I was worried I would dislike Gain because one of the main characters has cancer, ovarian to be exact. I get squeamish reading "cancer novels" and I did in this one too. However, in classic Powers style, he ties her story in with the carcinogenic impact of toxic waste produced by the cosmetics factory of a huge American company located in this woman's town.
Clare & Company, started by three brothers as a soap manufacturing concern in 19th century Boston, grew into an international consumer products conglomerate (think Proctor & Gamble.) Tracing the growth of this business gives Powers the opportunity to present a history of capitalist business practice in America.
Most of the financial shenanigans went over my head but the rest of it was fascinating as it traces the incredible growth of just about everything in America over three centuries, showing how we got from then to now. Makes your head spin.
I happen to be one who fully believes that the malignant rise of cancer in the world is a direct result of the radiation and chemicals we spew into the environment. That is a downside of all that industrial growth and our luxurious way of life. Don't get me started on the epic fail of medicine to find an even somewhat humanitarian way to treat this scourge. (My apologies to those who have successfully survived the disease.)
Now I find myself reading all the labels on my soaps, cleaners and cosmetic products even more obsessively than I did before.
Once again, Richard Powers took a scenario from which we suffer while we benefit, focused it on the personal human level, and forced me to learn much more than I knew before. Gain is a link from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring to the world we have today.
November 26, 2012
I have a complicated relationship with contemporary American fiction. Actually, I flat-out despise most of it. Give me a period novel about Edwardian English gentlemen, Second Empire French coalminers, post-Petrine Russian nobles, or even Depression-era California fruit pickers, and I will be happy, but it seems like I loathe anything set in the modern United States. Why does the life of a person in the recent past seem so full compared to the bland epigones who populate our shelves? Such small characters, such vitiated lives, such small epiphanies. Charles Portis was right: "We're weaker than our fathers, Dupree. We don't even look like them." At the helm of the mightiest empire the world has ever seen, ordinary Americans are the least interesting people on Earth, yet the most willing to over-document their sluggish swirls through the stagnant pond that they call home. It's either self-indulgence or a simple absence of anything real to talk about.
Another reason I get annoyed is that a lot of those kinds of novels make "consumerism" a theme, which I find incredibly boring. What is interesting at all about people consuming goods, talking about consuming goods, or thinking about talking about consuming goods? Nothing. How many novels have we been subjected to where authors try to make "points" about consumerism by including all of those things, lulling the reader into an ostentatiously branded coma so that no one catches on to the complete absence of any action or humanity that would interest a normal person with full control of their faculties? What in the name of God are you trying to SAY? Yet somehow Gain takes both of those themes that otherwise bore me and makes them great. It's two interrelated stories: one, the gradual growth amidst all the turbulence of American history of a small colonial-era soap-making factory called Jephthah Clare & Sons into Clare Inc., a Johnson & Johnson-esque corporate behemoth; and two, Laura Bodey's struggle against ovarian cancer in the modern-day town of Lacewood, IL, where Clare has a factory.
As a big economic history nerd, I confess that I found the first story far more interesting for the most part. In long stretches of sometimes-overwrought prose, Powers has concocted probably the most engrossing life story of a fictional corporation you'll ever read (which may not be a crowded field). Parts of it were easily on the level with a real corporate history like Marc Levinson's superb The Great A&P, or a magisterial economic history like William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis, which Powers clearly alludes to in the part set just prior to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Watching the fledgling soap company make its first deals, improve its production process, and slowly expand into other markets to eventually become a titan of industry is honestly enthralling; you can almost see Adam Smith nodding approvingly during the sections on how the various Clare family members improve their firm's ability to truck and barter. There are also plenty of great parts about the chemistry of soap (no really).
Clare is intended to be both a parody of "better living through chemistry"-type companies, particularly as its story moves into the present-day, and also a serious study of how companies become both legal people and also "good corporate citizens", and enmesh themselves in our lives. Think of the sinister Bland corporation in Gravity's Rainbow, or Ambrose Bierce's definition of a corporation as "An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility", or Milton Friedman's infamous arguments in "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" that companies have zero responsibilities to society beyond enhancing shareholder value. While Clare is presented as a fairly benevolent company, taking early Progressive-era steps to bring their workers on board with the company and prevent the labor troubles so typical of the era, it slowly begins to seem like Just Another Company, especially when the narrative gets to the 80s. What starts out as a hagiography subtly becomes a much more nuanced picture.
This is made a little less abstract by Laura's story. She's a divorced mother of 2 kids who's seeing a married guy in her spare time. I expected to be bored stiff by her life, and initially I was, since she spends a lot of the beginning doing mundane ordinary complaining or snarking about consumer products, but Powers eventually won me over by giving her cancer, a time-tested method of increasing reader sympathy dating back at least to Charles Dickens. I've never had or known anyone close to me who had cancer so I don't know how accurate his depiction of it was, but it seemed pretty real and engrossing to me. While a lot of her story was used to present the reader with some Themes (e.g., the growth of Clare is implicitly analogized to the metastasis of cancer cells, the company's efforts to disavow any link between the chemical outputs of the Lacewood factory and the illnesses of the townfolk are contrasted with their equally assiduous efforts to seem like they Care About the Community), the changes in her relationships with her kids and ex-husband came off as genuine and moving. Powers also namedrops Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, a cool Walt Whitman poem.
Overall I liked the book, especially the capitalist cheerleading parts, which I would definitely read more of. While the modern characters occasionally threaten to become as boringly loathsome as their counterparts in a Jonathan Franzen novel, Powers does about the right amount of tearjerking to make them relatable and sympathetic.
Another reason I get annoyed is that a lot of those kinds of novels make "consumerism" a theme, which I find incredibly boring. What is interesting at all about people consuming goods, talking about consuming goods, or thinking about talking about consuming goods? Nothing. How many novels have we been subjected to where authors try to make "points" about consumerism by including all of those things, lulling the reader into an ostentatiously branded coma so that no one catches on to the complete absence of any action or humanity that would interest a normal person with full control of their faculties? What in the name of God are you trying to SAY? Yet somehow Gain takes both of those themes that otherwise bore me and makes them great. It's two interrelated stories: one, the gradual growth amidst all the turbulence of American history of a small colonial-era soap-making factory called Jephthah Clare & Sons into Clare Inc., a Johnson & Johnson-esque corporate behemoth; and two, Laura Bodey's struggle against ovarian cancer in the modern-day town of Lacewood, IL, where Clare has a factory.
As a big economic history nerd, I confess that I found the first story far more interesting for the most part. In long stretches of sometimes-overwrought prose, Powers has concocted probably the most engrossing life story of a fictional corporation you'll ever read (which may not be a crowded field). Parts of it were easily on the level with a real corporate history like Marc Levinson's superb The Great A&P, or a magisterial economic history like William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis, which Powers clearly alludes to in the part set just prior to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Watching the fledgling soap company make its first deals, improve its production process, and slowly expand into other markets to eventually become a titan of industry is honestly enthralling; you can almost see Adam Smith nodding approvingly during the sections on how the various Clare family members improve their firm's ability to truck and barter. There are also plenty of great parts about the chemistry of soap (no really).
Clare is intended to be both a parody of "better living through chemistry"-type companies, particularly as its story moves into the present-day, and also a serious study of how companies become both legal people and also "good corporate citizens", and enmesh themselves in our lives. Think of the sinister Bland corporation in Gravity's Rainbow, or Ambrose Bierce's definition of a corporation as "An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility", or Milton Friedman's infamous arguments in "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" that companies have zero responsibilities to society beyond enhancing shareholder value. While Clare is presented as a fairly benevolent company, taking early Progressive-era steps to bring their workers on board with the company and prevent the labor troubles so typical of the era, it slowly begins to seem like Just Another Company, especially when the narrative gets to the 80s. What starts out as a hagiography subtly becomes a much more nuanced picture.
This is made a little less abstract by Laura's story. She's a divorced mother of 2 kids who's seeing a married guy in her spare time. I expected to be bored stiff by her life, and initially I was, since she spends a lot of the beginning doing mundane ordinary complaining or snarking about consumer products, but Powers eventually won me over by giving her cancer, a time-tested method of increasing reader sympathy dating back at least to Charles Dickens. I've never had or known anyone close to me who had cancer so I don't know how accurate his depiction of it was, but it seemed pretty real and engrossing to me. While a lot of her story was used to present the reader with some Themes (e.g., the growth of Clare is implicitly analogized to the metastasis of cancer cells, the company's efforts to disavow any link between the chemical outputs of the Lacewood factory and the illnesses of the townfolk are contrasted with their equally assiduous efforts to seem like they Care About the Community), the changes in her relationships with her kids and ex-husband came off as genuine and moving. Powers also namedrops Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, a cool Walt Whitman poem.
Overall I liked the book, especially the capitalist cheerleading parts, which I would definitely read more of. While the modern characters occasionally threaten to become as boringly loathsome as their counterparts in a Jonathan Franzen novel, Powers does about the right amount of tearjerking to make them relatable and sympathetic.
December 11, 2010
Massively disappointing. I assumed I would dig this, because a) I liked/loved the other two Richard Powers books I read (coincidentally both also starting with G), b) Mike Reynolds raves about this one and c) the opening grafs are gorgeous as hell. But the chapters about the corporation read like a fucking textbook, and the ones about the sick woman are mainly just boilerplate coping-with-cancer drama. I respect the ambition of commingling the epic history with the close-up human story, but this just doesn't work, not even on a language level -- Powers seems to be holding back stylistically on this one. I am not soured on Rick P., though. Generosity and Galatea earned him a lifetime pass and I still want to maneuver through the rest of his catalog.
January 20, 2023
This seems to be one of the least discussed novels in the Powers catalogue, which makes sense considering that it follows the masterpiece Galatea 2.2 and, in comparison, feels like less of an event. However, I found it to be an extremely worthy story in its own right, and one of the most sensitive books I’ve read from him yet. It alternates between the history of the Clare company, a soap manufacturer, and the story a woman who lives in proximity to one of their factories and starts to suspect that the company is responsible for her developing cancer. I found both sides of the narrative to be equally interesting, which is really a testament to how Powers is able to write about absolutely anything brilliantly. A minor complaint is that the stories� trajectories aren’t hard to map out, but I think that’s also a function of the narrative here. Either way, more people should read this one. I really enjoyed it.
May 8, 2015
This is a dense read, mixing the fictional story of a woman with cancer and a history lesson in the Industrial Revolution in America. It's depressing and scary and insanely thought-provoking. That being said, I'm glad that I read it, but would have a hard time recommending it, unless to someone who was already interested in the topic. Primarily reads like non-fiction.
January 30, 2024
The first the thing that I want to say about Gain is that it is a very bold and dramatically current book.
Powers� novel delves into two overlooked and interlinked demons that haunt our society: cancer and the profound evilness of neoliberal capitalism.
The novel consists of two parallel stories.
The first one is the history of Clare, a big American chemical corporation. In my opinion, this is the weakest part of the book and it is the reason why I’m not giving it 5 stars. It is enjoyable for the first 150 pages, when we still deal with the personal stories of the Clare brothers during the 19th century. Afterwards, it gets increasingly technical and a bit boring. In some ways, it is an intended effect: the more the company becomes powerful, diffused and impersonal the more Power’s style gets abstract, although extremely precise and technical.
Without focusing on any specific character, Powers describes the automation, delocalisation and financialisation of the company. It is quite difficult to follow, but I’ve still found this part to be an outstanding exercise of style that’s worth making the effort.
However, the real core of the book is the story of Laura, a woman who gets ovarian cancer as a consequence of her proximity to one of Clare’s chemical plants.
Laura’s story tore me apart. I can’t remember the last time a book affected me this much. She is really a wonderful female character which is so rare, especially coming from a male writer. Her life, her family, her thoughts, her qualities, her flaws� everything feels so real, and you immediately empathize with her.
Powers applies the same poetic precision utilised to recount Clare’s rise to power, to describe how cancer slowly and cruelly eats Laura’s body.
The book gets increasingly difficult to read, I had to take frequent pauses. Gain made me realise how little we talk about cancer. We all know someone who had it and we are all afraid of getting it. It is something that is omnipresent in our society but healthy people do not want to talk about it. It’s too scary, and for good reasons.
Because of that, I wouldn’t recommend Gain to people who are hypochondriac (I’m not and I’ve booked several medical exams while reading it), or have dealt closely with cancer in one way or another. For everybody else, I highly recommend it, not only as a masterful literary piece but also as a very difficult but necessary reflection on how our insatiable, hungry-for-growth economic system is destroying humanity.
Powers� novel delves into two overlooked and interlinked demons that haunt our society: cancer and the profound evilness of neoliberal capitalism.
The novel consists of two parallel stories.
The first one is the history of Clare, a big American chemical corporation. In my opinion, this is the weakest part of the book and it is the reason why I’m not giving it 5 stars. It is enjoyable for the first 150 pages, when we still deal with the personal stories of the Clare brothers during the 19th century. Afterwards, it gets increasingly technical and a bit boring. In some ways, it is an intended effect: the more the company becomes powerful, diffused and impersonal the more Power’s style gets abstract, although extremely precise and technical.
Without focusing on any specific character, Powers describes the automation, delocalisation and financialisation of the company. It is quite difficult to follow, but I’ve still found this part to be an outstanding exercise of style that’s worth making the effort.
However, the real core of the book is the story of Laura, a woman who gets ovarian cancer as a consequence of her proximity to one of Clare’s chemical plants.
Laura’s story tore me apart. I can’t remember the last time a book affected me this much. She is really a wonderful female character which is so rare, especially coming from a male writer. Her life, her family, her thoughts, her qualities, her flaws� everything feels so real, and you immediately empathize with her.
Powers applies the same poetic precision utilised to recount Clare’s rise to power, to describe how cancer slowly and cruelly eats Laura’s body.
The book gets increasingly difficult to read, I had to take frequent pauses. Gain made me realise how little we talk about cancer. We all know someone who had it and we are all afraid of getting it. It is something that is omnipresent in our society but healthy people do not want to talk about it. It’s too scary, and for good reasons.
Because of that, I wouldn’t recommend Gain to people who are hypochondriac (I’m not and I’ve booked several medical exams while reading it), or have dealt closely with cancer in one way or another. For everybody else, I highly recommend it, not only as a masterful literary piece but also as a very difficult but necessary reflection on how our insatiable, hungry-for-growth economic system is destroying humanity.
July 30, 2008
With the critical acclaim piling onto his most recent novel, "The Echo Maker," one can only hope that Richard Power's other superb works will cease to languish undeservedly in the ranking of sales. One of the finest American novelists currently working, Mr. Power's work stands out for the author's deft prose, careful plotting and complex approach to issues of modern identity, science, and the self. Those put off by the sheer size of Powers' novels (the breath taking "Time of Our Singing" comes in at a back bending 640 pages, the recent "Echo Maker" at an only slightly less intimidating 464) may do well to look to begin exploring his work with the rich and thoughtful "Gain" a shorter novel of substantial depth.
An excellent demonstration of Powers' versatility, "Gain" tells two different connected stories in parallel. In the first, told in a close third person, the reader watches as Laura Bodey, a divorced mother working in real estate battles against cancer. The second track, told in an omniscient third person, tells the history of the Clare Corporation, a soap company that eventually rose to become a multi national chemical conglomerate, from its beginnings as a family concern at the beginning of the 19th century up to the present day. The connection between the two-stories? Lacewood, where Laura lives is a Clare company town.
Some short sighted reviewers imagine Powers' work as a general condemnation of corporations and capitalism. But not only does such shallow analysis ignore the novel's quite clever ending, they are further far too simple for this complex and thoughtful author. Readers familiar with Powers will know that he is no Luddite, nor political hack pimping an agenda. Instead, Powers offers a deep view of both the strengths and limitations of what corporations offer society. Of course being a work by this particular author, readers will further learn a great deal, part of his gift being how he weaves his research into his writing, in this case with a fascinating history of soap! If that seems uninteresting, wait to read the novel, because in all likelihood you will be enrapt.
The closer story Power tells. Of Laura's struggle with cancer, proves both gripping and human. As with all his characters, readers find here no cookie cutter bits of melodrama but whole people of blood on the page. Children struggling with the approaching loss of their mother, an ex-husband who can neither understand nor console his ex-wife, in short an engaging emotional experience.
Powers' fans may disagree on which is his best work. For me, I lean towards the transcendent "Time of Our Singing." But as with any great author, all his work offers readers a rare opportunity. For the vast majority, "Gain" will surely not disappoint.
An excellent demonstration of Powers' versatility, "Gain" tells two different connected stories in parallel. In the first, told in a close third person, the reader watches as Laura Bodey, a divorced mother working in real estate battles against cancer. The second track, told in an omniscient third person, tells the history of the Clare Corporation, a soap company that eventually rose to become a multi national chemical conglomerate, from its beginnings as a family concern at the beginning of the 19th century up to the present day. The connection between the two-stories? Lacewood, where Laura lives is a Clare company town.
Some short sighted reviewers imagine Powers' work as a general condemnation of corporations and capitalism. But not only does such shallow analysis ignore the novel's quite clever ending, they are further far too simple for this complex and thoughtful author. Readers familiar with Powers will know that he is no Luddite, nor political hack pimping an agenda. Instead, Powers offers a deep view of both the strengths and limitations of what corporations offer society. Of course being a work by this particular author, readers will further learn a great deal, part of his gift being how he weaves his research into his writing, in this case with a fascinating history of soap! If that seems uninteresting, wait to read the novel, because in all likelihood you will be enrapt.
The closer story Power tells. Of Laura's struggle with cancer, proves both gripping and human. As with all his characters, readers find here no cookie cutter bits of melodrama but whole people of blood on the page. Children struggling with the approaching loss of their mother, an ex-husband who can neither understand nor console his ex-wife, in short an engaging emotional experience.
Powers' fans may disagree on which is his best work. For me, I lean towards the transcendent "Time of Our Singing." But as with any great author, all his work offers readers a rare opportunity. For the vast majority, "Gain" will surely not disappoint.
July 7, 2008
One more book for our summer reading program, Read Green, Live Green!
Let me begin by stating that a novel by Richard Powers is not a beach read. That having been said, it probably should not be recommended for a summer reading program. This is a dense and slow novel, and it is not for amateurs!
In Gain, Powers tells two stories: the story of the Clare family and their soap business and the story of Laura Bodey, a woman who has just found out that she has ovarian cancer.
As the stories move along (alternating voices), we learn how the Clares failed as merchants, but turned to candlemaking and soap, which was a brilliant business decision. Their story begins in the early nineteenth century. Their story is dry. None of the Clares is developed enough for the reader to care about them. And who, except for a maker of soap, cares about how soap is made?
Laura Bodey's story really drives this novel. She is a forty-ish realtor with two kids, Ellen and Tim, and an ex-husband, Don. Her experience with cancer and chemo is horrific. When she finds out that many people in her town, Lacewood, also have cancer, she cannot help but to wonder about the culprit, namely Clare Soap & Chemical.
The two storylines really don't come together as one would expect. With such an elaborate history of soap and its makers, the connection between Clare and Bodey should have been more complex. Still, I couldn't stop reading this book, mostly for the compelling story of Laura Bodey.
Let me begin by stating that a novel by Richard Powers is not a beach read. That having been said, it probably should not be recommended for a summer reading program. This is a dense and slow novel, and it is not for amateurs!
In Gain, Powers tells two stories: the story of the Clare family and their soap business and the story of Laura Bodey, a woman who has just found out that she has ovarian cancer.
As the stories move along (alternating voices), we learn how the Clares failed as merchants, but turned to candlemaking and soap, which was a brilliant business decision. Their story begins in the early nineteenth century. Their story is dry. None of the Clares is developed enough for the reader to care about them. And who, except for a maker of soap, cares about how soap is made?
Laura Bodey's story really drives this novel. She is a forty-ish realtor with two kids, Ellen and Tim, and an ex-husband, Don. Her experience with cancer and chemo is horrific. When she finds out that many people in her town, Lacewood, also have cancer, she cannot help but to wonder about the culprit, namely Clare Soap & Chemical.
The two storylines really don't come together as one would expect. With such an elaborate history of soap and its makers, the connection between Clare and Bodey should have been more complex. Still, I couldn't stop reading this book, mostly for the compelling story of Laura Bodey.
November 14, 2009
One of the most engaging novels I've read in years. It works on more than one level by combining the story of a divorced woman raising two children who gets ovarian cancer with the history of the multi-national consumer products conglomerate that has a plant in her Illinois town. Powers is always interested in how science relates to culture, and in this case the science is chemistry, but for me the strongest part of the book was the history of the company. Starting with the British immigrant to colonial Boston who becomes a trader and importer, Powers encapsulates just about all of American economic history in the tale. It's not an easy read exactly, but it's vivid and moving and smart and even funny in places.
September 21, 2021
4.5 ⭐️
Catching up on Richard Powers before his latest, Bewilderment releases. Gain was as prescient in 1998 as the world was slipping from us. Powers continues to see things and write about issues that few current writers do. And it’s necessary. Highly recommended.
Catching up on Richard Powers before his latest, Bewilderment releases. Gain was as prescient in 1998 as the world was slipping from us. Powers continues to see things and write about issues that few current writers do. And it’s necessary. Highly recommended.
December 31, 2023
The multi-generational history of an American Corporation and the contemporary story of a single mother’s battle against cancer are the twin engines that drive this book forward - this was my introduction to Richard Powers and an astonishing experience of learning and pathos.
Read
August 7, 2024“A year from now, Ellen will either be going to college or nodding spiked out on somebody’s toilet. She’ll base her choice on the available evidence, and so far, mainstream existence has made an overwhelming case for all-annihilating stupidity.�
Read
December 10, 2023I very much skimmed this book for a class but I would be interested in coming back to it later, no rating because I barely count it as having read it
February 7, 2025
This was a disappointing read. The last book by Powers that I read was my favourite read of 2024. By contrast this will be, at least I desperately hope it will be, the worst of 2025.
It was impressively boring for a book about a woman dying of cancer as a result of the waste disposal malpractice of a huge incorporation. Every emotional impact, every piece of insightful commentary, was buried inbetween reams and reams of what was the most boring narrative on the history of a soap company. Huge swathes of this book were drier than the driest nonfiction books I’ve abandoned after two chapters.
The one good thing I can say about this book is that the writing is excellent. Every sentence was well crafted and all words meticulously chosen. I can’t fault Powers� language skills, but how on earth he stayed interested enough in his own storyline to finish writing this book is beyond me.
It was impressively boring for a book about a woman dying of cancer as a result of the waste disposal malpractice of a huge incorporation. Every emotional impact, every piece of insightful commentary, was buried inbetween reams and reams of what was the most boring narrative on the history of a soap company. Huge swathes of this book were drier than the driest nonfiction books I’ve abandoned after two chapters.
The one good thing I can say about this book is that the writing is excellent. Every sentence was well crafted and all words meticulously chosen. I can’t fault Powers� language skills, but how on earth he stayed interested enough in his own storyline to finish writing this book is beyond me.
March 17, 2019
This was alright. Definitely a dense read that takes a lot of effort to get into. Powers uses a corporation to work as main protagonist, but it gave the novel a stale voice. It is a history lesson paired with a sad story of a woman struggling to beat ovarian cancer. Laura’s story WAS very sad and really scared me - paired side by side with a story of a company’s growth, we see how anything small can affect a wider population. It was an interesting concept to write, but felt unnecessary. I would have had the same understanding of the novel if all parts on the company were omitted. An interesting idea, but hard to execute meaningfully.
April 22, 2019
This was a bit of a departure from what I have previously read from Richard Powers and that proved my interest in this book. The book has a dual plot line which Powers has successfully used before, but instead of pairing science and romance, he has melded a human interest story of a woman being treated for cancer with a fictional corporate history of a large chemical conglomerate with roots as a soap and candle manufacturer. This works surprisingly well with the cancer patient's story drawing on our heartstrings while the corporate history stimulates the academic neurons. The one issue is that Powers may have written the corporate history thread a little too dry for a novel.
August 15, 2023
Powers is a smart guy, and every page drips with the sort of subtle cleverness that leaves grad seminars short of breath. However, for each poetic description, human moment, elegant metaphor, and structural stunner there is an equally melodramatic and ineffective try at an emotional gut punch. That said, the audaciously ironic ending finally brought this novel's musical head and heart together in heartbreaking glissando.
March 27, 2008
This book put me in a really really really bad mood.
March 30, 2008
a tale told from both ends. somewhere in the middle we see how innocuous steps up can result in the creation of monstrosities, and how the machine will devour us all if we are not careful.
April 19, 2018
UGH THIS BOOK IS THE WORST.
February 23, 2023
not quite sure how I feel. the last 30 pages had some of the most emotional lines and devastating depictions of human suffering I’ve ever read. even though I could predict what would happen to Laura from the structure of Laura and Clare’s interlocking narratives, the swift change in language and subsequent emotional impact hit me so unexpectedly. before that, Laura’s narrative was passive and clinical, while Clare’s passage lulled in various parts (every description of soap making had me napping), but then suddenly, my heart was breaking for Laura and I felt so resentful of Clare’s successes. or maybe it’s just because I’m sick with a fever and sad asf. idk. tears were shed. Laura’s suffering was also relentless. maybe too relentless? we know that her cancer is a result of Clare’s products, but Powers made the reveal shocking nonetheless.
okay so these are some of my praises, but also, I gotta say a lot of the sections fell flat for me because of how much Powers weaved in his views on corporate America. and that’s fine you know, like I support preachiness, but I didn’t like how inconsistent it made Laura’s voice. it went from her barely being able to think because of the pain to her delivering a scathing take on the inescapability of consumer goods or something. and I also didn’t understand a lot of it 🙄. it was more natural during the Clare narrative.
speaking of the Clare narrative, it was hella impressive that he made the corporation the main character. did he pull it off? not entirely. but a lot of it did work for me. the scope of the company’s history, its struggles, its shapers, its cogs made me think a lot about the future, the past, marketing, sustainability, internships, why I’m reaching for what I’m reaching for, etc. etc. anyhoo. that’s all. fever delirious Cady out 😎✌️
okay so these are some of my praises, but also, I gotta say a lot of the sections fell flat for me because of how much Powers weaved in his views on corporate America. and that’s fine you know, like I support preachiness, but I didn’t like how inconsistent it made Laura’s voice. it went from her barely being able to think because of the pain to her delivering a scathing take on the inescapability of consumer goods or something. and I also didn’t understand a lot of it 🙄. it was more natural during the Clare narrative.
speaking of the Clare narrative, it was hella impressive that he made the corporation the main character. did he pull it off? not entirely. but a lot of it did work for me. the scope of the company’s history, its struggles, its shapers, its cogs made me think a lot about the future, the past, marketing, sustainability, internships, why I’m reaching for what I’m reaching for, etc. etc. anyhoo. that’s all. fever delirious Cady out 😎✌️
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 18, 2023
The American Dream? Gain Correlates Capitalism and Cancer. Fascinating and Thought-Provoking. Richard Powers writes the most intelligent fiction that I've ever read.
The whole time I was reading, I thought of the Unilever Corporation, which is mentioned by name more than once in the story in reference to Laura's father's favorite soap. Unlike Clare, Unilever is British Born, but similar to Clare, Unilever was the combination of soap-making and margarine companies.
Gain was my third Richard Powers experience, following and . I am definitely planning to read more by this author.
Favorite Passages:
But no point in second-guessing yesterday, with today coming on like there's no tomorrow.
_______
Funerals are for the living. Her mother liked to say that. More times than Laura cares to remember. Death was different, a lifetime ago.
_______
Funerals are for my mother. I'll never have to do any of this. Look at polio. Look at smallpox. Disease is just a passing holdover from when we lived wrong. It's all been a terrible mistake. My parents and their friends: the last generation that will have to die.
_______
The dead want nothing of us but that we live.
_______
Time, that universal solvent, dissolved the mystery.
_______
Hard to put aside a little bit for the future when the present is eating you alive.
_______
Does the world get poorer when a hundred-dollar bill falls down a sewer? For that matter, does the world get richer when we strike gold or cut down trees?
What does it mean, to own something? Twenty-two hours of work equals one mulching mower plus shipping, handling, and tax. What is "handling," anyway? How much can such a thing really cost? Can someone work for nothing? What rises or falls in the country of human ransom when a fireproof safe goes up in smoke or a coffee maker arrives free in the mail? How do insurance companies decide how much to give you when starting you up again from scratch? How often can you start from scratch? And what about stopping from scratch?
_______
Knowledge. Your pearl of great price. We only sent you to university in the first place int he mistaken belief that the cost of your edification would someday cease to be a drain and begin to return something to the family's current account.
Ben set his bloodless face into a mask. What, then, do you propose I do with myself?
The question was academic, the answer available long before education. What does life ever propose that one do, but come work?
_______
Tomorrow: the only lever long enough to dislodge today.
_______
A disembodied voice - male - speaks from another dimension. The voice is pastoral, reflective, sagacious. "Some things you can only say with the one look that will say them."
. . . "Some things you need never say at all."
_______
The calendar shrinks to its barest rituals. She forces herself through the reflex routines, the searches and seizures so usual that she's doing them already before she wakes. She checks the day's tasks off mentally as she hits the forest-green shag. She felt-pens her stations to the washable whiteboard Super-Glued to the refrigerator. Nothing must change.
Her life. Her life, Laura keeps telling herself. But the thing feels like nothing she's ever visited. She's back in some alien England, after years shipwrecked on a coral shoal that shows up on no one's map. She's perched on her own shoulder, watching her puppet body jerk through the checkpoints at her hours' borders, squaring off against her pocket diary's To Do List.
_______
We just need to choose what kind of world we want to live in, and then build that place.
_______
Whatever happens from here on, tonight excites her. Now feels warm upon her face. Don leans over to her in the oranged dark to tell her something, his peace as palpable as hers. Like some bonfire from ten years before. Like no human has ever been foolish. Like there's no such thing as forgiveness. Likie there's nothing to forgive.
_______
Her colors are all true and her resolution infinite.
_______
She wants to make it. She's gotten in the habit of existing. She likes being here. She doesn't know what else she would do.
_______
The nation was a silent-film showgirl, giddy with confidence, one step ahead of the censors.
_______
And if some company got together, came up with something for her, for what has happened, some fruit-scented spray that would return her to all those blissful, carefree assumptions: well, they could name their price. Cancer-Be-Gone. She'd sell just about anything but the kids to get it. If the cure lasted for only, say, ten years, at the end of which the vendor wanted the most unthinkable item in trade, she'd still sign.
_______
Brought to you by Snowdrop, Gristo, Tar Baby, FlapperJack Pancake Mix, Mentine Gargle and Breath Repairer: as if these things themselves were doing the bringing. Through radio, these names grew as easy to flesh out as any phantom, as real as the Shadow, Jack Armstrong, Jack Benny, Ma Perkins, or Kate Smith.
Each brand was a wooden puppet longing to be a little boy. Teh best of them grew lives of their own, until not even their most devoted listeners could say who made them anymore. America knew what Gristo brought you, but not who brought you Gristo.
_______
A little Baggie of diced oregano materializes one morning on her bedside table. She whiffs it; it smells like college. It seems to be there for a reason, the postscript of an ancient conversation she can't retrieve.
The whole time I was reading, I thought of the Unilever Corporation, which is mentioned by name more than once in the story in reference to Laura's father's favorite soap. Unlike Clare, Unilever is British Born, but similar to Clare, Unilever was the combination of soap-making and margarine companies.
Gain was my third Richard Powers experience, following and . I am definitely planning to read more by this author.
Favorite Passages:
But no point in second-guessing yesterday, with today coming on like there's no tomorrow.
_______
Funerals are for the living. Her mother liked to say that. More times than Laura cares to remember. Death was different, a lifetime ago.
_______
Funerals are for my mother. I'll never have to do any of this. Look at polio. Look at smallpox. Disease is just a passing holdover from when we lived wrong. It's all been a terrible mistake. My parents and their friends: the last generation that will have to die.
_______
The dead want nothing of us but that we live.
_______
Time, that universal solvent, dissolved the mystery.
_______
Hard to put aside a little bit for the future when the present is eating you alive.
_______
Does the world get poorer when a hundred-dollar bill falls down a sewer? For that matter, does the world get richer when we strike gold or cut down trees?
What does it mean, to own something? Twenty-two hours of work equals one mulching mower plus shipping, handling, and tax. What is "handling," anyway? How much can such a thing really cost? Can someone work for nothing? What rises or falls in the country of human ransom when a fireproof safe goes up in smoke or a coffee maker arrives free in the mail? How do insurance companies decide how much to give you when starting you up again from scratch? How often can you start from scratch? And what about stopping from scratch?
_______
Knowledge. Your pearl of great price. We only sent you to university in the first place int he mistaken belief that the cost of your edification would someday cease to be a drain and begin to return something to the family's current account.
Ben set his bloodless face into a mask. What, then, do you propose I do with myself?
The question was academic, the answer available long before education. What does life ever propose that one do, but come work?
_______
Tomorrow: the only lever long enough to dislodge today.
_______
A disembodied voice - male - speaks from another dimension. The voice is pastoral, reflective, sagacious. "Some things you can only say with the one look that will say them."
. . . "Some things you need never say at all."
_______
The calendar shrinks to its barest rituals. She forces herself through the reflex routines, the searches and seizures so usual that she's doing them already before she wakes. She checks the day's tasks off mentally as she hits the forest-green shag. She felt-pens her stations to the washable whiteboard Super-Glued to the refrigerator. Nothing must change.
Her life. Her life, Laura keeps telling herself. But the thing feels like nothing she's ever visited. She's back in some alien England, after years shipwrecked on a coral shoal that shows up on no one's map. She's perched on her own shoulder, watching her puppet body jerk through the checkpoints at her hours' borders, squaring off against her pocket diary's To Do List.
_______
We just need to choose what kind of world we want to live in, and then build that place.
_______
Whatever happens from here on, tonight excites her. Now feels warm upon her face. Don leans over to her in the oranged dark to tell her something, his peace as palpable as hers. Like some bonfire from ten years before. Like no human has ever been foolish. Like there's no such thing as forgiveness. Likie there's nothing to forgive.
_______
Her colors are all true and her resolution infinite.
_______
She wants to make it. She's gotten in the habit of existing. She likes being here. She doesn't know what else she would do.
_______
The nation was a silent-film showgirl, giddy with confidence, one step ahead of the censors.
_______
And if some company got together, came up with something for her, for what has happened, some fruit-scented spray that would return her to all those blissful, carefree assumptions: well, they could name their price. Cancer-Be-Gone. She'd sell just about anything but the kids to get it. If the cure lasted for only, say, ten years, at the end of which the vendor wanted the most unthinkable item in trade, she'd still sign.
_______
Brought to you by Snowdrop, Gristo, Tar Baby, FlapperJack Pancake Mix, Mentine Gargle and Breath Repairer: as if these things themselves were doing the bringing. Through radio, these names grew as easy to flesh out as any phantom, as real as the Shadow, Jack Armstrong, Jack Benny, Ma Perkins, or Kate Smith.
Each brand was a wooden puppet longing to be a little boy. Teh best of them grew lives of their own, until not even their most devoted listeners could say who made them anymore. America knew what Gristo brought you, but not who brought you Gristo.
_______
A little Baggie of diced oregano materializes one morning on her bedside table. She whiffs it; it smells like college. It seems to be there for a reason, the postscript of an ancient conversation she can't retrieve.
April 25, 2021
mega depressing, dnf
May 6, 2013
Togliamoci subito di torno l’unico difetto di questo romanzo: il titolo. Ma non quello vero, che Richard Powers gli ha attribuito nel 1998, ovverosia Gain (guadagno, profitto). Mi riferisco al titolo di questa prima edizione italiana, ben tradotta da Luca Briasco (che di Powers aveva già tradotto Galatea 2.2, sempre per Fanucci). Forse alla casa editrice di via delle Fornaci volevano ironizzare sul fatto che, tra le altre cose, questo romanzo narra la storia di una multinazionale statunitense che nasce come fabbrichetta di sapone ai primi dell’Ottocento, e diventa un colosso della chimica. Be�, è un’ironia un po� fiacchetta. Non vedo cosa c’era di male a tradurre il titolo seccamente con “Guadagno�. Che è il vero tema della storia, molto bella, molto ben raccontata, e a tratti decisamente straziante, ma sempre senza compiacimento e sentimentalismo facile.
Se c’� una cosa in particolare che vorrei elogiare di Sporco denaro è l’architettura del libro. Intendo dire le grandi strutture, non tanto il singolo personaggio o la singola scena; ma il modo in cui la vicenda procede nel suo insieme. Powers ha una tecnica estremamente sofisticata, e che ben s’attaglia alle sue capacità decisamente virtuosistiche: prende due generi narrativi del tutto diversi e li fa sposare. In Galatea 2.2 la fiaba e l’autobiografia; qui la storia della morte di un’americana di mezza età, Laura Bodey, agente immobiliare nell’insignificante cittadina di Lacewood; e la storia della vita di una grande multinazionale immaginaria, la Clare, fondata nel 1832 da un candelaio irlandese e due commercianti inglesi male in arnese, i fratelli Clare. Niente di più incompatibile, in apparenza, che la vicenda di una persona in carne ed ossa, con due figli, un ex-marito, un amante, un lavoro, una casa con giardino amorevolmente curato, e quella di un’organizzazione grande e impersonale, fatta di gente che va e viene, di macchinari, di conti, e soprattutto di soldi. Ebbene, Powers dimostra ancora una volta le sue capacità di romanziere (probabilmente il più interessante nella generazione dei quarantenni americani con Vollmann) dimostrando senza molta fatica la storia della donna americana Laura Bodey non si capisce senza la storia dell’industria chimica americana Clare (simile ai veri colossi del settore come Colgate e Procter & Gamble), che in realtà è la storia del capitalismo americano, quindi degli Stati Uniti in quanto tali.
Infatti la vita felice di Laura s’interrompe quando scopre di avere un tumore alle ovaie, e l’ex-marito Don le mette la pulce nell’orecchio: parecchie, troppe persone di Lacewood hanno sviluppato tumori, e la cittadina campa grazie a un grosso impianto per la produzione di fertilizzanti della Clare. Laura recalcitra a fare due più due, nonostante gli indizi a sfavore della Clare si accumulino nel corso del romanzo. Fino a una conclusione che forse è lieta (non tanto per la protagonista), forse no.
Va comunque segnalato, siccome la letteratura statunitense ha sempre il vizio, dai tempi di Hawthorne e Melville, di essere allegorica, che il cognome di Laura, Bodey, nasconde ovviamente il termine body (corpo); e che al disfacimento del corpo della protagonista (descritto senza nascondere nulla) si contrappone l’“incorporation�, ovvero la costituzione della Clare come società per azioni. Nel termine inglese (da cui il nome delle grandi multinazionali, dette corporation) c’� ancora la parola latina corpus, perché la società è giuridicamente una persona, con proprie responsabilità e diritti. Insomma, da un lato Powers racconta la distruzione di un corpo umano, dall’altro la costruzione di un corpo immateriale, ma potentissimo. L’interazione dei due corpi è devastante per la povera Laura, e il romanzo lascia capire che questo è un problema generale (anche da questo lato dell’Atlantico).
Ma se leggiamo bene il romanzo, c’� una terza narrazione intrecciata alle prime due: tra un capitolo e l’altro Powers ha inserito una serie di testi pubblicitari della Clare, dall’Ottocento a oggi. Essi sono praticamente la voce della corporation, con cui la grande azienda si rivolge al suo pubblico, che è anche la sua preda e vittima. Una voce che, pagina dopo pagina, si fa sempre più agghiacciante e mostruosa.
Se c’� una cosa in particolare che vorrei elogiare di Sporco denaro è l’architettura del libro. Intendo dire le grandi strutture, non tanto il singolo personaggio o la singola scena; ma il modo in cui la vicenda procede nel suo insieme. Powers ha una tecnica estremamente sofisticata, e che ben s’attaglia alle sue capacità decisamente virtuosistiche: prende due generi narrativi del tutto diversi e li fa sposare. In Galatea 2.2 la fiaba e l’autobiografia; qui la storia della morte di un’americana di mezza età, Laura Bodey, agente immobiliare nell’insignificante cittadina di Lacewood; e la storia della vita di una grande multinazionale immaginaria, la Clare, fondata nel 1832 da un candelaio irlandese e due commercianti inglesi male in arnese, i fratelli Clare. Niente di più incompatibile, in apparenza, che la vicenda di una persona in carne ed ossa, con due figli, un ex-marito, un amante, un lavoro, una casa con giardino amorevolmente curato, e quella di un’organizzazione grande e impersonale, fatta di gente che va e viene, di macchinari, di conti, e soprattutto di soldi. Ebbene, Powers dimostra ancora una volta le sue capacità di romanziere (probabilmente il più interessante nella generazione dei quarantenni americani con Vollmann) dimostrando senza molta fatica la storia della donna americana Laura Bodey non si capisce senza la storia dell’industria chimica americana Clare (simile ai veri colossi del settore come Colgate e Procter & Gamble), che in realtà è la storia del capitalismo americano, quindi degli Stati Uniti in quanto tali.
Infatti la vita felice di Laura s’interrompe quando scopre di avere un tumore alle ovaie, e l’ex-marito Don le mette la pulce nell’orecchio: parecchie, troppe persone di Lacewood hanno sviluppato tumori, e la cittadina campa grazie a un grosso impianto per la produzione di fertilizzanti della Clare. Laura recalcitra a fare due più due, nonostante gli indizi a sfavore della Clare si accumulino nel corso del romanzo. Fino a una conclusione che forse è lieta (non tanto per la protagonista), forse no.
Va comunque segnalato, siccome la letteratura statunitense ha sempre il vizio, dai tempi di Hawthorne e Melville, di essere allegorica, che il cognome di Laura, Bodey, nasconde ovviamente il termine body (corpo); e che al disfacimento del corpo della protagonista (descritto senza nascondere nulla) si contrappone l’“incorporation�, ovvero la costituzione della Clare come società per azioni. Nel termine inglese (da cui il nome delle grandi multinazionali, dette corporation) c’� ancora la parola latina corpus, perché la società è giuridicamente una persona, con proprie responsabilità e diritti. Insomma, da un lato Powers racconta la distruzione di un corpo umano, dall’altro la costruzione di un corpo immateriale, ma potentissimo. L’interazione dei due corpi è devastante per la povera Laura, e il romanzo lascia capire che questo è un problema generale (anche da questo lato dell’Atlantico).
Ma se leggiamo bene il romanzo, c’� una terza narrazione intrecciata alle prime due: tra un capitolo e l’altro Powers ha inserito una serie di testi pubblicitari della Clare, dall’Ottocento a oggi. Essi sono praticamente la voce della corporation, con cui la grande azienda si rivolge al suo pubblico, che è anche la sua preda e vittima. Una voce che, pagina dopo pagina, si fa sempre più agghiacciante e mostruosa.
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