The Overstory

I'm one-handed this week, so typing is a difficult, hunt-and-peck sort of adventure. But that's just an excuse thrown out there; the truth is that I'm one-brained and I'll never be anything more than one-brained, and that is reason I'll never be able to share with you the amazingness of Richard Powers and his incredible multi-brained, multi-dimensional novels. To read a Richard Powers novel is to leave this world forever (know this: you'll never be able to sit through another tedious sit-com, another banal lunchroom chitchat, without wishing you could transport to quietly reread a page, a paragraph of one of his books instead...it may destroy real life for you) for the beauty of words. I can do no more than sit, with my hands folded, in admiration of the rush of words and ideas in this novel, like I'm enrapt on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon at dawn.

So just ignore this review; I'm not worthy of reviewing this book,. I feel privileged to have read it. You read it. Anyone can, in the last remaining democracy, the democracy of the written word. Please read it, and think about it, and try to share it with others.

A few beautiful quotes:

“If he could read, if he could translate....If he were only a slightly different creature, then he might learn all about how the sun shone and the rain fell and which way the wind blew against this trunk for how hard and long. He might decode the vast projects that the soil organized, the murderous freezes, the suffering and struggle, shortfalls and surpluses, the attacks repelled, the years of luxury, the storms outlived, the sum of all the threats and chances that came from every direction, in every season this tree ever lived.”

“He pacing, filled with that stomach-flop feel that comes with leaping into the blue. Half terror, half thrill: Everything scattering on the air. We live, we get out a little, and then no more, forever. And we know what's coming—thanks to the fruit of the taboo tree that we were set up to eat. Why put it there, and then forbid it? Just to make sure it gets taken.”

And this warning:
“What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.”

Challenge accepted.