Playground

 Richard Powers' most recent novel, Playground, is an ambitious tale of themes as grand as planetary survival and as intimate as trust and friendship. I found it complex and lovely, and quite quotable.  

Page 6:  The world with all its bright and surprising contents was created out of boredom and emptiness. Everything started by holding still and waiting. 

Page 44:  Power, the mayor decided, was an isolating thing, especially when power was powerless. 

Page 59:  Play was evolution's way of building brains, and any creature with a brain as developed as a giant oceanic manta sure used it. If you want to make something smarter, teach it to play. 

Page 138:  I've started to wander and not just at night. I'll materialize in the kitchen without having gone there. Or out in the garage. Or in the park two blocks down the street... I'm going to need an ID bracelet. 

Page 155:  Of all the things we humans excel at, moving the goal posts may be our best trick. 

Page 200:  "Decisions are rarely made by reason but almost always by temperament, and that doesn't change much as people get older." 

Page 214:  "... People are like sculptures. You can mold them a little when they start out, but not much. A body wants to be what a body wants to be. ..."

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf is a formidable force. I'll admit that her novel, To the Lighthouse, was not an easy read, but the rumination of it, after, was delicious. It read as a stream-of consciousness, the point of view flitting from one character to another. Flitting emotions as well. This was dizzying and yet satisfying. Absolutely worth it. 

Consider this delightful exchange between husband and wife:

Page 23:  There wasn't the slightest possible chance that they could go to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mr. Ramsey snapped out irascibly. 

                How did he know, she asked. The wind often changed. 

                The extraordinary rationality of her remark, the folly of women's minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now she flew in the face of facts, made his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies. He stamped his foot on the stone step. 'Damn you,' he said. But what had she said? Simply that it might be fine tomorrow. So it might. 

                Not with the barometer falling and the wind due west. 

                To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people's feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There was nothing to be said. 

                He stood by her in silence. Very humbly, at length, he said that he would step over and ask the Coastguards if she liked. 

                There was nobody whom she reverenced as she reverenced him.