Gain

"Gain" by Richard Powers is a compelling exploration of corporate evolution and its intimate impact on human lives. Powers presents a narrative that mirrors real-world giants like Dow Chemical, Unilever, and Proctor & Gamble through the fictional Clare Corporation. The novel traces the company’s humble beginnings as Clare & Sons, a small, local business struggling to meet basic needs. It follows its growth into a global powerhouse influencing every aspect of social and economic life. The brilliance of "Gain" lies in its dual narrative structure. While chronicling the expansive reach of Clare Corporation, Powers also delves into the life of Laura Bodey, a resident of a factory town dominated by Clare's presence. Laura's tragic battle with ovarian cancer, caused by long-term exposure to the corporation's pollutants, highlights the profound personal costs of industrial progress. Her story is a poignant reminder of the human toll behind the corporate facade. Powers masterfully juxtaposes the benefits of industrial advancements—improved comfort and safety in our material world—against the environmental and ethical costs. "Gain" challenges readers to confront the dissonance between corporate convenience and environmental degradation, leaving us to ponder the balance between progress and preservation.

I remember reading, many years ago, a passage in which a writer- it might have been Paul Theroux- detailed a conversation with an African about a man who had been bitten by a snake. "Witchcraft", the African said knowingly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "But the man walking down the path- that wasn't witchcraft," argued the European, and the African nodded. "And the snake coming down the path- that wasn't witchcraft either" the writer went on. The African agreed with this as well. "Then how could it be witchcraft?" "Ah," said the African, "the fact the the man and the snake happened to be there at the exact same time- *that* was witchcraft!" Reading Richard Powers novels often puts me in mind of that story, and perhaps there is no better example than Gain. As is often the case in Powers' novels, there are two seemingly unconnected- or tenuously connected at best- threads, seperated by time. One story is that of an old-line American company- you could be forgiven for thinking Lever Brother or perhaps Proctor and Gamble- slowly making its way from humble beginnings to becoming a major industrial power, proceeding in fits and starts, and always thinking of the customer and the employees. In a somewhat different time frame, a divorced woman is living her life as she believes best for her and her children. And yet, with good intentions all along the way, something terrible happens that no one seems to be to blame for- and yet someone must be. This is one of Powers' most affecting books, I think, and one that will both move most readers and prompt them to examine many of their beliefs about justice and responsibility.

First: a confession. I am writing this review because of another review which refers to Powers as a "cold fish" (as if that's a bad thing!). That said, this is a review and not a discussion forum.Richard Powers is not the world's most emotional writer, and those reading him and wanting an emotional roller-coaster with beautiful love story and a happy ending had best look elsewhere. I find his books deeply moving on occasion, but the main thrill of reading them is for insight. It's really quite easy to jerk tears, but to shed light on true mysteries is a gift.There's a passage in "Gain", close to the end, which strikes me as having been written or thought of first. It stabs deeply through the layers of what makes our modern society work and then illuminates what it reveals it suddenly and briefly and then disappears. It begins as a description of the way glossy cardstock is made.Structurally, this book is very simple. Two stories told in alternating streams in third person past tense. One is of a single divorced mother's struggle to raise a family and deal with cancer. "Terms of Endearment" without the astronaut. The second is the history of a multinational corporation -- it could be any of a dozen household names, and the story is not so different from the official company histories you might read (only far better written than those I have read).I find the family story very touching and tiny details of it ring true -- the relationships, dialogue, and the flashes of insight into the little things that make life both horrible and wonderful are beautifully and economically rendered.The story of the company is sometimes dry stuff, but while the family's story (a broken home, not incidentally) is like a slice of life today, the story of the company is a slice through the history of corporate America. The intersection of the two stories is the cancer which devastates the family.My favorite thing about this book is that it isn't preachy or overtly judgmental. Any conclusions you draw from reading it are your own. This is not a book about the evils of capitalism, or the tragedy of cancer, or how we must return to nature. This is a book that shows us the author's vision of how capitalism works, why it works, and the price we pay for it.

I have not read all of the books that Mr. Powers has written. This is the fourth, and while the writing is not as complex, with each subsequent phrase attempting to make its predecessor seem inferior, he has created a book that begins with two stories widely separated in time and brings them together with final pages that are emotionally devastating.The wealth of knowledge this Author is known for is again evident in "Gain". The difference this time is that he shows an understanding of the human condition, its pain and its suffering as though he experiences the trauma as he writes. He writes about an experience we all will face, and it reads as though it is documented fact, not some mystic farce substituted for weak writing that lacks the skill that Mr. Powers has. His writing does not read as opinion, it feels as though you are reading the truth, that you are being told by someone who knows, and not just an authority on the topic, an articulate dandified product of academe, an erudite poser.A man and his wife arrive in Boston. Over a century later the son of another woman, working across the river in Cambridge, will take the money from a legal outcome that is a direct result of that first man's arrival, and likely set in motion events that are orders of magnitude more powerful. It could be argued that the moment the first man decided to emigrate, the countless number of steps, the cascade of effects were irrevocably put in motion.This tale could be dressed up as a form of Chaos Theory, the Butterfly in China whose delicate movements cause the East Coast of the US to be flooded. Mr. Powers does not need a curtain that wrapped the city of the Oz Wizard to conceal what he was unable to do. If Mr. powers were a magician, he could conjure all that illusionists do. Rolling up his sleeves would be meaningless, as he would require none.Mr. Powers has demonstrated he can write at any level of complexity, on subjects that only token numbers of people can get their minds around. In this work he tells a story that we all have heard countless times. However this is the first time we have heard him tell it, and the similarities are almost nil. The real world is not black and white, and neither is this writer's prose. The quote that is the title of my comments is spoken at a moment, and by a person that will demonstrate how powerful a simple statement can be. But this is a Richard Powers' book, where even a simple declarative sentence is unbounded.An incredible Author, and I have yet to read the book that almost all reviewers say is his best.

Serious American novelists are compelled to confront certain questions: what is right about America? What is wrong with us? A select company of writers are distinguished by their ability to recognize that the answers to these questions are virtually identical. I am thinking about Dreiser, Fitzgerald and, now, Richard Powers. In Gain, Powers tells two stories in one, one historical and one contemporary: the first tells of the seemingly irresistible rise of Clare, a multi-national corporation; and the second examines the life of a working mother afflicted with ovarian cancer -- a disease evidently caused by chemicals released by Clare's manufacturing processes. The book reads somewhat like a novelistic rendering of Hardy's poem "The Convergence of the Twain." Like the iceberg and liner in Hardy's work, heroine and corporation are on a collision course plotted by human vanity and outraged nature. As in the very best of classical tragedies, the action seems both sadly unnecessary and starkly inevitable. As the soap-selling business of the Clare brothers gathers momentum, one feels both the thrill of its financial triumph and the horror of the humam cost its growth exacts. In this novel, the conditions of American society enable characters to conceive great visions and to pursue them with courage and enthusiasm. At the end of the day, however, they cannot escape either their mortality or the prosaic, banal truth of their existence. Did so many brave, intelligent people labor and die just so that the heroine's teenage son can play video wargames in the comfort of a suburban bedroom? It is troubling, Powers suggests, that all our hopes and strivings should take us no further than this. Even-handedly, however, Powers shows us the benefits of industry as well as its dark side. Also deeply impressive is the sheer knowledge conveyed by this novel, ranging from insights into Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" to informed commentary on the process of making a bar of soap. While some readers may grow impatient with Powers' erudition, I found it fascinating to be in the presence of a poet who is also a technician. Gain is linked in my mind with the tragic quest of Gatsby and the life and death of Clyde Griffiths. Like Fitzgerald's novel and Dreiser's, it probes the core of the American Dream -- a dream that irresistibly calls its followers onward, a dream too mighty to escape but too fantastic to fully achieve. The book is a powerful jeremiad against those who gain the world and lose their souls, but it also acknowledges that this kind of self-destruction may be inherent in the human, or at least the American, condition. Gain is one of the very best business novels I have read. In my view, it is one of the best American books of the last 25 years, maybe longer.

After the muddled _Operation:Wandering Soul_ and the disappointing and overpraised _Galatea 2.2_, Powers in this book returns to the form of his first three novels, which made him my favorite contemporary novelist.Like most of his other novels, _Gain_ mixes together two plotlines. The first is the struggle of a middle-aged, divorced mother of two, Laura Bodey, to deal with ovarian cancer, her children, and her ex. The second, parallel story details the rise of the huge multi-national corporation Clare International from its modest beginnings as a small family business through all the twists and turns of American history.With these two stories, Powers looks at the way in which technology has become omnipresent in our lives, and attempts to trace how the imperatives of business worked to produce the modern world, in which corporations have grown beyond any individuals ability to control them. Along the way, we find out that a local Clare factory may be responsible for Laura's cancer, one illustration (of many)of the costs of continuous 'progress.' Despite some of the reviews, Powers doesn't have a political agenda here. Rather, he sees both the good and the bad that have come from technology, and merely (!) tries to answer how we came to the point where our everyday household objects are made by processes we don't understand, with materials from 6 different continents.Powers is one of the few writers with the interest and background to really address the technological issues that increasingly shape our lives. He doesn't just gratuitously throw in technological details to look sophisticated, but actually tries to come to grips with the modern world and the forces that shape it. _Gain_ succeeeds completely on this thematic level, and also as both a fascinating history and a moving story of one woman. As a final achievement, the novel manages to be very funny. I highly recommend it.