Proof Copy of Three Farmer's

For those looking to complete their collections, or who want to help me complete mine, there's a copy of the advance proof of Powers's first novel, Three Farmer's On Their Way To a Dance, available through Serendipity books.

8 vo. Uncorrected proof. Pictorial wrappers. Laid in is a pictorial postcard which reproduces the famous Sander photograph on the front wrapper. A fine copy of this advance printing of the author's first book which signaled the arrival of a major new talent on the literary scene. Provenance: Larry Moskowitz.

Only $1,500!

Richard Powers's High School Yearbook

This struck me as a very unusual item for the collector of Richard Powers material who just plain has too much money: a copy of his high school yearbook, plus some issues of the high school magazine, for $1,750. (Click the title link above to see the item for sale via abebooks.com).
If anyone buys this, I hope you'll let us know if it contains any surprises!
The item description says

Screwbound printed yellow binder. Quarto. The wrapperbound year book, The Kalibre, bound with ten of twelve possible issues of the school newspaper, The Barblet (lacking issues seven and ten), for author Richard Powers' (here referred to mostly as Rick Powers) senior year of high school. Slight tears in the yellow cloth binder, some pages well-thumbed, student inscriptions in the year book, and a couple of leaves loose but sound, a very good example. Powers is pictured on at least three pages in the year book, twice in band pictures, and once in the National Honor Society, although curiously, he is not represented by a senior class picture. According to biographies of Powers he spent much of his high school time in Thailand, and only returned to DeKalb to finish high school, and was perhaps thus not present for the photo. He also appears at least three times in the issues of The Barblet, twice playing the cello, and once at a National Honor Society Assembly (we have by no means exhaustively searched the bound volume and may have missed other appearances). According to our research, Powers is the second most important graduate of the high school, after supermodel Cindy Crawford.

I love that: "second most important graduate...after Cindy Crawford."!

Publication Date Set for Generosity: An Enhancement

Richard Powers's tenth novel, Generosity: An Enhancement, is scheduled for publication on September 29, 2009.

Pre-order Generosity: An Enhancement
here and support the Richard Powers website.

Here's the publisher's blurb:

FROM THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD–WINNING AUTHOR OF THE ECHO MAKER, A PLAYFUL AND PROVOCATIVE NOVEL ABOUT THE DISCOVERY OF THE HAPPINESS GENE
When Chicagoan Russell Stone finds himself teaching a Creative Nonfiction class, he encounters a young Algerian woman with a disturbingly luminous presence. Thassadit Amzwar’s blissful exuberance both entrances and puzzles the melancholic Russell. How can this refugee from perpetual terror be so happy? Won’t someone so open and alive come to serious harm? Wondering how to protect her, Russell researches her war-torn country and skims through popular happiness manuals. Might her condition be hyperthymia? Hypomania? Russell’s amateur inquiries lead him to college counselor Candace Weld, who also falls under Thassa’s spell. Dubbed Miss Generosity by her classmates, Thassa’s joyful personality comes to the attention of the notorious geneticist and advocate for genomic enhancement, Thomas Kurton, whose research leads him to announce the genotype for happiness.

Russell and Candace, now lovers, fail to protect Thassa from the growing media circus. Thassa’s congenital optimism is soon severely tested. Devoured by the public as a living prophecy, her genetic secret will transform both Russell and Kurton, as well as the country at large.

What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments? Funny, fast, and finally magical, Generosity celebrates both science and the freed imagination. In his most exuberant book yet, Richard Powers asks us to consider the big questions facing humankind as we begin to rewrite our own existence.

Plowing The Dark is published in French

Click the title of this blog entry to read a review, in French, of the recently-published French language translation of Plowing the Dark.

Dragon + Olympus = ?

From Middle Tennessee State University Philosophy Professor Phil Oliver's "Up@Dawn" blog, a piece about his own beginning efforts to use voice-recognition software.