Powers essay, and essay about Powers in new literary compendium

Powers is present as both author and subject in the newly-issued, massive American literary history edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors, A New Literary History of America.

The essay by Powers appears on pages 434-440, and is titled, in the chronological manner of the book's entries, "1897, Memorial Day," subtitled "'Choose life and die': Augustus Saint-Gaudens's bas-relief is unveiled on Boston Common." Powers explores the evolving meaning of the monument to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th regiment, the first all-African-American regiment fielded by the North in the Civil War.

The essay about Powers is by one of the book's editors, Greil Marcus (a favorite critic of mine, who has written wonderfully about Bob Dylan, among many topics), and is titled "2003: Joseph Strom sets down his brother's story." It's a wonderful essay on The Time of Our Singing. Among Marcus's observations:

It is no small thing to write two perfect pages--two pages where the reader cannot find the seams, the artifice, the vanity of art.

A high compliment, indeed.

Update: an interview with Marcus on the The Arts Fuse, contains this statement by Marcus:

For example, one of the last essays in the book is mine on the Richard Powers novel “The Time of Our Singing.” I would stand on the claim that that is the great novel written by an American in the last 20 years, maybe farther back than that. The book specifically addresses the American argument about how the nation came to be what it is, whether or not the country even exists, a country that betrays all of its own promises. Does our nation exist at all, that is the question raised in that novel.

It is not a political or didactic novel, it is a story about people and it is a tragedy, one whose last page will leave you smiling through your tears. And so there is a specific entry on this novel and there is nothing on John Updike, nothing on Don DeLillo, and nothing on John Cheever. Well, I would argue that this novel outweighs the life’s work of those writers. But we didn’t have that discussion on those terms – it was we want that book in this book, so it is here.