My first interaction with this book came from another Richard Powers book, Galatea 2.2, in which the narrator, Richard Powers spends his time lamenting having to give up this book to publication and how much he wants to go back and live with them. That book has some similar focus to this one.
In a lot of ways this book is a novel version of Escher, Godel, Bach, which looks at complex systems, number sequences, spirals, patterns, and chaos. This book does the same thing. The book begins with a research librarian at the New York Public Library (one of two narrators, the other being a third person voice) who posts a fact of the day, quote of the day, and other programming. Part of her job is to help patrons find out things they want to find out. This is a service that sometimes still happens, but was much more prevalent pre-internet obviously. Sometimes the questions are factual queries, sometimes metaphysical ones, and sometimes impossible ones.
One day she’s asked to find a scientist who may or may not have accomplished something triumphant. More to the point, she’s asked to find out if he did. The query, as we later find out, comes from a researcher who is working with this scientist and can’t make him out. Eventually the young scientist and librarian start a relationship and she begins working with the older scientist. In addition, the novel follows this older scientist (a geneticist) who began researching soon after the discovery of the structure of DNA and quickly learns or begins to feel he is going to cross the 26 year old threshold before he’s seen as wasted potential.
Those are the two main stories, but the book is built upon ideas and ideas. These ideas spiral out all over the place, especially thinking about genetics and mutation, music, thought, language, flowers, computers and networking, ciphers, and all the other kinds of natural and human inventions that work through codes and codes and codes. It’s a lot of book and it’s a lot to take, but there’s also a lot here. It’s easy to see how Richard Powers felt so joyously imprisoned in the writing of this novel.