Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

by Richard Powers

In the spring of 1914, renowned photographer August Sander took a photograph of three young men on their way to a country dance. This haunting image, capturing the last moments of innocence on the brink of World War I, provides the central focus of Powers’s brilliant and compelling novel. As the fate of the three farmers is chronicled, two contemporary stories unfold. The young narrator becomes obsessed with the photo, while Peter Mays, a computer writer in Boston, discovers he has a personal link with it. The three stories connect in a surprising way and provide the reader with a mystery that spans a century of brutality and progress.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, War, Historical

352 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 1994

About the author

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His book The Overstory won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Librarian note: There is more than one author with this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my fourth Powers novel after Orfeo, The Time of Our Singing and The Echo Maker. All of those three were very impressive, so when I saw this one in a second hand shop I couldn't resist picking it up even after buying 12 books earlier the same day.

This is Powers' debut novel and it does have a few more rough edges, but it was still a very interesting book. It takes inspiration from a real photograph, Three Farmers by August Sander, which also appears on the cover. This picture was taken in North West Germany shortly before the First World War, and it shows three suited figures carrying canes walking along a muddy road, looking at the camera with ambiguous expressions.

The book alternates between three storylines, two present day and one starting in 1914. The first is told in the first person, its narrator stumbles on the photograph while killing time changing trains in Detroit, and develops an obsession with it. Another, more picaresque and funnier than anything else I have read by Powers, follows Peter, a hack journalist on a computing magazine is drawn into a bizarre quest which reveals a personal family connection to the picture. The third imagines what happened to the three men in the photo and eventually their descendants. Real characters including Henry Ford and Sarah Bernhardt also form major subplots, and each chapter has an epigraph, several of them each from Walter Benjamin and Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk.

I was not 100% convinced that the whole thing gelled, but it is an impressively ambitious and thought provoking debut novel spanning much of the troubled history of the 20th century.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been slowly assembling a shelf of my favorite books of all time. I was so pleased to find a copy of this book in a musty old warehouse of a used bookstore recently. I first heard of this book from Liz, an eccentric older woman, now passed, a member of our bookclub. She told me more than once that this was her favorite. She also mentioned Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Doig. I was never sure if she was mixing the two up but I read and loved both. But I think this is still my favorite.

As I get old I find what I look for most in my reading is a book that expands my thinking and gives me a wider view of the world around me. This book did that and so much more. This book is an early Richard Powers (his debut? circa 1985) and I must admit I chose it not so much for the author as for the photograph on the cover and an interest in seeing if nature had always been a strong influence as in his other works I had read, namely The Overstory and The Echo Maker (where the Sand Cranes are an integral part of the story). No nature here but historical fiction and a dual time line and a story that is so slow paced at times I thought about giving up especially as it set a complex stage for what was to come.

In the story a young man is on his way to Boston in the 1980's on a train that has a stopover in Detroit. There with a layover of several hours he choses to explore downtown Detroit and ends up at an Art Museum where he sees a photograph that soon becomes an obsession. This sends him on a quest for information that leads both far from himself and deeper into himself than this reader could imagine. (the author circles around the subject of genetic memory without naming it as such, a subject I have a curiosity about).

The story, a dual timeline, follows this young man and the lives and fates of the three men in the photo and the photographer that took it. Along the way much is said and implied about memory, history. Henry Ford, WWI, war, industry and more. It is an early work and meanders much but the story is a good one and worth digging for.
The audio by Recorded Books with John Skelley as narrator is excellent. Also the Youtube video on Art Assignment (Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance) https://youtu.be/3AVNhTi9pzM. is well worth the time. Highly recommend.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am setting out on a re-read of all 12 of Powers' novels. I plan to read them in chronological order (unlike the first time I read them) so that I can simultaneously watch Powers' development as a novelist. This one does feel like a first novel: there are times, especially at the start, where it reads like someone showing off a bit - later in the story, the narrative seems to settle down and concentrate on the business of story telling rather than demonstrating the author's cleverness and delight in words.

I first read this book 2.5 years ago. Between then and now I took the decision to leave my employment and concentrate on my main hobby. Not reading, but photography. This means that this book, which starts with a photograph and includes long passages discussing the philosophy of photography and the implications of the act of looking at something, is possibly more relevant to me now than it was on my first reading.

There are, as I mention in my first review below, three story lines that are progressed in turn. Two are immediately linked and the third joins the party part way through. The plot hinges on a photograph (a real photograph that you can see in the museum in Detroit) of three farmers on their way to a dance. One plot line tells us the story of these three men. In another, an unnamed narrator (we learn that his surname starts with P and we are, I believe, to assume that he is Mr Powers himself) sees the picture in Detroit and becomes obsessed with finding out about it. In the third, a reporter follows a sighting of red headed woman in a crowd and becomes linked with the photograph.

But all is not quite a simple as it seems. Which is part of Powers' cunning plan. He is looking at how observing something changes the thing being observed; he is looking at how observing something changes the observer. He is looking at inevitability and connectivity: a photograph captures a moment in time, but there is a long train of events that leads up to that moment and a long train of events that follow from that moment. Often, with the benefit of hindsight, we can look back and see that significant moments were inevitable given what led to them - there are few, if any, surprises. Having read all of Powers’ subsequent novels, this clearly shows the seeds of some ideas that will be important for him in the subsequent books.

Several historical figures play a part in this narrative. Sarah Bernhardt is there (sort of) as is Henry Ford. Reading the book in 2018, it is hard not to draw comparisons between Ford and Trump, although the Ford portrayed here, despite his egotism (including creating a currency of his own which plays a part in the story) and self-importance, at least has the decency to show some self-doubt occasionally.

It is a complex story and you are likely to come away from it not quite clear on how it all links together. On this second reading, I paused at the end of each chapter to write a brief summary and this helped make more sense. But I believe it is deliberately set up to be difficult to follow. Partly this is probably because it is Powers' first novel and he wanted to show what he can do (and maybe he went slightly overboard on this?), and partly it is because that sense of confusion and uncertainty supports some of his key ideas.

For a while, I thought I was going to reduce my rating of this book. The first chapters rely rather too heavily on humour derived from a kind of disappointed cynicism. But once things settle down, it becomes an entertaining, if confusing, story and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Next up - Prisoner's Dilemma. One a month for the next year was suggested to me by someone on Goodreads and it sounds like a good plan.

-----------------------
ORIGINAL REVIEW
-----------------------
I really enjoyed the different story lines here and the imaginative way they are linked. Richard Powers is a very clever man and there are some chapters here that are almost academic essays and philosophy: interesting but heavy going at times.

Still who isn't going to love a book that includes the sentence: "And what was the nature of this Dutch wireless message you received from the Russians over your dental work?"?

There is a lot of thinking about the effect of observation on the thing being observed and about the causes of war. As a photographer myself, some of the thinking about images was thought provoking: "Looking at a photo, we act out and replay, to a copied phantom, parallels of the very decisions and criticisms of the photographer. We ask: "Who would I have to be, what would I have to believe in to have wanted to preserve this instant?""

I am working my way through all Powers' books and have enjoyed all 4 that I have read so far.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 5 out of 5]

CRITIQUE:

Confessions of a Late Modernist

In an interview with Jeffrey Williams that took place in 1998 and was published the following year, Richard Powers admitted that his "extended and overwhelming love affair was with European modernism - Proust, Mann, Joyce, Musil, Kafka - the stuff that transformed the world in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century. That influence has stayed with me throughout my career."

The Essayistic and Imaginative Novelist

In this, his first novel (published in 1985), Powers' narrator refers to the essayistic and the imagined perspectives on a photographic image.

It comes as no surprise, then, that in "Three Farmers", Powers is as essayistic as Thomas Mann (at least in "The Magic Mountain"), and as imaginative as James Joyce (in "Ulysses").

While some critics and readers claim Powers as part of their postmodernist coterie and canon, I'd argue that the place of, at least, Powers' early fiction is squarely in the modernist camp. He assesses modernism sympathetically from the inside, rather than critically (or negatively) from the outside. He supports modernism, rather than trying to supplant it.

World War One Modernity

Although the events portrayed in the narrative are viewed from the perspective of 1984, the most significant part of the narrative revolves around 1 May, 1914, when the photograph on the front cover was taken by the German photographer, August Sander.

This is just three months before the commencement of the first world war. In fact, it can be inferred that the three farmers in the photo were on their way eventually, either directly or indirectly, to military service in the war, even more so than to a May Day festival.

On their way, a photographer on a bicycle stops them and offers to take their photo.

At this point, the novel concerns the beginning of modernity, especially the tools of modernity (such as cameras, radios and automobiles), the conveyor belts of mass production, weapons of mass destruction, media for mass distribution of information and opinion, vehicles of mass entertainment, the mechanical reproduction of works of art, and the growth of mass consumption.

While modern(ist) art was perpetrated by a relatively tiny avant-garde, its potential audience was proportionately small in contrast to the audience for more traditional, classical, popular or commercial art, which was aimed at the masses. The mass market, because of its size, was arguably where the money was.


August Sander - "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" [1 May, 1914]

To Observe is to Change

Powers' perspective is influenced not just by Walter Benjamin's "Illuminations", but by John Berger's 1972 TV series and spin-off book, "Ways of Seeing".

The promise of the camera is to "commit the moment to memory".

On the other hand, a photograph enables us to see or look at something, if only at a distance (in time or space).

Influenced by early 20th century physicists, Powers writes:

"Sander, at the same time as those working in physics, psychology, political science, and other disciplines, blundered against and inadvertently helped uncover the principal truth of this century: viewer and viewed are fused into an indivisible whole...

"Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, and other co-conspirators similarly turned physics back onto itself, bringing a new reflexive element into the limits of the discipline."

"To observe was already to change."

"To look at a thing is already to change it. Conversely, acting must begin with the most reverent looking."

"...To see an object from a distance is already to act on it, to change it, to be changed."

"Memory was a reminder to change something in the future. And photos were more or less recognised memories."

In the future, we (or someone else) would look at the object or the image again, potentially from a different perspective and in a different context.

The Pliable Image (Between Feeling and Meaning)

To look is the starting point of "seeing" and interpretation:

"Every photographic print invites identification with the photographer, forces re-creation of the values implied in preserving the vanished image. Viewing becomes a memento mori, a reminder of the death of the subject matter, landscape or portrait, long since passed away but remade in our owning and involving ourselves with the print."

"Interpretation asks us to involve ourselves in complicity, to open a path between feeling and meaning, between ephemeral subject matter and the obstinate decision to preserve it, between the author of the photograph and ourselves."

Often, the viewer's perspective is driven by desire or need. (As Hegel said, self-consciousness is desire itself.) For much of the novel, the chief protagonist in 1984, Peter Mays, chases or quests after a red-headed woman he saw in a Veterans' Day parade from an eighth-storey window, who turns out to be Kimberley Greene, "a local [Boston] talent who’s made a name for herself doing a revue of famous women from the past", including Sarah Bernhardt. (1) She treasures a photo of Bernhardt sleeping in a pine coffin.


Sarah Bernhardt sleeping in her pine coffin (Source: Wiki)

Almost Like Playing

The elderly character , Mrs Schreck (a European "immigrant with an assumed name"), shows how much an individual interpretation can change or distort an image:

"The simple portrait, worshiped for half a century, most of a lifetime, had no real connection to her except as an act of the imagination.

"She did not know the actual boys pictured there, but had, rather, invented, out of her own need, a whole story linking them to herself by means of the pliable image. After years of trying to monopolise the print, she had at last to surrender the question of authenticity not to the photographer nor even to the indiscriminately reproducing machine, but to the tampering darkroom of each viewer’s imagination…

"If the photographer is as powerless as we viewers in giving authenticity to a print, then we viewers are at least as capable as the photographer of investing a print with history and significance…What matters is not the slice of history on the emulsion, but our developing it."

Mrs Schreck has her own explanation for her interpretation:

"The photo has not once, not even once told me who my young man would have become. I had to do it all. In here. [In my eye.]…It’s almost like playing."

Richard Powers, the author, and his narrator play with the image in a similar manner. They invent names and back stories for the three farmers. The image projects us into a fiction. Like Mrs Schreck, the fictional farmers have assumed names, even though their real names can now be ascertained.

Modulators, Tamperists and Narcissists

The narrator refers several times to people who engage in this behaviour as "reality modulators". It's interesting that, in "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight", Nabokov described them as "narcissists" who undermined the purposive integrity of the author's fiction (i.e., the ability and right of the author to determine the meaning of the artistic work that they have created).

Powers is much more willing to allow audience members their own way of seeing (at least with respect to photography, if not necessarily with respect to the written word - presumably, at least Nabokov, if not Powers, would argue that "the tampering darkroom of each viewer's imagination" could compromise the author's creative intent, as much as the photographer's, especially as the author's words are there in black and white for all to read).

History and Significance

Ironically, this interpretation by the viewer doesn't invest the image with any "authenticity", it invests it with context, "history and significance":

"The reproduction must be enough like the original to start a string of associations in the viewer, but enough unlike the original to leave the viewer room to flesh out and furnish the frame with belief."

The significance of an image is its significance for the viewer (or any viewer).

The Essayistic and the Imagined Views

Still, the image consists of both what the photographer intends it to be/mean and what each of us viewers believe it to be/mean:

"One context did not replace the other but existed concurrently, like the two views needed to create the illusion of depth in a stereoscope…With two slightly different views of the photo – the essayistic and the imagined – side by side, I needed only the stereoscope itself to bring the image into fleshy three-dimensionality."

"No dog is a thoroughbred. The final mystery of photography is that taker, subject, and viewer, each needed for the end product, circle one another warily, define one another in their own terms…each at work reconstructing each other, even going so far as to postulate a biographer such as myself. And I am certainly no thoroughbred…

"I am every day more convinced that it is the work of the audience, not the author (whose old role each year the machine wears down), to read into the narrative and supply the missing companion piece, the stereo view."

In the age of modernity and mechanical reproduction, the mass audience is vital to the meaning of an image, if not its sole determinant.

Powers' Stereoscopic View

The stereoscope integrates or combines multiple perspectives or interpretations.

Powers' novel remains both profoundly essayistic and powerfully imagined, yet it's united by his stereoscope, something that is derived from his training and learning in both physics and literature.

What begins as a work of modernism embodies what would become the intellectual concerns of the postmodernist project. It's more than arguable that postmodernism was implicit in and already formed part of modernism. It is but one stream or strand of a modernism reinvigorated by late modernists.


FOOTNOTES:

(1) Mays' chase of the red-headed Kimberley Greene reminded me of Herbert Stencil's quest to find V. in Thomas Pynchon's 1963 novel.


SOUNDTRACK:

Diego Rivera - “Detroit Industry Murals”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilswo...

August Sander - "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" [Video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AVNh...

Ed Kuepper - "The Way I Made You Feel"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzIwf...

Bettie Serveert - "Roadmovies"

https://youtu.be/VjQ7xeCijlE

John Berger - "Ways of Seeing" [Episode 1]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4...

John Berger - "Ways of Seeing" [Episode 2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1GI8...

John Berger - "Ways of Seeing" [Episode 3]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7wi8...

John Berger - "Ways of Seeing" [Episode 4]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jTUe...

John Berger on Ways of Seeing, being an Artist, and Marxism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5y7Q...

The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger (Official Trailer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwYeq...

[Simon Robs · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Powers hovers impossibly between extremes with a tightrope walker's perfect balance. He may be at once the smartest and the most warmhearted novelist in America today." --Chicago Tribune

"Memory, then, is not only a backward retrieval of a vanished event, but also a posting forward, at the remembered instant, to all other future moments of corresponding circumstance."

So, like gr'r "NR" (and many others) who pride in "completest" reading, I, too, have set about reading ALL of certain fav. authors' works, in this case Powers; I have only a couple yet to read. Part of this stems from the fact we are the same age, we come from the same place, (Sputnik marks our birth year) we share a common surname (my Powers' are upstream a generation or so) and so that mid-westerner's sensibility is easy for me to spot as is peppered throughout his several novels. These convergences would not override a lack of quality if it were absent from his books, and most definitely they are ALL books worthy of reading investment.

"Three Farmers" is RP's first novel, his foray into fiction writing and an immediate success, so much so he left the country to get away from this new adulation which made him uncomfortable. 'The first shall be last and the last shall be first.' Well, not quite, but my reading order bounced around with his books in no special order finally coming to this book. Usually you'd think an authors books would get better with time and maybe it's true of him too, but I must say that this was "almost" as good as any other I've read and enjoyed. He's a brilliant scholar with multiple disciplines and it shows one every page. He teaches while he entertains, he questions while he explicates. There are always grand allusions and colorful cultural intersections depicting what-if's alongside what-were's.

Here a troika, a braided threesome of characters from a 1914 early photo in pre-WW1 Europe mix with two contemporary character story lines (three in pic. as one line and two separate other character lines) converge eventually after a convoluted getting there. Grand worldly themes are soaked in lye and left to dry and expose themselves. Henry Ford & Sarah Bernhardt figure prominently throughout amidst a panoply of other celebrated notable personalities. Physics as history; the concepts of simultaneity and onlookers influence, even as portends a mere photograph intrigue at every turn. It's a zeitgeist dream with historicity kaleidoscope. Even a love story; always a love story w/Powers. It's a damn fine novel and I am happy to recommend it!

[Brenda Sorrels · Rating 2 out of 5]

The reason I’m giving this book only two stars is because I did not really enjoy it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t brilliant and intellectual and full of esoteric ideas and philosophical quotes. I just found it an ordeal to get through and ponderous as best. I pushed myself to stick with it, especially the first third of the book to get a handle on the three intertwining stories but even that was difficult because each of the stories was not that interesting. The language the author uses is so over-the-top and I felt he tried too hard to be witty, funny, stylistic ... whatever. Yes, there is a lot of info about the lead up to WWI and something things were interesting like Diego Rivera’s mural in Detroit .. but honestly, the photo of the 3 farmers so fascinating to two other men looking to find its meaning was a big stretch that didn’t pay off in the end, at least not for me. It was so tiresome to wade through the weirdness of this book to try and extract a storyline. I understand that people loved it and it’s won awards, etc. I’m sure I’m not smart enough to get it, but it also didn’t hook me enough to make me want to get it. I believe that storytelling should be something that engages the reader and takes them to places they’ve never been before. This book went to some very bizarre places and I found myself kicking and screaming the entire way. It wasn’t for me, but obviously, from other reviews, it has an audience.

[Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die Linse einer Kamera ist ein von zwei Seiten zugängliches Portal, durch das sowohl der Gegenstand des Fotos als auch der Betrachter in eine andere Zeit blicken. Der Gegenstand, der sich der Dauerhaftigkeit des Dokuments bewusst ist, schickt eine Erinnerung in die Zukunft ab. Der Betrachter, der später an diese Erinnerung anknüpft, versucht, das Bild vor dem Verschwinden zu bewahren. Beide sind in beiden Momenten anwesend; beiden wird offenbart, dass sie durch die Zeit treiben und diese wie ein Flickwerk zusammensetzen.


[August Sander - Jungbauern - 1914]

Der Blick der drei Männer auf diesem Foto weist über die Kamera hinweg in die Zukunft, wo er sich mit dem Blick des Erzählers, eines Programmierers aus Boston trifft, der das Bild in einem Museum in Denver entdeckt. Die Geschichten nicht nur der drei Männer, auch des Erzählers und weiterer Figuren sind mit dem Bild verbunden. Kapitel für Kapitel entfalten sich überraschende Zusammenhänge, die sich aus der wechselseitigen Beziehung von Bild und Betrachter ergeben.

Richard Powers meint, die Erkenntnis dieser Beziehung, nämlich der rekursiven Abhängigkeit von Beobachter und beobachtetem Objekt sei das wesentlichste Merkmal des 20. Jahrhunderts und streut dazu einige essayistische Kapitel ein, die von den Schriften Walter Benjamins über die Fotografie inspiriert sind.

Sehr angetan war ich von der Idee und dem Konzept des Romans, wie sich die einzelnen Fäden kunstvoll und raffiniert zu einer Geschichte verknüpfen, deren Struktur auf medientheoretischen Überlegungen beruht. Sprachlich wirkt der Text manchmal etwas bemüht, man merkt, dass Powers in seinem Debutroman noch nicht zu seinem eleganten Stil gefunden hat.

Als erfreulicher Nebeneffekt wurde ich auf das interessante Werk von August Sander: Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts aufmerksam, und in Folge auf zwei weitere im Text erwähnte Fotografen dieser Zeit, Jakob Riis und Eugène Atget. Die Fotografien aller drei sind sehenswert!

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the third novel I've read by a contemporary, living, American,author writing about the theatre of war in Europe in the 20th century.
The other two, William Vollman's Europe Central, and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, write a reflective and anarchic take on real events and people.
Three Farmers on their way to a Dance, similarly lays the authors invented characters over true events.
It's a first novel, and some thirty years after publication it reads like the work of an author starting out.
The storylines (three of them) are disjointed, and the means used to bring the strands together at the end feels forced.
Richard Powers brings a technicians eye to bear on the photographic process, and he virtually hijacks the narrative to interject his personal interpretation on the nature of artist and their subject matter. I didn't really enjoy, or truly understand, the points he was making.
What I did like was the merging of fictional, speculative characterisation with known facts for two historical figures- Henry Ford, and Sarah Bernhardt.
Powers could, I felt, have concocted the whole book around either or both of this duo and achieved his objective; to juxtapose the old and new worlds as they underwent irrevocable change.
Ford's 'peace ship' particularly, was intriguing.

Three Farmers on their way to a Dance, also gave me a great idea for one of life's great unknowns: how much to 'tip' a waiter
p149"I start with a maximum of twenty- five bucks and subtract a dollar for every word they say. When I go to a restaurant, I want to be waited on. If I want chat I go home to my wife",
This system could work well, substituting smiles, or unsolicited visits to the table!!

Richard Powers is a prize winning author and his subject matter is widely varied. I hope to return to his work soon

[Anthoney · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am quite intrigued about stories that have or are based on real esoteric themes as an overarching element, especially anything scientific. Any good literary meat stuffed with interesting scientific or art motifs looks very appetizing. It seems delectable because you get a good entertainment with some trivia blended with a good measure. One such lookout led me to Richard Powers who supposedly draws his stories around science and technology ...

...And so I purchased this book hoping to add to my collection, for re reads. And what a waste of good money it has been, Rs.800 to be precise. I quote the price because losing every paisa of that investment hurt upon finally managing to finish the book which offered nothing except for one good essay in Chapter 19 about photography, the philosophical insights seemed slightly redemptive of both Mr. Powers and my efforts.

You are given 3 parallel stories to hold as ropes, you follow these vague outlines and characters in the hope that they will converge to a stunning conclusion ..they should, right? But frustratingly it doesn't at least to me. I was left holding the ropes not knowing if they could be tied together.

I do hope that the other Powers book I have already bought turn out better. God, with the number of hopes in this review, I seem to have invested a lot of hope in his writings along with the money

[N. Jr. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was lent to me by a friend.

It almost seems that if a book is hailed by the literary critics, there is about a 50% chance it is nothing more than post-modernist bullshit. The outstanding achievement of this one however, is that not only does the author succeed at making you hate what he wrote, but goes all the way to make you hate him as well. His name dropping of supposedly important people from philosophers to basketball players, together with his spewing of esoteric facts about arcane subjects, all done in a manner that assumes that if you don't know what he's talking about, then you are just an uncouth, uneducated peasant, come across as a gross insult to the typical reader. He persistently attempts to dazzle you with his own erudition, until you feel like your competing in a rigged game of Jeopardy, where he constantly rings the buzzer and has the right answer every time, while you stand like an intimidated fool.

On top of all that, the various interwoven tales, centered on a photograph, are disjointed and not very interesting, while the prose tends to ramble in the frenetic pretension of a condescending intellectual.

[Carloesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro a dir poco entusiasmante. Leggendolo vi ho trovato un po’ di Proust (anche qui tutto ruota intorno al tempo e alla memoria: il tempo di una fugace istantanea colta da un fotografo itinerante, August Sander, nella primavera del 1914, il tempo da ritrovare per farlo rientrare in vita, la memoria da recuperare per legare il passato al presente attraversando un secolo che ha visto enormi trasformazioni, anche nella nostra percezione del tempo e della memoria attraverso i progressi della meccanica e della tecnologia, della fotografia, della storia e dell’arte…), ma anche dei legami con Kafka (le ossessioni che confondono l’onirico e il reale) , con De Lillo, con Foster Wallace, e poi addirittura con Sebald (che era ancora sconosciuto nell’85 quando questo romanzo d’esordio di Powers fu pubblicato), per le lunghe divagazioni nella scienza, nella tecnica, nella filosofia e nell’arte, e per lo stretto legame tra immagine e scrittura, pur tra le molte diversità di stile: se quello del tedesco anglicizzato è tipicamente europeo, elegante e compassato, quello di Powers (pur senza rinunciare a una certa raffinatezza) è decisamente più scanzonato e tipicamente yankee. Ma tempo e memoria sono sempre gli ingredienti fondamentali dei romanzi di entrambi.
Qui la storia si divide su tre piani: quella narrata in prima persona dall’autore (il primo piano) che viene casualmente in contatto con quella fotografia che diventa un’ossessione per lui, fino a cambiare il corso della sua vita e a fargli ricostruire, come scrittore, la vita (vera o falsa, o meglio: falsamente vera) dei tre soggetti immortalati (il secondo piano) dalla istantanea di Saunder e dal titolo stesso della foto che diventerà anche quello di questo libro; e con esso diventerà scrittore (la circolarità Proustiana. NB: lo stesso Powers decise di dedicarsi alla letteratura e lasciare il suo impiego di programmatore dopo l’incontro con un fotografo in un museo di Boston).
Ma tra i due c’è anche un terzo piano, anch’esso contemporaneo, che narra di un redattore di una rivista di tecnica informatica che attraverso l’ossessione di trovare una donna dai capelli rossi, con un abito fuori epoca e un clarinetto in mano di ritorno da una parata cittadina in una giornata commemorativa della I Guerra Mondiale e dei suoi caduti, e da lui appena intravista dall’ottavo piano dell’edificio della sua redazione (in realtà lei era travestita da Sarah Bernhardt), scoprirà un suo sorprendente legame diretto sempre con quella foto, che rimane il fulcro di tutto il romanzo.
E tra le sue pagine attraverseremo il secolo, incontrando la follia della prima guerra mondiale e dei sovrani imparentati tra loro che la scatenarono, tutti convinti che sarebbe terminata in pochi mesi; e le profonde trasformazioni di una società prettamente contadina in una completamente nuova, piombata nell’era industriale, basata sulla riproduzione meccanica e sulla fruizione di più beni per tutti e del loro più’ampio e rapido consumo; e dei progressi sconvolgenti nei mondi della fisica, della scienza e della meccanica (grazie ai quali ciò fu reso possibile); e poi i personaggi di primo piano come Sarah Bernhardt ed Henry Ford, otre allo stesso Saunder ed altri fotografi, divagando piacevolmente sul pensiero di Walter Benjamin e di Hannah Arendt, sulle teorie di Charles Peguy, di Godel e di Plank, sulla storia della fotografia e sul rovesciamento dei canoni estetici, sulla percezione del mondo e sulla fruizione dell’arte, non senza tenerci sulle spine in attesa delle sorprese che attendono tutti e tre i protagonisti delle tre diverse storie e che alla fine riescono a fondere il passato e il presente, ad annullare e ritrovare il tempo perduto attraverso l’invenzione letteraria (questo libro).
Powers si rivela così uno scrittore originale e pienamente maturo fin dal suo primo incontro. E se un romanzo per essere un buon romanzo deve essere un viaggio, pieno di svolte inattese e sorprendenti, quale può essere migliore di questo?

[Dan Witte · Rating 2 out of 5]

There appear to be three narrative voices in this disjointed mess of a book, presumably all belonging to the same person (as opposed to, say, the three farmers), with no explanation, aside from possibly implied schizophrenia, as to why. Early on it was fun reading about working in the trade press in the 1980s, maybe because I was in that line of work at the time, but it didn’t take long for this slight novelty to be bludgeoned senseless by ponderous and maddeningly irrelevant dissertation about the most occluded subjects. The result is a dull and sometimes aggravating slog that shouldn’t have been published in its published form, much less lauded by critics who should have known better. Written in the mid-1980s, the debut work of an author who would go on to win the Pulitzer thirty years later, I think this book is about media and memory, especially as impacted by technology and industrial advances in the twentieth century. But it is so clumsily executed it’s hard to know. Perhaps the photo of “three farmers on their way to a dance”, glimpsed in a Detroit art museum by one version of the three-headed narrator, was meant to serve as some kind of metaphor for postwar identity in America? At some point I decided that’s what the author may have been going for, but I admit hurrying through the last few chapters to get this book behind me, so maybe I missed his larger point. Having read (and written) my share of poorly executed fiction, I started thinking about how this book would have been shredded in even the most parochial workshop. Now having finished it, I can’t help but retroactively admire the work of his literary agent.

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance is Richard Powers' debut novel, published in 1985. It was inspired by a photograph taken by August Sander of three young German farmers dressed in their Sunday best, walking to a dance in 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I. Themes include history, art, memory, and time.

Powers weaves together multiple narrative threads: 1) the imagined lives of the three farmers in the photograph, 2) the story of the photograph itself and its survival through the tumultuous 20th century, and 3) a contemporary narrative set in the 1980s following a computer programmer who becomes obsessed with the photograph. It plays with the idea that a single moment can reverberate through history.

Richard Powers is one of my favorite authors, and while his debut contains flashes of brilliance, I don’t think it is quite as cohesive as his later works. I plan to eventually read them all. I love his erudite approach to tackling big complex ideas, and though this one is not a favorite, I came away from it with plenty of food for thought.

3.5

[María Jesús · Rating 3 out of 5]

Para entusiastas de la genealogía

Recién terminado este libro tengo dos quejas fundamentales sobre él, una subjetiva y otra objetiva (o eso creo al menos). Empezaremos por lo subjetivo, que es siempre lo más importante y está a la base de lo que nos parece objetivo, ja, ja...

Como mi motivo para abordar este libro fue que me enteré de su existencia por una estupenda reseña de Javier, en la que explicaba que el autor había concebido la novela tras quedar impresionado por una antigua fotografía de Sander, que da título al libro y, como resulta que yo también me había sentido atrapada por esa misma fotografía al punto de haber realizado un trabajo gráfico sobre ella (que podéis ver en este link https://www.goodreads.com/photo/user/...), me dieron muchas ganas de leer la novela.

El caso es que yo me esperaba una novela con una importante carga emocional y un énfasis en la descripción, no solo vital sino psicológica, de los tres personajes principales en el convulso escenario europeo de la primera gran guerra. No es que no haya nada de esto, es que hay poco. Los tres personajes están bien presentados y perfilados y su, corta, peripecia vital trazada grosso modo y en apenas una tercera parte de la novela, puesto que las otras dos partes tienen que ver con el deambular de un lejano descendiente por los Estados Unidos contemporáneos, primero en una búsqueda caótica y con tintes de absurdo de una mujer, que luego acaba enlazando con una búsqueda de sus propios orígenes y una remota conexión con el magnate Henry Ford. Esto constituye otro tercio de la novela, o quizá un tercio más largo que los otros dos tercios, ja, ja (pido disculpas a los de mentalidad matemática).
El tercio restante son las meditaciones filosóficas del propio autor de la novela sobre aspectos relacionados con la fotografía como técnica de expresión y representación del mundo.
Todas estas perspectivas se van alternando, aunque no es esto lo más lioso (este asunto del lío es mi queja objetiva), lo peor es que el propio autor parece ir disfrutando cada vez más de los vericuetos, sub-tramas , digresiones e incluso pequeñas trampas con las que va sembrando el camino, para creciente desconcierto y eventual aburrimiento al menos en mi caso. En esta misma línea de no linealidad (vaya, juego de palabras no intencionado pero que viene a cuento de mi siguiente queja) está la complicación excesiva del lenguaje y el estilo, con constantes juegos de palabras, de ideas, de relaciones, de inferencias y referencias y sus aparejadas digresiones. Eso, a menudo, me ha resultado complejo de entender y, dada la sobreabundancia, aburrido. Supongo que un conocimiento cultural nativo de la vida y la sociedad americanas aliviará o eliminará este problema para otros. Ciertos aspectos de, no sé si llamarlo realismo mágico porque dado su carácter esporádico y en nada asimilable al tono del "realismo mágico" más parecen de absurdo o simple broma, me rechinan en esta novela. Por no hablar del barullo de los nombres propios, con personajes que cambian de nombre (esto justificado) y otros a los que el autor se refiere, a cada uno de ellos, con tres nombres distintos y dentro de las misma situación (esto injustificado).

En resumen, creo que el autor ha sido secuestrado por su propio ingenio y se ha perdido en vericuetos más superficiales de lo que el planteamiento inicial parecía sugerir. Sólo he sentido alguna empatía muy al principio, cuando nos presenta a los tres personajes de la foto, y muy al final cuando reflexiona sobre su destino y su/nuestro reflejo en las fotografías.

[David]

Powers is good enough to at least lay claim to the possibility of being the best among contemporary novelists. For me, he is always cerebral, intellectual, and profoundly moving, emotionally. Not every reader agrees. I always argue that an entire undergraduate degree program could be taught by having students simply research the references that Powers’ novels make. I don’t know that there is an academic discipline upon which he never touches. This one is his debut, and foreshadows just about all his career-long concerns, his stylistic experiments and variations, his humor, his scientific inquiry, and his understanding that fiction (or art in general) is often among the best ways to point us towards wise choice of the things we will actually experience, when we have such a choice, as opposed to the things that we will merely read about and encounter as ideas. [this time around, I've started reading Powers from the beginning in order to postpone the moment when I finally read his newest one; "oh, there's reasons, Shel, there's reasons"]

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Powers first novel starts with a chance encounter with a photograph of three German men on their way to a celebration in late 1913, unaware that their world and everyone else's is about to be torn apart by world war.

So begins an incredibly dense novel that in typical Powers fashion explores big ideas and historical moments but doesn't quite harmonize the multiple storylines in any satisfactory way. There are glimpses of Powers audacity, his engagement with human questions of how we interact with technology (in this case photography) is on display but it also feels very much like a first novel. He tries too hard. The poetic writing we get in later works feels dense and lacking rhythm. The aha moments are too subtle and challenging to decipher. There were moments of recognizing the style I've come to admire, those moments were too few to really enjoy the reading experience.

I'll take a bit of a break before my getting to his second novel but happy to move on.

[David Curry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Powers’ 1985 debut novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, makes it clear that from the very beginning Powers was in full possession of his namesake gifts: the power of rich, fresh language and the power of inventive and compelling narrative. Add to those qualities some obvious work, including intellectual grounding in fields such as history and science, and you have a writer of considerable weight. Among the major delights of this early book is a take on Henry Ford that might make even E. L. Doctorow equivocal about his claim to that turf.

It doesn’t hurt that all of this turns out to be fun. In sentence after sentence, Powers’ enjoyment in writing becomes our enjoyment in reading, as with this representative plum: “Aside from having once spent a month and a half asking everyone I met if they knew a song with the words ‘a lingering lass in her party dress,’ a line I knew from somewhere but could not place, I had never been obsessed.”

If you find yourself having trouble keeping track of characters and narrative threads, relax. As you go along, things become clearer (when they’re not getting more complicated), and whatever else it may be, the journey is never dull.

This is not a writer who skimps. Each of the 27 chapters bears a chapter title and an epigraph, with the epigraphs ranging from Sigmund Freud to BarbaraTuchman.

The opening section of Chapter 6 should do to let you know how energetically this book runs. The chapter title is Two Leads on a Fata Morgana, and the epigraph comes from Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons: “You see what I’m doing: there was an empty space left in the trunk which I’m filling with hay; that’s how it is in our life’s baggage; no matter what we stuff it with, it’s better than having an empty space.”

Then here’s how the chapter gets rolling:

“I found my thri-i-ill
In John Stuart Mill …”

“Delaney’s voice strongly resembled a Phantom jet in the hands of a developing nation. His strafing run had as objective a reticent molded-plastic-cum-printed-circuit-card that generated what the magazine referred to as “fully user-programmable” coffee. The machine, however, had long since rewritten its own software, and now refused to wander from REHEAT MODE. Although the machine’s microprocessor could make decisions in milliseconds, it invariably decided to do the same thing time and again: bring the water to 65 degrees and dribble it miserably into the waiting flask. The U. S Army had , at Arlennes, 1917, devised a method — big pot of lukewarm water with grounds stirred in — that beat the IC technology in both taste and throughput.

“Delaney, having changed his tune this quarter hour ever so slightly to ‘I found my thrill in diddling Jill,’ perhaps knowing somewhere in his voluminous preconscious that by cashing his checks on Powell Trade Magazines Group, he morally obligated himself to accomplish at least a little something each morning, annexed a cup and made his best imitation of a straight line toward Mary’s module.

“ ‘Do you realize that if I stretched out your small intestine it would reach all the way to the latrine and back? Save you the trip.’ ” (Onstage you would pause before that final line. I actually had that thought while reading. It’s that kind of book.)

Here’s a character at the theater in chapter 15: “Looking over the gallery, Mays concluded that most people who came t o the theater did so because it met the requirement of what bygone eras had called ‘hobbies’: it was expensive, it produced nothing useful, and it killed time. The problem with getting by was no longer that life was nasty, brutish, and short. Lately, the difficulty was that life had become comfy, ghoulish, and long.”

The unrelenting send-up of war (specifically the First World War) is irresistible: “The European War had come about because the Germans were too industrious to be observant while the French were too observant to do anything, and two such radically opposed temperaments could not exist side by side on the same map.”

As the memorable old Mrs. Schreck memorably observes in the golden chapter 22, after laughter: “We laughed until we rotted.” Moments later the narrator observes: “The path of even the straightest of lives winds strangely.” Top those, anyone.

It does have to be said that occasionally the narrative is arrested when Powers inserts a nearly extraneous essay, as with the discussion of photography that opens chapter 19. I was beginning to nod when the narrative welcomely returned after 14 pages. Well, Powers’ essays are less bothersome than Tolstoy’s sermons, and when the narrative does resume, we immediately get this:

“On a Wednesday afternoon, just after one, the drizzle of a false January spring began slowly, imperceptibly to crystallize into a flurry of snow. I had skipped work, calling in a lie about my returning to the Midwest for a family emergency. The couple in the apartment directly above mine were also home and fighting, as was their natural idiom. The woman alternately screamed and laughed in pleasure. The man begged, pleaded, threatened, and destroyed furniture. I could not hear the issue.”

There now — you’ve been teased and warned.

[John Paul Gairhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exploration of memory, violence, art, mechanization, and the escapades of Henry Ford. History is abstract and time is relentless! We should all just try our best.

—

“Three farmers walk down a muddy road: the time being, that will have to do.”

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw the photo from August Sander which inspired this book at an expo in Paris this year. I was drawn as Mr Powers was to the innocence on these young men's faces and again like Powers wondered what their fates would become. In this first novel of what would be a long and much-lauded career, Powers tells the story of his own (fictional?) discovery and obsession with the photo, of a distant relative of one of the protagonists in the photo, and the putative stories of each of the three boys. We get a fascinating view of World War I and its aftermath, a little about World War II, and a post-World War II love story. I won't give anything away, but I thought this book was a great read, a remarkable achievement for a first book, and am very thankful that the Pompidou expo referenced it which was what sent me running to the library!

[Raoul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting segments with a lot of hot air in between.

[Stephan Benzkofer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best-laid plans: I fully intended to love this book, guided by Richard Powers as he led me on a tour of new ideas and fresh observations. I thought The Overstory was transformative and extraordinarily powerful. I enjoyed Generosity, though it wasn't anything close to the former. So I was eager to dig into Powers' earlier work, and you can't get earlier than his debut novel.

Three Farmers is frustrating. At times, the author's tangential essays are simply boring. Sometimes they're just rubbish (an essay that begins with mass-produced art and photography somehow also leads to the development of the WWI war machines). And commonly, they bring the novel to a screeching halt (the aforementioned essay last for 15 or more pages).

Even worse, though, while his passages bringing to life the three farmers are great, the modern-day characters fail to resonate. In the end, I simply didn't care that much about them.

But throughout, the Richard Powers who would blow my mind later is evident in select sentences and in the sheer scope and boldness of the subjects he tries to include.

I'm eager to hear what others thought of this book, and I'll dive into the reviews now — and await commentary from you, my friends.

[Mika · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do you do if (1) you are really, really smart, (2) read Walter Benjamin's "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," and (3) see August Sander's "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance" and Diego Rivera's "Detroit Industry"?

Well, you might write a novel that explores all of those, and more (technology, modernity, the twentieth century, war and violence, the self and the other, sex, family, work, journalism,...). And because you're smart, the novel would have multiple, complexly connected story lines, clever prose, and erudition up the wazoo. In other words, not everybody's cup of tea (see some of the cranky reviews here), but if you're a Powers fan, or Benjamin fan, or love photography, all of which is true of me, you'll like this novel.

Now this is Powers's first novel, and it's a novel by a young man. The latter is a fortiori true, of course, but it's worth distinguishing it from it being Powers's first novel. The themes and the approach that matures over his oeuvre is just beginning here. The cleverness is sometimes too clever, the reflections occasionally mini-essays you won't mind if you liked your grad school syllabi, and he is maybe not yet fully in control of the complexity of the plot in the way he will be by Goldbug Variations and later novels.

And as for the young man element: it's not exactly a book by a bro, but it has preoccupations I can't really get excited about anymore.

Still, I'm glad I finally read it, and although he tells a different story of Sander's three farmers than I would have (or what actually happened), that's OK. That is the point.

[Stewart Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first time I’ve read a Powers book and considered it to be anything less than a masterpiece, but as a first novel this one is pretty fantastic. The historical threads that connect the three narratives aren’t quite as strong as they seem to think they are, but the writing is very strong and the questions posed about the nature of photography/individuals as historical actors are fascinating. To me, this one proves that Powers isn’t just a one trick pony; each of his books that I’ve read so far has been thematically distinct and full of a unique sort of life. Once again I’m tempted to just crack open another of his novels immediately, but I’ll hold myself back for at least another month or so.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

This, I believe, is Richard Powers first published book and isn't as good as most of his later works but it is still quite good. It's all based around an old photograph of three young men dressed in suits and carrying canes on a muddy path. There are three storylines running through the book. The first is about a man who discoverers the photograph and becomes obsessed with it. I believe that this is loosely based on Powers himself. The second storyline follows a journalist who has a connection to the photograph and the third storyline is an imagined story about the three young men. The story becomes a little confusing at times but, overall, is exceptionally well written, as are all of Powers books.

[Kristina · Rating 1 out of 5]

My second and last failed attempt at reading this novel. Powers' "The Echo Maker" is one of my favorite 4* novels, which is why I approached this one with high expectations. Unfortunately, not even a few years later could I get past the fourth chapter. I was put off by style and theme; it all seemed too mechanical and encyclopedic, and there was nothing to keep me engaged or make me interested enough to pick up the book every day. I guess it's time to give up on this one and move on to the next.

[Ffiamma · Rating 4 out of 5]

la storia si può raccontare anche partendo da una foto di august sander- ed ecco l'america, l'europa, la guerra, i tempi che cambiano e le storie che si intrecciano. non sempre accogliente, ma comunque un grande romanzo/affresco.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my favorite books ever by the greatest writer alive.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange but fascinating novel centred around a photograph taken on the eve of the first world war. I believe this is the author's first novel which makes it all the more impressive. Three storylines are interwoven in a clever way, all centred around the characters in the photograph. But the best thing about it is the style and quality of the writing. And the frequent paragraphs where the author steps back from actual event and speculates philosophically about their significance.
Highly recommended. I shall be seeking out other books by this author.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powers is such a smart writer, one always learns so much in his novels. This, his debut, doesn't always cohere but it's a great read nevertheless.

[Ryan Ratzlaff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once we understand,
It has already transformed,
Into something else