Outage: A Journey into Electric City

by B.W. Powe

B. W. Powe explores the moment of darkness so many of us know, when life - through the magnetic, electrical forces of the universe we absorb daily from television, radio, computers and other signals - simply seems to spin apart around us.
Commencing with the 1987 stock market crash, the narrator, a writer and teacher on the verge of divorce, weaves a story of his experiences in a world rapidly changed by the forces of technology - a world both enlightened and utterly confused. Questioning the true meaning of these changes, he journeys into the city, encountering a wide range of characters on the edge - a burnt-out student who leaves long, crazed phone messages citing conspiracies and world plots; artistic parents who cling to their visions even as age wears out their creative abilities; a media darling who poses as the perfect family man while privately descending into drugged despair; young women who awake at night to venture alone into underground nightclubs. Spinning away from his wife and deeper into a world of confusion and sensation, he leaves Canada and in Venice concludes his disturbing, but ultimately insightful odyssey.

Genres: Fiction

324 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Professor of English at York University.

He was the program coordinator for three significant cultural symposia held at the university:
Marshall McLuhan (1997)
Pierre Trudeau (1998)
Living Literacies (2002

Reviews

[Sooz · Rating 3 out of 5]

on the verge of divorce (and possibily a break down of some sort) Powe embarks on a journey - asking questions about intimacy and questions about noise. asking if 'hightech tribalism' can become community - create neighbourhoods - bring people together in a meaningful way. asking how we filter and make sense of the barage of messages, filter and makes sense of the electro-magnatic buzz that inudates us all. asking questions about the energy and pattern behind the visible.

i have a hard time getting into this book. my own expectations interupt what the writer is trying to convey. i was expecting revelations. i was expecting answers. expecting to form a connection with Powe - in which i would respond, 'yes!' to the ideas as he presents them.

finally, able to recongnize this and put off - at least a little - to the side, i sit down to give the book a chance to be what it is intented to be. a playlist - the collaborations of Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Daniel Lanois, Steve Roach and Jeffrey Fayman - plays quietly in the background. it feels very fitting. i find Powe's voice.

so far there are no revelations - only more questions:

culture under the influence of technology. this was inevitiable. technology is so much a part of our lives - yet by it's very definition, it is inhuman. how do we wed culture and technology in a way that is meaningful? that resonates with our humanity?

mass production of art. flattened homogenized and mass produced, it becomes billboards. commercials. to survive, will real art have to become fleeting? impermenant? something that can only be experienced in the moment. something that is immune to mass production?

beauty. will we ever rebell against beauty? weary from the over-exposure of beautiful people, paraded through our lives, will we find respite in the sight of ugly people?

concluding the book, i'd say there were parts i liked, but on the whole the book never lost the personal journalling aspect, and personal journals are never as intresting to others as they are to the writer.

[Takatsu Takatsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I'm really enjoying as I'm reading this now (he's my professor and has been extremely inspiring to me) is the fact that many questions are unveiled as someone else had commented on Goodreads, and that they are pieces and fragments of his soul. It is an analogy of technology itself as a whole: personal things are broadcasted in pieces, in rapid-fire rates, and becomes a mosaic of moments. There are many fantastic, deep, profound, thought-provoking moments in this - even a simple memory about sexual encounters, becomes art and extrapolates life into a much more prophetic level - and they all function individually rather than expected to function cohesively as one novel.

I believe literature is art, and art doesn't always have to follow a traditional conventional way of storytelling as some reviewers seemed to be expecting. For me, literature like this is what makes literature literature and not just another novel or story to read. I am really enjoying this piece.

I wish I don't know him personally, because reading his personal journal-esque works is kind of awkward. If I don't know him, I would enjoy each moment and personal detail more, as some sort of abstract painting of the society and the context in which we exist.

I'll go into more depth when I finish the novel.