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The Time of Our Singing

4.23 of 5 stars 4.23 · rating details · 1,130 ratings · 176 reviews

Jonah, Joseph and Ruth are the children of mixed-race parents determined to protect them from the grinding effects of race. Hothouse children, they are all musically talented, but they cannot be protected from the world for long. Jonah becomes a successful young tenor, but the world of opera can only accept him as a 'brilliant Negro singer'; Joseph, our narrator, becomes a...more

Paperback, 631 pages

Published February 5th 2004 by Vintage (first published 2002)

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Sep 26, 2007 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: my boss

Shelves: here-is-new-york, happyendings

I had a hard time finishing this book, because the ending was so good that I couldn't stop crying. Not because it was sad, but because it was so unbelievably good, and because I'd never before read a long book with an ending that lived up to its heft.

Seriously, it took me like half an hour to read the last few pages, because I kept flinging down the book and pacing around my apartment, sobbing hysterically.

Don't get me wrong, this book is not perfect, and it definitely falters in places. However...more

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May 12, 2007 jeremy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Every once in a while you'll get into one of those conversations with an acquaintance who thinks he or she is smarter than you in which you list a string of books you've read recently and authors you particularly enjoy. Invariably Michael Chabon's last name (shay-bawn) is mispronounced in these conversations.

If you want to win the next conversation like this you have, I highly recommend delving quickly and deeply into the urvruh of Richard Powers, who, despite never fully penetrating the upper e...more

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Jul 07, 2008 Oceana2602 rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008, unfinished, german, male-writers

Important Service Announcement:

I read the first 100 or something pags of this yesterday and decided not to continue.
*does not panic*
*breathes*

Yes, I can start a book and not finish it! It hasn't happened very often, in fact, I can't remember that it ever happened, but I'm convinced I can do it. It also helps that this is my mothers book, so I can give it back to her and not be tempted.

Why don't I finish it?

Well, it's a very very long book. And in the first 100 pages, the important ones where al...more

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Jun 08, 2007 Sarah Sammis rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: released

The Time of Our Singing follows the musical career of one brother as told by another. It's a family drama spread over many decades from the marriage of the boy's parents (a German Jew and a black women who met while singing) and goes up to present day.

I liked the premise of the story and Richard Powers has a masterful control over his prose. Unfortunately, his chosen motif, music, is drawn out as an all-encompassing metaphor for all the problems and triumphs of the characters in the book. As the...more

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May 19, 2013 GloriaA rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Richard Powers fonda questo romanzo su un’idea straordinaria, di bellezza indicibile, di libertà purissima: il sogno, la visione, il pensiero sincronico proiettato nel tempo di due persone lontanissime per colore razza cultura religione: uno scienziato ebreo fuggito dal nazismo e una giovane cantante di colore americana.

Un pensiero che corre verso il futuro sull’onda magica e sublime della voce di Marian Anderson che travalica luogo-spazio-tempo, questioni di razza, d’identità, di popolo, un p...more
Richard Powers fonda questo romanzo su un’idea straordinaria, di bellezza indicibile, di libertà purissima: il sogno, la visione, il pensiero sincronico proiettato nel tempo di due persone lontanissime per colore razza cultura religione: uno scienziato ebreo fuggito dal nazismo e una giovane cantante di colore americana.

Un pensiero che corre verso il futuro sull’onda magica e sublime della voce di Marian Anderson che travalica luogo-spazio-tempo, questioni di razza, d’identità, di popolo, un pensiero che è già nel futuro da dove l’immagine torna indietro. Liberi, svincolati, ascetici, ascendenti. Ci si librano sopra come la musica che li sospinge, uniti alle decine di migliaia di persone che galleggiano insieme a loro e che sono diventate un unico grande cuore, un’unica grande mente, un unico sentire travalicante.

Un pesce e un uccello soggiogati dalla medesima visione rilucente che determina un tempo zero da cui ripartire e dalla quale non si può più prescindere.

Il pesce e l’uccello si amano e costruiscono il nido, anticipando i tempi, troppo avanti coi tempi. Lo avvolgono e proteggono con le più belle note possibili, meravigliose sublimi divine e crescono i figli su questa idea folle e cullante. Riparandoli dietro pareti di note prodigiose risplendenti portentose. Ma la musica non basterà a difendere questi figli incongruamente precoci, capostipiti di una nuova era. Saranno travolti dal tempo della Storia che sembra intrappolato in un moto retrogrado, dentro violente questioni razziali, dentro orgogli di popoli, di origini, d’identità. Perché la paura non è del diverso, ma che il diverso diventi un tuo simile.

Eppure grazie alla musica si può provare “solo grazia incorporea. Si può andare oltre la razza, oltre qualsiasi cosa.” Liberamente tratto da pag. 791

Perché “ c’è una lunghezza d’onda ovunque punti il telescopio.”

Powers, attraversa 60 anni di storia americana con grande e rara abilità letteraria, affrontando il tema della questione razziale con sensibile accuratezza e attenzione, con profondità e ampiezza di pensiero. Riflettendo sulla libertà e le sue tragiche conseguenze.
Immergendo magistralmente il tempo nelle note universali della musica, sulla scia magica e conturbante del genio di Einstein.

Se gli si può fare un appunto, è che si percepisce la mano del direttore d’orchestra, ma l’esecuzione è a grande livello.
(less)

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Oct 16, 2012 Simone Scardapane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

La cosa buffa di romanzi come questo è che, a prima vista, non fanno nulla per ingraziarsi il lettore: elevata lunghezza, approfondimento psicologico dei personaggi quasi maniacale, tecnicismi di vario genere (in questo caso scientifici e musicali), linee temporali divise e frammentate lungo tutto il libro, e continue digressioni su ogni genere di argomento. Eppure il risultato, come anche nel caso di altri autori come DeLillo, è anche qui un piccolo gioiello: un affresco di vita, esplorato in o...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Melissa Kyeyune rated it 5 of 5 stars

Phew! I finally completed it! :)

'The Time of Our Singing' tells the story of the two sons of Delia and David Strom.

Delia and David might have been your everyday 1950s couple, had Delia not been an aspiring African American singer from Philadelphia's middle class, and David a white Jewish engineer who had just lost his family in the Holocaust.

The author has juxtaposed many of the Stroms' milestones with the broader American milestones of the 20th century especially with regards to Black-White re...more

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Mar 23, 2011 Caroline rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've had this book for a good few years now and I've never before been able to get into it. I've picked it up, read a few pages, put it down again and found something else. And now I wish I'd stayed with it, now I wish I'd read it years ago so I could have read it again and again by now, because...what a book. What a book.

On a purely surface level it's about two mixed-race brothers born in the late 1940s, children to a German Jewish father and a black mother. But it's so much more than that. It'...more

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Feb 01, 2011 Philippe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-english, music

"The Time of our Singing" is a magnificent book and I am grateful for one of my most rewarding reading experiences ever. The story starts with a flourish and one marvels at the author's supreme skill, throughout the book's 630 pages, in keeping up the pace, widening the emotional resonances and deepening the narrative's cogency, eventually to let it flower into a profoundly moving and intellectually satisfying finale. It is heartwarming to see that our age - so worn down at times by the pressure...more "The Time of our Singing" is a magnificent book and I am grateful for one of my most rewarding reading experiences ever. The story starts with a flourish and one marvels at the author's supreme skill, throughout the book's 630 pages, in keeping up the pace, widening the emotional resonances and deepening the narrative's cogency, eventually to let it flower into a profoundly moving and intellectually satisfying finale. It is heartwarming to see that our age - so worn down at times by the pressure of commercialism - is still able to provide a fold for this kind of artistry of the highest order.

The book is constructed around three main themes woven into another as spiraling helices: time, race and music. It is tempting to say that the time dimension is foundational in this book as it seems to tells us something very basic about the universe we happen to inhabit. But that would set us on the wrong foot when trying to navigate a complex narrative fabric in which our ways of socially encoding the colour of a skin or shaping a musical phrase are equally potent reflections of our world's unfolding order.

Time is injected into the story by means of David Strom, an eccentric quantum physicist who escaped Europe in the face of unstoppable Nazi madness and marries a black woman shortly after his arrival in the US. Throughout the book, Strom wrestles with the intractable problem of the very nature of time and what this means for us, transients in an expanding universe. According to Strom, there is no unidirectional arrow of time: " ... The tenses are a stubborn illusion. The whole unholy trio of them have no mathematical distinct existence. Past and future both lay folded up in the misleading lead of the present. All three are just different cuts through the same deep map. `Was' and `will be'. All are fixed discernable coordinates on the plane that holds all moving nows." Later on in the book we learn that this conception of time has fundamental implications for the nature of causality: "... events can move continuously into their own local future while turning back on their own past." Ergo " ... there is no such thing as race. Race is only real when you freeze time, if you invent a zero point for your tribe. If you make the past an origin, then you fix the future. Race is a dependent variable. A path, a moving process. We all move along a curve that will break down and rebuild us all." This is just a crude approximation of a wonderfully rich theme, given voice by Powers by means of an endearing fictional character, and masterfully woven into the finest meshes of the narrative fabric. (Incidentally, the character of David Strom may well be loosely inspired by the real-life quantum physicist David Bohm, who developed a holistic interpretation of quantum theory by asserting that any particular element of space may have a field which unfolds into the whole whilst the whole unfolds in it. Bohm referred to this concept as the `implicate order'. There are other similarities between Strom and Bohm (as there are significant differences)).

In the racially-torn environment of post-war America, Strom and his coloured wife Delia Daley decide to raise their three `mixed' children `beyond race', unimpeded by a perverse system of classification and free to carve out their own destiny. Indeed for them `race' is a dependent, not an originative variable. The Stroms act on the believe that it is wrong to constrain people's opportunity space upfront by collaring them with a socially constructed, basically immoral designation. Music, and particularly the canon of Western art music, provides the aesthetic and supposedly racially neutral matrix in which the Stroms' family life is embedded.

Their three children embody different reactions to this `experiment'. Jonah, the eldest, develops into a breathtakingly accomplished singer who takes this idea of racially-neutral, aesthetic purity to its artistic extreme. Ruth, the youngest, throws herself on the other horn of the racial dilemma. Rather than to negate race, she turns it into the foundation of her militant life. Joey, whose voice tells the story, is the mediator between these two extremes. He devotes the first part of his life to his brother's career as a piano accompanist. Later on he joins his sister as a music teacher in a black community school. From Joey's hands blossoms an incredible musical finale when he rehearses with a class of children in the presence of his elder brother: the immutable, artificial perfection of Western art music and the lived, participatory spirit of gospel blend in an affirmative, improvisatory `contrapunctus' of countless voices, a musical `glass bead game' drawing on "... all the chords (...) needed to get anywhere pitches could go."

In "The Time of our Singing" Powers refracts the implicate order of an enfolded, hyperdimensional universe through a fractally layered prism of a nuclear family of five people, of their extended family and of the broader society in which they are embedded, all grappling with the dilemmas of time, race and music. It is an affirmative story, but it is not redemptive. Until the very end, the assertion that "bird and fish can fall in love" - expressing a belief in the power of hybridisation, in transgressing fixed categories in favour of the whole - is followed by the irreducible, eternally unsettling question "But where will they build their nest?" The end is open, floating on David Strom's `time curves on configuration space', leaving us to our own precarious judgment and memory: "If our father was right, time doesn't flow, but is. In such a world, all the things we ever will be or were, we are. But then, in such a world, who we are must be all things. (...) Until we come from everyplace we've been, we won't get everywhere we're going."

All this might have been stuff for a solid academic dissertation. But the wonder of this book is that Richard Powers has the ability to develop such a profound meditation over hundreds of pages, virtuosic in his meshing of themes, uncannily precise in his prose, remarkably clearheaded in his command of the underlying ideas. A magisterial work, no doubt about it. (less)

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Jan 23, 2011 Alexandra Graßler rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Was für ein geschriebenes Epos. Mir fällt kaum vergleichbares ein, in dem Worte wie Musik komponiert werden und in ihrer Einmaligkeit und Komplexität eine Sprache entfalten, die seinesgleichen sucht. Es gelingt Richard Powers in seinem Werk den Bogen von 1939 bis in die 80er Jahre zu spannen und in dessen Mittelpunkt eine Familie zu stellen, deren Lebensgrundlage immer wieder die Frage zu beantworten sucht: 'Der Fisch und der Vogel können sich verlieben. Doch wo bauen sie ihr Nest?'

Die Geschicht...more Was für ein geschriebenes Epos. Mir fällt kaum vergleichbares ein, in dem Worte wie Musik komponiert werden und in ihrer Einmaligkeit und Komplexität eine Sprache entfalten, die seinesgleichen sucht. Es gelingt Richard Powers in seinem Werk den Bogen von 1939 bis in die 80er Jahre zu spannen und in dessen Mittelpunkt eine Familie zu stellen, deren Lebensgrundlage immer wieder die Frage zu beantworten sucht: 'Der Fisch und der Vogel können sich verlieben. Doch wo bauen sie ihr Nest?'

Die Geschichte beginnt, dass sich eine schwarze Frau und ein weißer Mann verlieben und sich gegen alle Konventionen und dem Denken der herrschenden Zeit zusammenzutun um eine Familie zu gründen. Beinahe jeder Atemzug in ihrem zuhause atmet Musik und es findet sich in den abendlichen Stunden am Klavier eine neue Art von musikalischem Zitateraten, Vermischung alter und neuer Musik statt. Deliah ist eine äußerst talentierte Sängerin, die jedoch zu Gunsten ihrer Kinder daheim bleibt und diese auch zunächst daheim unterrichtet. Jonah und Joseph, ihre beiden älteren Söhne, werden von ihr in einem Atemzug liebevoll JoJo genannt. Vor allem der ältere zeigt bereits in frühesten Jahren eine begnadete Stimme und ein wahrhaft außergewöhnliches Talent.

Ihr Mann David Strom ist ein deutscher, jüdischer Physiker, der vor den Nazis geflohen ist und sich geradezu im Phänomen der Zeit verliert, das er zu erforschen sucht. Durch seine Offenheit und Bereitschaft alles ungewöhnliche als normal anzusehen, kann er viele der Ansichten aus Deliahs Familie nicht nachvollziehen. Ihre Ehe stellt zur damaligen Zeit einen Verrat am Denken von Weissen wie auch Schwarzen statt. Ihr Versuch eine neue Welt im Kleinen zu schaffen kann nicht gelingen.

Deliah und ihr Mann David entscheiden sich schweren Herzens beide Söhne auf eine Musikschule zu schicken um ihnen die Gelegenheit zu geben, ihr Talent unter professioneller Anleitung zu entfalten. Diese Schule katapultiert die zwei Jungs in eine andere Welt. Zwar spielt ihre Hautfarbe hier nicht die Hauptrolle, sondern ihr musikalischen Können, doch können sie sie auch nicht ablegen. Und so entfaltet sich Seite für Seite dieses Buches die Geschichte von Kindern, die weder der einen noch der anderen Rasse angehören und versuchen, dieser Definition durch ihr besonderes musikalisches Talent zu entgehen.

Ihr Schwester Ruth ist diejenige, die unter dem frühen Unfalltod der Mutter am meisten zu leiden hat und sich auch als erste von ihrer Familie abwendet um sich im Kampf der Schwarzen gegen die Rassentrennung engagiert. Die Familie droht auseinander zu brechen und jedes der Kinder versucht auf seine Weise damit fertig zu werden.

Die Reise auf die uns der Autor mitnimmt, springt in Zeitsprüngen von der Geschichte der Eltern zu der der Kinder. Doch niemals irritierend und immer einen Bogen schlagend um persönliche wie geschichtliche Ereignisse miteinander zu verweben. Es ist ein Genuss, sich in diesen kunstvoll gearbeiteten Sätzen zu verlieren. In diese Fülle von Wörtern einzutauchen und den beschriebenen Klang wie von Engelszungen entstehen zu hören. Nicht umsonst wurde Richard Powers bereits mit renommierten Preisen überhäuft. (less)

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Jul 01, 2012 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I feel a bit guilty giving this book only three stars.
Yes, it's a highly acclaimed novel, it's relevant and praiseworthy and it tackles huge universal and specifically American themes through the individual stories of the Strom family members, music lovers all. It's almost perfectly constructed, the main narrator Joseph is full of solemn sensitivity and insight, and the author's reflection on (and use of) time and space is mind-grabbing.
The problem is the novel's relentlessnes; not just the ove...more

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Mar 25, 2009 Donna Cook rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Man, I can't decide what I think. As I write this, I'm still pondering my ultimate rating. On the one hand, this book is pretty incredible. The author deals with some tough topics, and really digs deep. His ability to write about a person singing - over and over again - without it sounding repetitive, is flat-out amazing. His writing is rock solid. On the other hand, the fact that it was well written was too noticeable. It's like he was jumping up and down saying "look how brilliant I am!" Too o...more Man, I can't decide what I think. As I write this, I'm still pondering my ultimate rating. On the one hand, this book is pretty incredible. The author deals with some tough topics, and really digs deep. His ability to write about a person singing - over and over again - without it sounding repetitive, is flat-out amazing. His writing is rock solid. On the other hand, the fact that it was well written was too noticeable. It's like he was jumping up and down saying "look how brilliant I am!" Too often, it felt like every third sentence was full of depth and imagery, sentences that took work to read and appreciate. It slowed the narrative down. They were wonderful sentences, but too often I was thinking "enough already!" The point of great writing is to let the story feel absolutely real, to forget there even IS a writer, not to draw attention to the writer. Sometimes it took FOREVER for him to narrate the most basic scenes. He overexplained. Every word, every gesture, every look carried the weight of the universe. I'm sorry, but people just aren't like that all the time. Save the life-altering drama for the moments that count.

The themes of this book were music, time, race, and family. The title was sooo appropriate! As I said, the author covered these themes in depth, and for the most part, that added to the pure richness of the story. He didn't shy away from anything. Still, there were several times when I felt like he was saying the same things over and over again, particularly when it came to race.

SPOILER ALERT**** Which brings me to the ending. The way the storylines tie up, particularly the brothers' storylines, was very unsatisfying. Though I was disappointed Joseph never learned how to live his life on his own, I could've accepted the end to his storyline if he hadn't turned his back on the music he'd listened to and loved his entire life. I just couldn't believe he'd do that. Add to that the way Joseph died, as if he'd undergone some big revelation that his sister was right about everything all along and that his life and his music was too "white"? Now I'm just plain irritated. Now this view about "white music" isn't just a character having an opinion (the way I felt about it when Ruth was the one who believed it, which was fine and real), now I'm feeling like that's the message of the book. White people, white music, white culture... it all equals bad. And apparently the way to triumph over it is to live in the hood or die in a riot. What??? I liked it a lot better when there were different people with different thoughts about race (just like in real life) rather than feeling like I'm being told that there's only ONE way to think about race, and only one way to act if you're REALLY going to be black. Give me a break. If someone was telling me what I can and can't listen to based on my race and the origins of that music, I'd tell them to stuff it. If you WANT to make a difference by serving these disadvantaged neighborhoods, I think that's great. Admirable. But not everyone has that inclination, and that's okay too. There's nothing wrong with those boys pursuing their music and their hearts. You don't get to lay self-righteous claim to another person's life just because of their race. It really bothered me that that seemed to be the ultimate message of this book.

That being said, the final scene at the Mall was freaking brilliant. I loved the way it tied in everything - all four themes touched upon in that one scene. It circled back to the beginning (the way great novels do) to give a sense of closure. It was great. Loved it.

So, how do I rate it? The quality of the writing demands four or five stars. The fact that I didn't like the ultimate message, and the fact that too many times I was just ready to be done with this massive book already, makes me want to give it three.

Well, this is my personal rating system, and I've written my explaination for it. So despite the truly remarkable skill of this author, I'm putting it in my personal three-star category. I'm glad I read it, but I can't say I loved it.(less)

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Apr 15, 2009 Murray rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: novel, historical

My 'best read' of 2008 - and in my top ten of all time. The writing is wonderful, capturing something that is very difficult to write about well, namely the beauty of the human voice when singing classical music. Powers does this not once but many times in the book.

I thought I was well informed about race relations in the USA but this book brought it home to me in a way that was unexpected and painfully informative. We see the action of the story through the eyes of a young man who is of mixed...more

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Mar 21, 2013 Hanneke rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Dit boek is een absoluut meesterwerk! Het is één van de beste boeken die ik ooit heb gelezen. Het is eigenlijk onmogelijk om een reactie te geven die recht doet aan dit boek. Ik wil wel proberen een indicatie te geven waar dit boek o.a. over gaat: gezin, familiebanden, trouw, liefde, moederliefde, broederliefde, hoop, segregatie, discriminatie, interpretatie Amerikaanse geschiedenis twintigste eeuw vanuit gezichtspunt van zowel zwarte en blanke mensen, idealen nastreven, onvermogen en onwil tot...more

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Jan 26, 2009 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 15, 2009 Kathy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was unlike any I'd ever read, and has left me unsure of how to discuss it! I picked it up off someone's stoop because I'd heard of the author, then read that it involved a family over generations (something I love), as well as the family's relationship to music (one of my main loves). The main characters are brothers who live for singing classical music. I have a long classical singing background, so I found the pages and pages of description about those very pieces I studied, and the...more

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Sep 05, 2007 Libby Bain rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: alreadyread

This book tackles family, race, music, the sense of belonging, the tumultous issue of race in the middle of the century - and has some of the most beautiful language I've ever read. It's long but it's worth it.

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Nov 13, 2012 Nathalie Gauthier rated it 4 of 5 stars

Un long, long, long voyage au coeur de la musique, du chant, de la famille, de l'intégration, de la compréhension, de l'acceptation.
Une écriture lumineuse, précise. Un vocabulaire époustouflant pour décrire en mots l'effet de la musique, du chant sur l'âme humaine.
Mais encore, Richard Powers, plus que jamais orfèvre de la langue, nous taille un diamant brut; celui des luttes raciales, en une pure merveille.
Avec lui, non seulement on comprend l'exclusion ressentie par ceux qui sont différents, ma...more

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Jul 11, 2009 Nesta rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have mixed feelings about this book. This is the first Richard Powers book I have read. On the one hand, I thought Mr. Powers' use of language, descriptions, characterizations were great. I thought his portrayals of historical events such as the Emmett Till murder were incredibly well done and deeply moving, and I felt the same way about his descriptions of music. I did, however, start feeling a bit bogged down about 3/4 of the way through the book; I felt it could have used a bit of tightenin...more

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Apr 07, 2009 Peggy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is about a racially mixed family growing up during the civil rights era. The parents share a love of music which becomes the foundation of this family of extraordinarily (musically) gifted children. Despite their talents, they face discrimination throughout their lives and struggle to make sense of the world they live in. The book is profound and enlightening and not one I will forget. It was a bit difficult to concentrate in places when the descriptions of the music and its effects ar...more

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Apr 12, 2013 Elalma rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nordamericana

Secondo Pamuk il potere nell'arte del romanzo è basato sulla particolarità di generare negli essere umani sentimenti che possono anche contraddirsi. E' esattamente quello che ho provato io durante la lettura di questo romanzo; la cosa strana è che non trovo neppure un commento adeguato, tante sono le sensazioni contrastanti: lo stupore per la costruzione e l'armonia, l'irritazione per i personaggi che sembrano inseguirsi senza raggiungersi, l'inevitabile uggia di fronte a un romanzo così "massim...more

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Nov 06, 2012 Carola rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Carola by: Will

It would be a mistake to let the length of time it took me to read this book cause you to question my rating of it. This is one of those books that is definitely worth reading, but is too dense to speed right through it. I picked it up during a period when I thought I was going to have plenty of time to myself for reading. When this did not turn out to be the case, I had to return it to the library to keep my fine under the cost of purchasing my own copy.

Richard Powers is an incredibly talented...more

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Oct 29, 2010 Gloria rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was just so good. Moving, fascinating, complex...manages to weave a compelling family story together with an eerily accurate picture of 20th century U.S. history and race relations. I found myself wishing that this book had been written just after Obama's election, so that Inauguration Day could factored into the framing device of huge, defining moments in Washington (would have preferred that to the Million Man March, which closes the novel). The characters felt real enough that I wan...more

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Apr 14, 2011 Lisa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

To me fiction tells a story, and literature creates a world, I'd consider this the latter.

The book was pleasant. My biggest problem with the book was the long, detailed accounts of song. Even when something is central to a story it can be over done. I get it- Jonah is divine when he opens up his mouth. It's other-worldly, it's a journey, and music itself requires lots of words to convey its actual profound simplicity. Or at least, Richard needed a lot of words to do it. It just got repetitive an...more

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Jun 01, 2010 Elaine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, lit, music

I cannot begin to describe the effect this book has had on me. I experienced it as a rush of music. A chamber chorale piece. The keys to which I do not have, because of lack of musical training, but whose effect and emotion even the lowliest of musical consumer can grasp. All you need to read this book is a pair of ears.

What is it about? Viscerally? It's about music. And musical talent. The struggle of two half-black brothers in post Civil Rights America to realize their gifts. They were trained...more I cannot begin to describe the effect this book has had on me. I experienced it as a rush of music. A chamber chorale piece. The keys to which I do not have, because of lack of musical training, but whose effect and emotion even the lowliest of musical consumer can grasp. All you need to read this book is a pair of ears.

What is it about? Viscerally? It's about music. And musical talent. The struggle of two half-black brothers in post Civil Rights America to realize their gifts. They were trained (not by their parents, but by the private music institution they were sent to) to reject jazz and soul, instead to embrace classical music ('white man's music). And here, the book raises its first profound question through music. Who owns what? Where did this concept of musical ownership of a genre comes from and why is it important? Richard Powers shows us through this book's romping 630 densely-packed pages how you cannot begin to ask this question in post Civil Rights America when its singers are black without dragging into the hall with you all the ghosts and antecedents of slavery's inheritance, the whole history of the struggle for equality in America. You cannot breathe out this question about musical ownership without understanding American civil and social history -- from the denunciation of "separate but equal", desegregation, lynchings, school busing, racial riots across cities in America, to Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam.

This is the story of Jonah and Joseph and Ruth. Their parents wanted to raise the them for an imagined 'future'. An ideological utopia. Beyond race. Except possibly, they were born too early. This raises the question of Time.

So, brilliantly, Powers marries Physics with Music. Like marrying a black woman and a white man. Quantum physics. The concept of time. Past, present, future. Einstein's theory of relativity. Time is. Or perhaps time -- that relentless march forward -- doesn't really exist. In a different dimension, time bends back upon itself. The future collides with the past. I felt that these parts of the book were also crucial, but Powers gives us less rungs to pull ourselves up. We get quantum physics through the pater of this family -- a white German Jew who escaped the Holocaust. An outsider to America. A physicist. He jabbers in non sequiturs about time loops and whether the universe has a preferred rotation. Powers eviscerates his impact throughout the book, in an authorial act of chastisement almost for being the important "white" person in the book. His life work too comes across as diminished as a result. But in the book's final resonant ending, the future and the past are collapsed. Time is. What does it mean exactly? I think it means perspective. Quantum physical perspective. We can look at race the same way. Race is. It's not either or. It's not inferior or superior, dominant or subjugated. In an ideal world, that is. In our world, race isn't just race. Race is often binary. Race is often a weapon. It is more often about division and subtraction than it is about addition and multiplicity. Richard Powers' gave me a second little 'treasure' here. In an imperfect world, race should be an 'and'. A series of 'ands'. You and you and you and black and white and yellow and red. We can take all the 'ands'. Let's hope the world is big enough.

This is how the quantum physicist and his black wife, Delia, decided to raise their three kids -- Jonah, Joseph and Ruth. An inexorable racial experiment. An execrable one, according to most of the folks who surrounded them. Richard Powers doesn't try to answer the inevitable question this raises: isn't this good? Isn't this rainbow world what America is striving to be? Melting pot and all that crap? It's just theory. And again. It IS JUST THEORY. In 1970s and 1980s America, if you were black, or even quarter or one-eighth black, the reality was you had to choose. As Ruth, the sister in this story claims, "If you don't choose to be black you are therefore choosing to be white." And the irony of course is that even as late as 1980s, the choice is really illusory. By the shade of your tan, you are defined.

Jonah and Joseph chose the world of classical music. Jonah wanted to believe he could be anything he wanted to be, if talent was the constant, the only criteria. In order to do so, he had to abandon America. Betray himself. That sharp sense of self-betrayal was wonderfully conveyed by Powers, but he also conveyed its irony when Jonah, after years of abandoning any form of racial identity or struggle, is selected as Ebony's Top 50 Leaders of the Future. Again, the concept of time plays with history. The beginning of a story already encompasses its end. I would have been really disappointed if Powers' had turned the side of maudlin and apologetic in conveying all the ills and sufferings and discrimination suffered on account of race by this family. He doesn't shortcut it, he doesn't gloss over it, but he doesn't melodramatise it. Yes, even in New York back in the early 1970s, whites crossed to the other side of the road if they saw a black person walking down the street. Yes, they gave you the evil eye in the subway if you brought along your mixed race kid. Hospital personnel questioned your birthright if your skin wasn't the same shade as the relative you came to see. Violence was perpetuated on the streets. This is the legacy of America's history. How long can you apologize for it? Someday everyone will be brown. It was written when the plantation owners took their slave-women to the back of the barn. It has been beginning before we knew its beginning. Purity of race? Powers would scoff. No such thing. We all have a little white in us. We all have a little black in us. You can't even trace it.

"Every song and dance in this country has gone brown. You think you're a traitor out there? You're nothing but an advance scout. A double agent...Well, call it that too if you like. Name an immortal piece that wouldn't sound better sung by the hired help. That little world you've been scouting is going to be overrun with black, once we show the least bit of interest. Sie werden noch besser sein als im Basketball."

What understanding do you need to survive post Civil Rights America if you were black? What can you claim ownership of? What can you depend on? What will hold you up? What will hang you? It is so important to understand the thread of connections: that the violence of America's urban cities has its face painted long before by the violence of racial hatred and mob history and lynchings. That the drugs and crime waves in inner cities are inextricably linked to the concept of white-abandonment. White flight to suburbs? Well, from plantation owners abandoning their mixed race children, this history is a series of lessons. Not about morality. But about our need to empower and define ourselves, even if it means destroying someone else. That has nothing to do with race. That's just something to call it by. A handy-dandy derivative. We can try very very hard to be good, but our gains are illusory if we do not confront our need to be significant at all cost.

I am blown away by this book. A reviewer very aptly characterises the art of great novelling.It's not just character and story. It is also about ideas. Powers is noted for his hybrid yoking of mutually exclusive ideas. Physics and Music. In Goldberg Variations, DNA/genetics and Music. At the hands of a lesser mind, this could become very messy. Here, it just cracked open a grand chasm between Novels and novels.
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Jan 11, 2010 Zachary rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was my second go at this book. I orginally bought it on recommendation from someone who worked at Maple Street Book Shope in New Orleans. It took me several months to get through it and I'm glad took this one off the "haven't read" shelf.

The first couple hundred pages tend to drag despite the author's exceptional writing. The first third of the book is primarily to develop characters and plot, which is done tremendously well...in hindsight. Unfortunately, the characters and the plot are rat...more

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Feb 27, 2009 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

EDITED

How gorgeous can a thing be? is my first question. Powers has this elegance, this way of caring and knowing about his subjects (I've read a third of his catalog and so far his subjects have been: artificial intelligence, photography, WWI, WWII, every single thing in a hospital, myths, neuroscience, music, physics and probably a few others) that goes so far beyond what I'm used to in fiction it leaves me breathless. The only reference point I really have is when my DFW makes me tear up. I m...more EDITED

How gorgeous can a thing be? is my first question. Powers has this elegance, this way of caring and knowing about his subjects (I've read a third of his catalog and so far his subjects have been: artificial intelligence, photography, WWI, WWII, every single thing in a hospital, myths, neuroscience, music, physics and probably a few others) that goes so far beyond what I'm used to in fiction it leaves me breathless. The only reference point I really have is when my DFW makes me tear up. I mean, lots of books can bring out emotions - short stories normally do it for me. (Well, not normally, but if it happens at all it's normally a short story that does it. I'm not very clear this evening. Sorry.) For any serious reader, words or sentences will occasionally breeze in and rip you open, but for me it's less of a breeze and more of a climate. It just seems like the guy who wrote 'Operation Wandering Soul' HAS to be a doctor, but he's not and that's a terrible tragedy, but then again OWS did more for me than any doctor ever has. Except for allergy shots, maybe. I think a thing you get in retrospect about Richard Powers from reading Richard Powers is that he could have been a doctor. Or a nurse. Or a black woman in the 1950s. Or a fictional version of himself. Or a young farmer going to a dance. How else could he do this? I think that to be these things so much and so tenderly that we forget that he isn't these things at all, and that these things and these people, if they could exist at all, couldn't possibly exist AND have the empathy the fiction possesses, is a feat. I know I get really excited and sloppy with the praise when I'm enjoying a book, but honestly people: why aren't you reading Richard Powers? is my second question. I guess I'll review the book now.

A story of race, time, family and singing, and all combos of the various definitions of those elements. 1939/black nurse-white physicist wed/bone at least three times/raise three mixed children, singing/life ensues.

Goddamn.

.....

Edit: I'm thinking less DFW and more Gurganus, though I have no reasons or evidence. Like that matters. Something you don't get at all from my first review but I do want to stress is that this book is flawed. So flawed. 600+ pages of music metaphors. Sforzando, anyone? Me neither. (Stellar fucking word, though. Sforzando.) And it's sentimental. Not Hallmarky or anything, honest, but still sentimental. Especially the last hundred. The passage of time within the novel never really clicked with me either. I know one of the recurring themes and statements is that 'time doesn't flow, it is', is reinforced by the structure, but it's still missing something. Actually right now I'm thinking it isn't so much the passage of time as it is the passage of time without mention of the sister, Ruth. Or just the lapses in family connections over time within the family. I know everyone can't be part of everything, but I'm not sure Joseph would've missed the things he did. Or Ruth. Or the Philly branch. I don't know. I'll stop with: I think this book is great. I read it a few times.(less)

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Feb 25, 2009 Guy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Je zou het misschien niet zeggen op basis van wat ik de voorbije periode gelezen heb, maar ik hou ook van schrijvers met bagage en ambitie, van schrijvers die op de proppen kunnen én durven komen met fictieve werelden die alles op z’n kop zetten, en dat in provocerende, wervelende of uitputtende taalbraaksels. Thomas Pynchon, William Vollmann, William Gaddis, Josef Skvorecky, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, dat soort kerels (jaja, bijna allemaal Amerikanen, inderdaad). Het zijn boeken die een extra in...more Je zou het misschien niet zeggen op basis van wat ik de voorbije periode gelezen heb, maar ik hou ook van schrijvers met bagage en ambitie, van schrijvers die op de proppen kunnen én durven komen met fictieve werelden die alles op z’n kop zetten, en dat in provocerende, wervelende of uitputtende taalbraaksels. Thomas Pynchon, William Vollmann, William Gaddis, Josef Skvorecky, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, dat soort kerels (jaja, bijna allemaal Amerikanen, inderdaad). Het zijn boeken die een extra inspanning vergen van de lezer en die best geconsumeerd worden in afzondering. Pynchon lezen terwijl Mike ligt aan te pappen met Femke in Thuis? Geen beginnen aan. John Barths postmoderne kermis of Vollmanns geenideehoejehetnoemt contrasteren met afwasgekletter of Radio 1-gelul? Oh no. Ook deze van Richard Powers stelt het doorzettingsvermogen op de proef. Powers staat bekend als een specialist van de ideeënroman, en dat is nu niet anders. Personages zijn vaak niet meer dan speelballen om theorieën en plannen uit te werken, om filosofische discussies op gang te brengen, of de lezer te confronteren met prangende politieke en wetenschappelijke kwesties. In The Time Of Our Singing worden drie werelden gecombineerd: het is een familiekroniek die meteen ook een portret van enkele decennia rassensegregatie wil tonen, maar het is ook een boek over wetenschap/relativiteitstheorie (Einstein draaft ook op als personage), met ellenlange uiteenzettingen over tijdsbegrippen en (dis)continuïteit; én daarenboven is het een boek dat volgestouwd zit met muziek, niet enkel via de carrière van enkele hoofdpersonages (die het maken in de wereld van de klassieke muziek), maar ook via ware gebeurtenissen (het legendarische openluchtconcert in 1936 van zwarte zangeres Marian Anderson), familiale overdracht en een brede geschiedenis van Amerikaanse muziek (ragtime, gospel, blues, jazz, avant-garde). Het is een taai boek met talloze literaire hoogstandjes die het hoofd doen duizelen (werkelijk élke pagina bevat doorwrocht taalgestunt), maar door die immense opeenstapeling van spitsvondigheden, diepzinnigheid en expliciet literaire ambitie zit je uiteindelijk ook opgescheept met een boek dat geen hart meer lijkt te hebben, dat je murw klopt met feiten en data en theorieën en je vervolgens amper bij de les weet te houden. En onverschilligheid is dodelijk. Wat een geweldig boek over rassenrelaties met filosofische inslag had kunnen worden, verzandt zo in een kolos die respect afdwingt, maar waar je onmogelijk van kan houden. (***)
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Jul 21, 2008 Reagan Ramsey rated it 4 of 5 stars

anyone who loves music will appreciate this book. I found it a little difficult to get into at first, but really enjoyed it. it starts with the unlikely love story between a priviledged young black woman (whose father expects her to be a doctor) and a german inventor who meet at the washington monument the night marian anderson sang. they marry and have children, born in the 60s, who constantly struggle for acceptance. one has an incredibly beautiful voice, and would be the darling of any profes...more

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Jun 08, 2012 Ted Burke rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers is an amazing novel, an ambitious generational tale of an American family with a mixed heritage of African-American and German Jew, and covers the travails, triumphs and tragedies of this family.

There are three children, one with a beautiful singing voice who opts for a classical music career, a daughter who becomes involved with the civil rights struggle,and a second brother who, though gifted as well, buries his ambition to bridge the gap between his...more

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About Richard Powers

Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology.

Powers was born in Evanston, Illinois, and his family later moved a few miles south to Lincolnwood, where his father was the principal at a local school. When Powers was 11, his family moved again, this time to Bangkok, Thailand, where his father had accepted a position at International School B...more Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology.

Powers was born in Evanston, Illinois, and his family later moved a few miles south to Lincolnwood, where his father was the principal at a local school. When Powers was 11, his family moved again, this time to Bangkok, Thailand, where his father had accepted a position at International School Bangkok and where he attended until the end of his Freshman year, 1972. In his time outside the United States, Powers developed a love of music, with notable skill in vocal music as well as proficiency in cello, guitar, saxophone, and clarinet. He also became an avid reader, enjoying classics such as The Iliad and The Odyssey, but primarily works of non-fiction.

At age 16, Powers moved back to the U.S., and following graduation in 1975 from DeKalb High School in DeKalb, Illinois enrolled as a physics major at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his first semester, however, he switched his major to English literature, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1978. He continued his education at Illinois, and in 1980 received his MA in literature. He decided not to pursue a PhD in the field because of (a) his aversion to strict specialization, which was also one of the reasons for his earlier transfer from physics to English, and (b) the apparent absence of pleasure in the reading and writing that graduate students and their professors do (see his novel Galatea 2.2).

After receiving his master's degree, he worked in Boston, Massachusetts, as a computer programmer until an encounter with the 1914 photograph "Young Farmers" by August Sander, at the Museum of Fine Arts, inspired him to quit his job and spend the next two years writing his first novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, which was published in 1985. The novel contains three alternating threads. The first is a fictional story about the three young men in the picture during World War I. The second is about Peter Mays, an editor for a technology magazine, who is obsessed with the photograph. The third is the author's own critical and historical musings, mostly concerned with the mechanics of photography and the life of Henry Ford.

Powers then moved to the Netherlands, where he wrote Prisoner's Dilemma, a work that juxtaposes Disney and nuclear warfare, and then his best-known work to date, The Gold Bug Variations, a story that ties together genetics, music, and computer science. Powers has said that he moved to the Netherlands to avoid the publicity and attention generated by his first novel. When asked about his reclusive tendencies, he responded, "All that sort of thing [author publicity] just creates confusion about the nature of the book, deflects attention from what you've done. That's what always seems to happen in this culture; you grab hold of a personality and ignore the work."[cite this quote]

Operation Wandering Soul, a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1993,[1] is about a young doctor dealing with the ugly realities of a pediatrics ward. It was mostly written during a year's stay at the University of Cambridge, and completed when Powers returned to the University of Illinois in 1992 to take up a post as writer-in-residence.

Galatea 2.2 (1995) is a Pygmalion story, about an artificial intelligence experiment gone awry.

Gain (1998) is a look at the history of a 150-year-old chemical company, interwoven with the story of a woman living near one of its plants and succumbing to ovarian cancer. It won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction in 1999.

Plowing the Dark (2000) is another novel with parallel narratives, this time of a Seattle research team building a groundbreaking virtual reality, while at the same time an American teacher is held hostage in Beirut.

The Time of Our Singing (2003) is a story about the musician children of an interracial couple who met at Marian Anderson's legen(less)

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“In that weekly ecstatic keeping of faith and bearing of witness, Delia fell in love with singing. Singing was something that might make sense of a person. Singing might make more sense of life than living had to start with.” — 2 people liked it

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