Gain

I have a complicated relationship with contemporary American fiction. Actually, I flat-out despise most of it. Give me a period novel about Edwardian English gentlemen, Second Empire French coalminers, post-Petrine Russian nobles, or even Depression-era California fruit pickers, and I will be happy, but it seems like I loathe anything set in the modern United States. Why does the life of a person in the recent past seem so full compared to the bland epigones who populate our shelves? Such small characters, such vitiated lives, such small epiphanies. Charles Portis was right: "We're weaker than our fathers, Dupree. We don't even look like them." At the helm of the mightiest empire the world has ever seen, ordinary Americans are the least show more interesting people on Earth, yet the most willing to over-document their sluggish swirls through the stagnant pond that they call home. It's either self-indulgence or a simple absence of anything real to talk about.

Another reason I get annoyed is that a lot of those kinds of novels make "consumerism" a theme, which I find incredibly boring. What is interesting at all about people consuming goods, talking about consuming goods, or thinking about talking about consuming goods? Nothing. How many novels have we been subjected to where authors try to make "points" about consumerism by including all of those things, lulling the reader into an ostentatiously branded coma so that no one catches on to the complete absence of any action or humanity that would interest a normal person with full control of their faculties? What in the name of God are you trying to SAY? Yet somehow Gain takes both of those themes that otherwise bore me and makes them great. It's two interrelated stories: one, the gradual growth amidst all the turbulence of American history of a small colonial-era soap-making factory called Jephthah Clare & Sons into Clare Inc., a Johnson & Johnson-esque corporate behemoth; and two, Laura Bodey's struggle against ovarian cancer in the modern-day town of Lacewood, IL, where Clare has a factory.

As a big economic history nerd, I confess that I found the first story far more interesting for the most part. In long stretches of sometimes-overwrought prose, Powers has concocted probably the most engrossing life story of a fictional corporation you'll ever read (which may not be a crowded field). Parts of it were easily on the level with a real corporate history like Marc Levinson's superb The Great A&P, or a magisterial economic history like William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis, which Powers clearly alludes to in the part set just prior to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Watching the fledgling soap company make its first deals, improve its production process, and slowly expand into other markets to eventually become a titan of industry is honestly enthralling; you can almost see Adam Smith nodding approvingly during the sections on how the various Clare family members improve their firm's ability to truck and barter. There are also plenty of great parts about the chemistry of soap (no really).

Clare is intended to be both a parody of "better living through chemistry"-type companies, particularly as its story moves into the present-day, and also a serious study of how companies become both legal people and also "good corporate citizens", and enmesh themselves in our lives. Think of the sinister Bland corporation in Gravity's Rainbow, or Ambrose Bierce's definition of a corporation as "An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility", or Milton Friedman's infamous arguments in "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" that companies have zero responsibilities to society beyond enhancing shareholder value. While Clare is presented as a fairly benevolent company, taking early Progressive-era steps to bring their workers on board with the company and prevent the labor troubles so typical of the era, it slowly begins to seem like Just Another Company, especially when the narrative gets to the 80s. What starts out as a hagiography subtly becomes a much more nuanced picture.

This is made a little less abstract by Laura's story. She's a divorced mother of 2 kids who's seeing a married guy in her spare time. I expected to be bored stiff by her life, and initially I was, since she spends a lot of the beginning doing mundane ordinary complaining or snarking about consumer products, but Powers eventually won me over by giving her cancer, a time-tested method of increasing reader sympathy dating back at least to Charles Dickens. I've never had or known anyone close to me who had cancer so I don't know how accurate his depiction of it was, but it seemed pretty real and engrossing to me. While a lot of her story was used to present the reader with some Themes (e.g., the growth of Clare is implicitly analogized to the metastasis of cancer cells, the company's efforts to disavow any link between the chemical outputs of the Lacewood factory and the illnesses of the townfolk are contrasted with their equally assiduous efforts to seem like they Care About the Community), the changes in her relationships with her kids and ex-husband came off as genuine and moving. Powers also namedrops Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, a cool Walt Whitman poem.

Overall I liked the book, especially the capitalist cheerleading parts, which I would definitely read more of. While the modern characters occasionally threaten to become as boringly loathsome as their counterparts in a Jonathan Franzen novel, Powers does about the right amount of tearjerking to make them relatable and sympathetic. show less

Richard Power's 'Gain' justaposes the history of a modern multi-national corporation against a small town woman dying of ovarian cancer--a victim of the chemicals that that corporation has been seeding into the local ecology of her town for years.

From it's founding as a soap and candle making manufactory in Boston Massachusetts in the early 19th Century--the Clare corporation is shown as it grows over the next century and a half + through science and also innovation and through the ruthless dog eat dog ideology that pushes it over the top of its competition--swallowing up those competitors which has it adding and diversifying its product lines. As the country grows westward following the newly built rail lines the Clare company will show more set up in small town Lacewoold Illinois centrally located between Chicago, Kansas City and Indianapolis and become immediately the most essential part of that town's economy. Over the years its residents will depend on the Clare corporation for their livelihoods and it will act as not only that town's main benefactor but as a symbol of their small town values of good citizenship.

But there is the darker story that Powers describe following one of Lacewood's residents Laura Bodey who as it happens does not and has not worked for Clare but has been poisoned by some of Clare's pollution which has gotten into the local ecology. She as we find out is not the only victim and there is a class action suit against the company being waged in court and many of the plaintiffs work for Clare. The behemoth company of course is fighting them every step of the way. It points to its good citizenship--the local hospital for instance is a gift to the community from them. Laura's ex-husband Don wants her to join in the lawsuit against the company--sometimes arguing bitterly with her. Their children seem caught somewhere between numbness and incomprehension.

It's an interesting story that Powers tells well. His description of the cancer treatments that Laura recieves--whether Chemo or radiation are particularly gripping and are realistically drawn. The book is worth reading just for them. Overall however there are some lapses. In mostly short passages he chronilogically updates the companies history offsetting it in likewise short passages running side by side with that history he details Laura's life, illness and eventual death connecting both in time at the end. Sadly this does not require a rather large leap of the imagination as a story such as corporate neglect of the enviroment leading to devastating effects on nearby localities have been all to frequent in the last century or so. Not all that many books about it though.

As a writer I think Powers is much too creative to the point where he is incapable of writing a bad book. This may not be his best effort but it is certainly good and has enough intensity and imagination to carry the reader to the end. How that reader may look back at this one afterwards may have as much to do with their personal ideology than anything else. The attack on the corporate structures holding up America's economic well being are understated but they are still there. This novel is as much about people disappearing into a void at the expense of a consumption driven culture bent on kowtowing to wealth, power and ambition on the one end and the obsessive drive of consumers to realize themselves on the other. show less

Richard Powers is probably the smartest writer you're either not reading or never even heard of. In his novel Gain, he takes two incredibly simple, almost paradigmatic, narratives and weaves them together in a fairly straightforward allegory. But this book is not what you're expecting, because at almost all turns, it manages to upend the obvious in increasingly fascinating ways.

The novel opens in Lacewood, IN, a small town that houses major factories for Clare Soap & Chemical. Laura Bodey, a realtor and divorced single mom, lives in Lacewood with her somewhat eccentric family. All seems well until Laura is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. As she progresses through various treatments, Powers interweaves the narrative of Clare's development show more -- from its humble beginnings as a small Boston store run by three brothers to the multinational conglomerate it has become in the present.

The novel's accessibility comes from this relatively simplistic approach: eschewing chapters, Powers instead alternates short passages of ten or fewer pages from each narrative before breaking off to rejoin the other story. Ultimately, there's a predictability to the plot: Clare's "gain" and Laura's "loss" happen on relatively equal though opposite valences, and the concept of excess and overgrowth is unsurprising given the novel's thematic focus on cancer. Nevertheless, Powers navigates each portion of his tale brilliantly, the emotional wear-and-tear of Laura's life contrasting brilliantly with the technical discussions of chemical compounds, medical treatments, and business expansion. The result is a novel that is as erudite as it is affecting.

If there's a weakness to the work, it's that the novel itself is an exhausting mental exercise. Though "only" 355 pages in length, Powers's style is so dense that he encapsulates large concepts into brief thoughts and paragraphs, resulting in a work that reads incredibly slowly. As the inevitability of the story sinks in, Powers consequently overwhelms the reader with detail and observation, painstakingly pointing out each portion of the plot's progress. It's fascinating if taxing on the brain, and almost assuredly will result in the reader taking frequent breaks, no matter how engrossed he may be in the story.

Despite its challenges, Gain nevertheless proves to be an unquestionably valuable read. It is challenging, thought-provoking, and inspiring in ways that few novels in recent memory have been. It offers no easy answers, but revels in giving the reader everything he needs to form whichever solutions he'd like. If you've never heard of Richard Powers, or never considering reading Gain, it's undoubtedly your loss. show less

Gain, Richard Power’s amazing sixth novel (originally published in 1998), takes one of the most difficult issues of our time and humanizes it. The issue is corporate culpability. We all know that “better living through chemistry” has its price and its consequences, but who is to pay?

Not Clare, the transnational corporation whose history is charted across three generations in this saga of a novel. The company makes soap — a cleaning product that offers the homemaker so much to gain. And the company, of course, has gained, prodigiously, over the years: it has profited immensely.

Clare manufacturers its products in Lacewood, Illinois, where Laura Bodey is an estate agent. Laura has ovarian cancer. Her story – of her illness and show more how, as she disintegrates, her family reunites around her – is intertwined with the story of Clare International.

Long before the novel makes the facts plain, we’ve already drawn connections: our chemistry is killing us. The brilliant Powers draws parallels and cycles in abundance but, to his credit, he never once hits over the head with any moralizing message.

Perennial plants flower and die, and so do people and industries, he implies. It’s the way of the world. We can change things, perhaps and, after reading Gain, we may well join one crusade or another, seeking justice for victims of industries focused on nothing but gain or, contrarily, seeking to eliminate the tort system that is, at this point, the victim’s only source of recompense and punishment for the polluters who make us sick. Either way, or no way, that’ll be what you got out of the novel, not what’s there.Gain is a history of a cancer, then, but also a history of the American corporation — a frightening parallel, but also apropos. Clare starts out as just a few people but, because they are incorporated, they have all the rights of individuals but none of the responsibilities. In our lust to profit and consume in an environment unfettered by regulation or consequence, we too quickly forget this strange contortion of the Fourteenth Amendment. Written to declare the personhood of those held as slaves and thus set them free, it quickly came to be wielded as a blunt instrument in the creation of corporate personhood.

Corporations attained the rights of individuals (without the responsibilities – that is, they cannot easily and directly be held responsible of their actions) through a reading, an interpretation of the word “person,” in the U.S. constitution. So Powers is riffing on a cycle of healing and sickness: in the hands of a great writer, reading is curative. In the hands of lawyers, though, interpretative powers can be perverted and make us sick.

Gain is, in short, a brilliant, exhilarating novel that, like all Powers’ novels, deserves and rewards our closest reading. Richard Powers is without a doubt one of the two or three best living writers working in the English language. With Gain, he flexed his considerable muscles, letting us see ourselves through both the wide-angle lens of history and the microscope of the cancerous body. Gain is a major achievement, a novel of conscience for a largely unconscious culture. And he didn’t stop with Gain. Soon after came novels about terrorism, the environment, race and, most recently, a return to science in a novel about the creativity of genetic engineering (and the engineering of creative writing).

If you care about ideas and their power in the world, you should be reading Richard Powers.

Originally published on Curled Up With A Good Book at www.curledup.com. © Brian Charles Clark, 2010 show less

Laura Bodey is a 42-year old divorced mother of two teenaged kids who is struggling to make ends meet as a real estate broker in the small Midwestern town of Lacewood, Illinois. She manages just fine most days, but when she contracts ovarian cancer everything in her life starts to spiral downward in a hurry. Clare International Inc. is a major multinational corporation that is headquartered in Boston but has located its agricultural chemicals division in Lacewood. The firm has been a model citizen for as long as anyone can remember, but recently there have been reports that Clare is responsible for the spread of toxic pollutants that may have contaminated the land and water around town. Is the company responsible for Laura’s illness show more and, if so, what should be the remedy?

In Gain, Richard Powers continues his on-going exploration of the trends and events that have shaped modern American society. In fact, in the tradition of the sort of promotional campaign used by companies like Clare, the author gives the reader a two-for-one deal in story-telling: the rise of a major corporation from its origins as a family soap-maker in the early 1800s to its modern-day status as a major industrial conglomerate is intertwined with Laura’s heart-breaking personal tale of physical decline. In an interesting literary device, the novel is structured without chapter divisions by alternating between the two story lines—each more or less linear in its own time frame—until they converge in the present day.

I enjoyed reading Gain and I learned a lot in the process, just as I have with every one of Powers’ other novels. Surprisingly, though, Laura’s sad plight did not quite resonate with me, perhaps because there was not enough time spent developing her background before she became ill. On the other hand, the way that the author animated the corporation as a fully realized character in its own right was nothing short of amazing, particularly for all the research and imagination it required to fit the details of Clare’s fictional existence into the historical circumstances that actually occurred over the 170-year arc of the tale. For the most part, this is an even-handed and realistic portrait of what is both good and potentially bad about the corporate form of business organization and that alone should make this novel well worth reading. show less

Though I applauded Powers’ 2006 National Book Award win for Echo Maker, this is still my favorite novel by one of my favorite authors. Corporations have long been treated like individuals under the law and in this book, Powers has done the literary equivalent--a corporation as a living breathing character. One plot line follows the corporation from its humble beginnings in 19th century Boston to a multinational conglomerate, and the other plot line is the painful story of Laura Bodey who is facing a terminal illness. You know how the stories will collide from the beginning, but you enjoy every second of the journey. The history of this fictional corporation is the history of this country, from cute jingles to advertising savvy, from show more family ownership to shareholder control, and the consequence of the shifts of American capitalism are written horribly on Laura’s life. show less

As a reader, I'm sometimes not sure if "Gain" is reporting or fictionalizing history. So much of the narrative appears to recount actual history--the influence of specific corporations, for example--or a summation of technological processes--like the explication of what's involved in developing a disposable camera. On the other hand, the characters are fictional and there is a plot and there is action and there are all the other elements we associate with "story." The approach does remind me of Michener, though--thoroughly researched realism. I am fascinated by "Gain's" accumulation of detail. I've never had ovarian cancer (or any other kind of cancer, for that matter), but, having read this novel, it seems that I understand, or at show more least am sensitive to, what people go through in chemotherapy. show less