The Gold Bug Variations (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Richard Powers
- First Published: 1991
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The 1950’s to the 1970’s
- Setting: Urbana, Illinois, and Brooklyn, New York
- Principal Characters: Jan O’Deigh, Franklin Todd, Stuart Ressler, Jeanette Koss
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, Love or romance, Twentieth century, Science or scientists, Libraries or librarians, Women, Mysteries, Metaphysics, Mysticism, Men, Genetics, Life, philosophy of, Information science or systems, Computers, DNA
- Locales: Brooklyn, NY, Illinois
The Novel
The title of The Gold Bug Variations provides from the outset a clue to two influences to which readers might be sensitive in reading the novel. The title suggests both Johann Sebastian Bach’s intricate musical composition The Goldberg Variations and Edgar Allan Poe’s cryptic short story “The Gold Bug.”
As in his earlier and subsequent novels, Powers is, in The Gold Bug Variations, fundamentally concerned with structure and with complex ideas that shed light on the basic underpinnings of the postmodern era. Just as Bach offered...
[The entire page is 2072 words long]
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