Generosity

An Enhancement

De: Richard Powers

Narrado por: David Pittu

The National Book Award-winning author of The Echo Maker proves yet again that "no writer of our time dreams on a grander scale or more knowingly captures the zeitgeist." (The Dallas Morning News).

What will happen to life when science identifies the genetic basis of happiness? Who will own the patent? Do we dare revise our own temperaments? Funny, fast, and magical, Generosity celebrates both science and the freed imagination. In his most exuberant book yet, Richard Powers asks us to consider the big questions facing humankind as we begin to rewrite our own existence.

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Narrator david Pittou's easy, thoughtful voice is a pleasure to listen to.” —SoundCommentary.com

“Part of this production's power is the performance by Pittou, slightly sardonic as Stone, French-accented as Thassa, comfortingly bland as Candace. It's a reading that doesn't get in the way of the prose, but offers its own enhancements to Powers' good writing.” —Providence Journal Bulletin

Ah Russell

I’m not used to meta-fiction, but this one worked fine since it was an author telling the story of an author. It was a bit dense in places, and I found myself losing interest when it got very technical into the genome area. My biggest criticism is the narrator’s voice for Tasha. She sounded like an old woman. Every other character in the novel sounded younger, but she was the youngest by far, so that made it even harder to relate to one of the main aspects of the book, her lightness of being.

Neuroscience

Richard Power's strength is in his ability to inform readers about subjects from genetics, to relationships, to education. In this volume he approaches neuroscience. In particular, he tells the story of one Thassadit Amzwar who is possessed by such happiness that it attracts attention from Russell Stone her creative writing instructor. This is another of his idea-driven novels and it readily informs and invigorates. My problem (with each of his good books) is that the characters really never come to life. They are the props around which the ideas are presented.

Otherwise, the writing is very good and the narration of David Pittu exceptional. If you are interested in the topic at hand - this is a keeper. Powers is the sugar that makes the medicine go down very well.

Thought provoking

Generosity is one of those novels that becomes more interesting the longer you sit with it. On the surface, it’s about the search for a possible “happiness gene,” but Richard Powers is far less interested in answering scientific questions than in exploring what those discoveries would mean for society.
The novel’s central idea, to me, is that humans don’t really want happiness—we want to be happier than we were before. Happiness is almost always measured by comparison, and if someone were truly the happiest person alive, the only direction left on that graph would be down. Thassa’s extraordinary optimism makes her the subject of scientific curiosity, media obsession, and corporate interest, and those very forces slowly erode the thing that made her remarkable in the first place.
Russell and Thassa’s relationship was my favorite part of the novel. Russell spends much of the story trying to protect her from becoming like him, but what makes their relationship compelling is that she never really needs saving from herself. She needs saving from everyone else’s need to explain, own, or profit from her happiness.
One of the novel’s greatest strengths is that it refuses easy answers. Powers treats the science with respect while focusing on its philosophical implications. Rather than arguing that nature or nurture is more important, the story suggests they’re too intertwined to separate. Genetics may create possibilities, but experience ultimately determines how those possibilities are expressed. Thassa’s upbringing contributes just as much to her happiness as any biological predisposition, and watching that happiness fade under public scrutiny reinforces that idea.
I also appreciated the novel’s critique of capitalism and intellectual property. If something as valuable as a happiness gene were ever discovered, the book suggests it would likely become another commodity—a luxury available to those who could afford it rather than a universal benefit. It’s a sobering but believable perspective.
Perhaps my favorite takeaway is that while life can be reduced to data points, those numbers can never tell the whole story. Human experience can’t be separated from the equation. Science can explain mechanisms, but it can’t fully explain meaning.
Generosity is dense, thoughtful, and often philosophical. It asks difficult questions without pretending to have definitive answers, and that’s exactly what makes it so rewarding. Even after finishing it, I found myself continuing to think about its ideas, which is probably the highest compliment I can give a novel.

I cried

This book is very long and there are quite a few long dull spaces. But, the story is very good.

Again I found another story narrated by David Pittu. He gets accents so perfect when creating characters. There is no one better.

An enhancement

No answers. Just long looks.
Still, what is creative nonfiction?
Ingredients
Essences of life well mixed.