I loved this book so much I read it twice in succession. As is typical with Powers, there’s a lot going on here. His usual themes, surrounding technology, art, and the natural world, are in full form, coming together in a multi-threaded and highly rewarding character driven plot. This story is especially current and relevant to me as he grapples with things that cut deep in my own life.
Like Powers, I have a background in technology. I’ve been programming computers since I was 10 years old. And most of that long life has been a sort of love affair with what Steve Jobs called “a bicycle for the mind” — the ability for computers to empower and extend human potential across a broad spectrum of fields. And it is only more recently, in the last ten years or so, that I’ve begun to doubt that vision. Or at least grapple with very difficult questions around how that kind of power can be used, at the same time, to undermine human expression. I could go on all day about this but I’ll just say Playground captures this intricate and almost inscrutable question through story and narrative device in a way I found deeply moving, concerning, and honest.
Spoilers ahead…
In Playground, Powers takes the idea of the unreliable narrator to some kind of meta-level. The narrator is entirely reliable, and while he is clear about what he is doing from the start, it is a little hard to grasp until late in the story. I was gobsmacked by this. We have in this fictional universe both fictional-fact and fictional-fiction, each serving a purpose, and each calling into question the idea of story as a means of understanding the world. We know the story we just read is “untrue” even within its own fictional universe, and we’re not quite sure how to tease out the factual. We’re not even sure if the meta-fiction is a net good or a net bad. Rafi planted an idea in our minds in the early chapters and it is only in the end, long after he is dead—long after we have supposed he is not—that we realize we have become unwitting participants in the game he imagined. We have been manipulated (or graced?) by Keane’s deceit (or gift?). It is a remarkable work of storytelling, and one that only really works in the current moment of early “AI”. An absolutely genius approach to dealing with “large language models” narratively.
In some sense what Powers is doing here is probing his own role as a storyteller—a person who tells big Truths through little lies and hopes along the way for somethig like purpose. And he’s probing his role as a collator, refiner, and mixer of other people’s ideas and discoveries. In a very real and rewarding way, the acknowledgments after the “conclusion” of the novel become a part of the novel itself, and I think they were positioned this way intentionally.
Playground is a true work of genius. I’m reminded of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral, perhaps the last book I read that genuinely shocked me structurally.
Richard Powers proves himself once again a master craftsman and an absolute gift to the literary universe.
When I was around 14 years old, casting around for new things to listen to, I found The Nylons 1984 album Seamless in my dad’s record collection. I loved the whole album right away, but I especially loved The Lion Sleeps Tonight. The strange tightrope it walks between haunting and soothing, the melodic howling, the fairytale feel, the plotlessness, the seemingly-nonsense chorus—these things really drew me in. I can’t say for sure that this was the first time I’d heard the song, but it was certainly the first time I’d listened to it. At the time I was so curious how this song came to be, what it was about.
I don’t think younger people can ever really understand this, but of course in the late 80s, we could not satisfy our curiosity about things with a tap on a screen. Tumbling down the Wikipedia hole would not become a thing for 20 more years. So while I was enthralled by this song, I didn’t really know anything about it. I suppose I could have scoured our little hometown library for something, but even if the right book had been housed there (doubtful)—the idea never crossed my mind. So, like so many brief passions throughout my life, I moved on without satisfying my curiosity.
We forget all about these things and then, years later, something triggers the memory, and we realize we now have the world’s knowledge at our fingertips. In this case it was a brief mention of the song in the book But Will You Love Me Tomorrow. I probably thought The Lion Sleeps Tonight was a folksong with a foggy history, attributed to the prolific Unknown. It turns out the origin is well known, and fascinating. It’s a story of transnational folk styles, cultural appropriation, genre-bending, and musical exchange and evolution.
Best of all, since the evolution of the song tracks with modern recorded music history, we can literally hear as the song we know develops over 30 years, passing voice to voice, right before our ears.
1939. The song originates with a South African musician named Solomon Linda. His 1939 improvisational recording Mbube (Zulu for “Lion”) was a hit in South Africa. While this is not The Lion Sleeps Tonight that we know, it is clearly in there. This is apparent throughout, but especially at around the 2:20 mark when we hear the clear germ of the famous melody in the improvised high part. LISTEN.
1949. Pete Seeger (something of a hero of mine) heard the song, and, just like I did, mis-attributed it as traditional. He riffed on it, as he does so well, giving us a 1949 American folk version clearly inspired by the original, and inching closer to the modern classic. He called his version Wimoweh and performed it with The Weavers. In this version we hear the main melody line more clearly, and repeated. And the nonsense phrase “A-wemoweh” is here. But we still have no sleeping lions. LISTEN.
(It’s an aside, but such a great example of the kind of person Pete Seeger was: when he learned the original was not a traditional song, but was actually an original composition, he sent Solomon Linda a check for $1,000 and directed all his future royalties to Linda. Alas, the rest of the American music industry was not so decent, and Linda’s estate didn’t receive its due until 2006, after suing Disney and the American music publisher who held the rights on paper.)
1961. The Lion Sleeps Tonight achieved its modern form in the 1961 recording by The Tokens, which hit #1 on the charts. This version has borrowed the “wimoweh” line and the melody, with added lyrics we all know by American songwriter George David Weiss. LISTEN.
From there it was covered many times, including my beloved version by The Nylons. The Wikipedia article on the song lists around 80 versions through the years, with everybody from Ladysmith Black Mambazo to Chet Atkins and Yma Sumac to ‘N Sync and R.E.M. What a satisfying answer to my childhood curiosity.
I’ve been in a bit of a groove lately reading about badly behaved women. I have to admit I didn’t really know much about Madonna the person. I grew up in the 80s and 90s so of course I knew her music. Like a Virgin was released when I was nine years old, and I know I was familiar with Madonna at least by then. I know this because one day I asked my big sister, “What’s a virgin?” She scowled and asked me who told me that word. And when I said, “you know, like in that song” she softened, and came up with what, in hindsight, was a great answer to a nine-year-old. “Oh. A virgin is someone who’s new to something.” It would only be a few more years before I sorted out new to what exactly.
One thing I enjoy about biographies is that you almost can’t read one without sort of falling in love with the subject. This connects to something very deep and beautiful about humanity, this idea that we can’t help but love someone more the more we come to understand them. If only we didn’t need to study them first. If only we could have more faith in one another. More trust of one another. Anselm of Canterbury famously said credo ut intelligam, “I believe so that I may understand.” If only. But I’ve lost track of what I’m talking about. Madonna.
I grew up in Indiana to mostly liberal parents in the heart of conservative America, and in the thick of the AIDS crisis. Which is to say Madonna was, for the most part, a villain in the cultural mind of my surroundings. And I’m a bit of a prude, so her provocateur nature made me uncomfortable in my younger years. Only later in life did I come to admire her. I remember believing her film, Truth or Dare was some mysterious and dangerous thing. I watched it last week, and it is honestly tame, and very good. (I’m told at the time what made it so provocative was a quick scene of two men kissing, which was something most Americans had never seen in any form, let alone in a movie. How times change.)
At any rate, I’ve gained a new appreciation not just for the woman, but for her unapologetic provocation, and for her music too. She was determined, unrelenting, and challenging, and the world needed her. And to my taste, her most recent album, Madame X is a mad work of genius. I can’t get enough of it. And two weeks ago I’d somehow never heard any of it.
Norman Mailer called Madonna, “a pint-sized [Italian woman] with a heart built out of the cast-iron balls of a hundred peasant ancestors.” He also called her “the greatest living female artist” (and he meant “artist” not “music artist”). I came away from this thorough biography feeling like he may be on to something. I wasn’t clued into her music enough to realize how inventive she is. As I read, I listened. It really is remarkable how thoroughly she has re-invented her music time and again. And I think this is key to her longevity (that and a steadfast refusal to go gently…) A media big-whig put it this way:
She’s incapable of doing anything that’s not interesting. If she’s in a photograph, it’s interesting. If she sings a song, it’s interesting. Her videos—all interesting.
Barry Diller, CEO of Fox
Most biographies end with a death, and in a sense this one did too. As her age finally catches up with her, it becomes clear she’ll never really perform again, at least not in the way that made her so special. It left me feeling a little sad. But more than anything, reading about her life made me respect her.
I’ll leave you with this excerpt from Extreme Occident on the album Madam X. It says it better than I can.
