Richard Powers, Prisoner’s Dilemma

Martin Kich (Wright State University)

Ed. by Sofia Ahlberg, Uppsala University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1988

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

can be fairly described as an attempt to recover some historical understanding of cultural artifacts now largely isolated from their contexts and of familial connections that remain, at best, very tenuously recoverable, then Powers’ second novel,

Prisoners’ Dilemma

, might be described as a historian’s attempt to escape history through alternating immersions in facts and fantasies that define his familial relationships. The main character is Eddie Hobson, a history teacher in his early fifties who has moved from one teaching position to another without markedly advancing his career. The degree to which his peripatetic career has been a manifestation of his own dissatisfactions or of his employers’ dissatisfactions is never made entirely…

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1850 words

Citation: Kich, Martin. "Prisoner’s Dilemma". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 March 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=21625, accessed 28 April 2024.]

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