Galatea 2.2

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As I was reviewing my 2010 reading over the weekend, I came across this novel by Richard Powers that I read a few years ago. I had completely forgotten about it, but the little excerpts I had copied made me want to read it again. Here's my description:


Galatea 2.2, by Richard Powers (1995)


Good novel about a novelist (named Rick Powers; there’s a lot of autobiography here—he mentions writing the real Powers’s Gold Bug Variations) who breaks up with his longtime girlfriend and is set adrift with a fellowship at the vaguely named Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences at his old alma mater. There he becomes entangled with a difficult AI (artificial intelligence) expert named Philip Lentz, who sets him to work on a Turing Test project—to help prepare a computer to take the English lit doctoral comps against a real human.

Powers is a good writer with interesting language, and his novel is a lot about communication: how reading the core English texts to the various versions of the computer (the last one called Helen; none are called Galatea 2.2, so I’m sure I’m missing some literary reference there) replaces how he used to read aloud to his girlfriend C., how the ultimate point of the experiment ends up being that Lentz has needed him for company and human companionship (Lentz’s wife Audrey has Alzheimer’s), etc.

Some nice writing: He speaks of listening to a piece of music: “We reached that ineffable clarinet, assembling, atop the reconciled chamber orchestra, the peace that the world cannot give.” About an Indian coworker: “He greeted me always, the epitome of cheer, with some gnomic well-wish that half the time I could not make out. When I could, I often doubted what I came up with. ‘Your luck, God willing, continues to be what you imagine it?’ Or, ‘I don’t even have you to ask about how the day isn’t going!’ By his own testimony, he was a native speaker. Either English had gone as plural as advertised, or, along with many other fellow Centerites, Dr. Gupta had replaced the standard version with a professional upgrade.” (This passage shows in particular how Powers enriches his literary language with computer language—which you wouldn’t think would be generally enriching but is with him.) The protagonist sends an unbelievably long novel to his publisher, expecting them to reject it for its length: “At best, they’d issue a desperate request that I change trajectories, free the skinny book hiding inside this sumo.” At the end he tells Helen “that after all this evolutionary time, we still woke up confused, knowing everything about our presence here except why.” And he mentions how humans “do the deity thing.”

It’s nice to see him tackle these subjects and also to see his generous attitude toward women; you feel through his writing his sympathy and fellow-feeling, rather than treating them like Others, an engima to be dealt with or a fantasy to be indulged. He wants to protect C., but their relationship falls apart because his desire to protect reveals a deep-set lack of confidence in her—that she needs protecting and bolstering. And that is damaging to her, although he means the best.
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