Generosity: an Enhancement

278 Pages·2009·1.27 MB·English

by  Richard Powers

ALSO BY RICHARD POWERS

Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance
Prisoner’s Dilemma
The Gold Bug Variations
Operation Wandering Soul
Galatea 2.2
Gain
Plowing the Dark
The Time of Our Singing
The Echo Maker
GENEROSITY
GENEROSITY
AN ENHANCEMENT
RICHARD POWERS
A FRANCES COADY BOOK
FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX NEW YORK
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Powers All rights reserved
Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2009

A portion of this work was published in slightly different form in A Public
Space.

What “the scientist says,” on page 295, is a paraphrase from Antonio Damasio’s
Looking for Spinoza.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following
previously published material: Excerpts from Exuberance, by Kay Redfield
Jamison, and A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, by Julian Barnes, both
courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf / Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Powers, Richard, 1957–
Generosity : an enhancement / Richard Powers.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-374-16114-9 (alk. paper) 1. College teachers—Fiction. 2.
Genetics—Research—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.O92 G46 2009
813'.54—dc22
2008054249

Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott www.fsgbooks.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For JTK—

La vraie générosité envers l’avenir consiste à tout donner au présent.
—Camus
PART ONE
OF STRANGE LANDS AND PEOPLE

Exuberance carries us places we would not otherwise go—across the savannah, to the moon, into the
imagination—and if we ourselves are not so exuberant we will, caught up by the contagious joy of
those who are, be inclined collectively to go yonder.

—Kay Redfield Jamison, Exuberance