The Gold Bug Variations

Written by Richard Powers

Narrated by Rachel Botchan and Andrew Garman

A national bestseller, voted by Time as the #1 novel of 1991, selected as one of the "Best Books of 1991" by Publishers Weekly, and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award--a magnificent story that probes the meaning of love, science, music, and art, by the brilliant author of Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance. Stuart Ressler, an up-and-coming molecular biologist, finds his career sidetracked by the turmoil of the sixties, and a young couple of the 1980s tries to discover why the biologist abandoned his scientific pursuits. The Gold Bug Variations is a double love story of two young couples separated by a distance of twenty-five years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9781980016700

Reviews for The Gold Bug Variations

[Roger Day · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The portraiture of the three main characters and quite a few supporting ones blazers with vivid color.
The plot weaves elegantly through some of the most compelling topics I know, the Goldberg Variations, the adventure of decoding the genetic code, the computer and software revolution.
The writing is deeply rich.. Often delightfully. But Sometimes too rich. Judicious removal of a third of the sentences would make an improvement. (Richard Powers ' masterpieces The Overstory and Orfeo, also rich in the writing, did not warrant this remark.)
One of the narrators slipped in numerous amusing mispronunciations. I loved repeatedly hearing John Von Neumann rendered as a cousin of Alfred E Neuman.

[jonfaith · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Gold Bug Variations wrecked the world of one jon faith a long time ago. My ecstatic reply generated ripples of both interest and disquiet . I loved the three characters, loved the Midwestern backdrop, the nerdy affinity that adults could maintain with straight faces. No, there wasn't much beer drinking, but the rich foam of ideas was a fair compensation. What followed was pure reverence. Then I had a girlfriend who found the novel to be shit. It should be noted that she was an actual scientist. I argued but in name only. I was defeated. My spirits sank. I now fear any return to this one.

[erickibler · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The idea behind this book, that a love story could be woven around dissertations on genetic mapping and music, turns out to be less appealing than you'd think. (That is, you might think it appealing if you had a more-than-average intellectual bent). But the result is neither fish nor fowl.

I can see why those who praise it like it. It's ambitious as hell, and sometimes the metaphors and wordplay are very apt and clever. But the book assumes that you either are a novice when it comes to the more technical material covered, and that you'll learn more about these things, or that you already have some expertise, and you're going to enjoy being lectured to. Neither is the case. The more you know, the more you're going to find the pages-long expositions tedious. And the less you know, the more you'll be lost in a less-than-clear literary muddle of fact, metaphor, and speculation. If you're in the latter camp, and you want to learn more about these subjects, I recommend the "...For Dummies" books.

However, I've heard Powers criticized for his characters being cyphers. I think that's a bit unfair. For me, the book flew along nicely when it dealt with the non-technical aspects of the lives of Jan, Todd, and Dr. Ressler, none of whom is in any way average, and none is indistinguishable from another, personality-wise.

I enjoyed the Q and A part of Jan's job. Trivia lovers will find a lot to enjoy in those segments. And it must be said that, when you finally get to them, there are a couple of very sexy set-pieces, although this book is by no means a bodice-ripper. This book was a literary sensation when it came out in 1992. I appreciate the ambition behind it, but its notoriety, I can't help but think, was only because there was little going on that year.

[debnance_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The title is a warning to the casual reader:"If you don't get the title, or if you don't want to get the title,beware."In The Gold Bug Variations, author Richard Powers perspicaciously composes a novel with themes of puzzles (Edgar Allen Poe's The Gold Bug), music structure (Bach's Goldberg Variations), romance (two love stories that intertwine across twenty-five years), computer technology, art history, and DNA genetic codes. I remember reading this book when it was first published, maybe twenty years ago, feeling like I'd plunged into the deepest and most bewitching lake on earth, hopelessly unable to surface for 638 pages, desperate for a breath of air, powerless to return to the top of the water, smitten with the sparkle of the words all around me, bewildered by the enigmatic story, in awe of the intelligence of the writing.

[jddunn_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It’s about the underlying similarities between, and conflicts inherent in, music and the genetic code and programming and language and beauty and meaning and relationships and patterns; the twin quests of discovery that are science and love… and it just blows me away. I don’t know how he can write so beautifully about such dense subject matter, and relate it so well back to the basic things that make us all human, but he can.

[browner56 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Just when you start to think you are smart, a guy like Richard Powers comes along and reveals how little you know about so many things. The raw candle-power of this man is stunning, but what I like best about all of his books is the genuine compassion he has for his characters. This novel is basically a love story set against the backdrop of the quest to solve the mysteries of genetic coding. Music also plays a prominent theme; in fact, the blueprint of the novel itself is patterned after the structure of Bach’s Goldberg Variations for piano. Reading this one is unlikely to be a relaxing experience--in fact, it might feel a whole lot more like investment than consumption--but it is well worth the effort.

[p_s_patrick · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The authors obvious passion for, and inspiration derived from the subjects involved here: genetics, Bach, code, libraries, and information, make possible the creation of what is without doubt a creative and intellectually stimulating book. They also go no small distance in blinding him to the cloying verbosity and dragging tedium manifest in several of the pages.I can't imagine that many people would get this book. The target audience would presumably be (molecular) biologists, or at least scientists of some description, with an interest in classical music, possibly art, and a reasonable knowledge of computer programming, not a particularly wide demographic. Without fitting this description the reader would struggle to understand half the book, the jokes, or to be interested enough in the themes that run throughout to force themselves to finish reading it. This, alongside the abundance of literary and scientific references that would challenge any well read reader to pick up on, puts the book in the top bracket for obscurity and abstrusion. I would say that I fit into this target audience fairly well, I have just finished a degree in cell biology, I listen to classical music, and have an A level in computer science, surely I am one of the few people who this book was written for. Yes, the book is clever, and yes it is one of a kind, and for the majority of the text the authors fluidity of consciousness shines through, but he doesn't make the blatant display of erudition that he attempts seem natural or subtle as easily as the intellectual benchmark Eco can. In fact I feel rather guilty about criticising the author for trying to be intellectual, as he genuinely doesn't do a bad job of it, and it is no fault of his own that he is writing for a niche, the world does deserve more books like this. He really does write some genuinely aesthetically and technically brilliant passages, but just somehow seems unable to realise that there are some absolute rotters in there too. It seems hit and miss, trial and error, and I can't understand how the same man who is capable of writing so brilliantly and so badly is capable of doing it within the same book. The quality parts are in the majority though, so it is easy enough to forgive the author, as he does provide something so startlingly complete in this book that it is worth reading through the bad bits. If it wasn't for the fact that the parallels between DNA and genes and the music of Bach had been picked up on before (in Hofstadter's GEB), then this book would have been genius.Something, apart from everything else, that isn't immediately apparent is that the book loosely follows the structure of the alluded to Goldberg Variations, having thirty chapters, each of which is meant to mirror the themes of their counterparts in Bach's composition, for example the sarabandes are supposed to correspond to more energetic chapters, and the slower variations are represented by the more introspective chapters. In fact the parrallels to baroque music in general seem to run far more deeply than the author probably intended, the over-decoration, flamboyant exaggeration, drama, intricacy, and emotional hyperbole, everything that makes baroque good, along with everything that puts people off it, is present in huge quantities in this book. But what leaves this novel being memorable for the right reasons, on the whole, is that it does wrap up rather nicely in the end, ending in a satisfying tonic key. Almost nicely enough to leave the impression that this was a fantastic book.

[notechaser · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My favorite book by him so far; deserving that overused word, masterpiece. What a brilliant tapestry of genetics, music, library reserach--and it's a love story too. Great punning title as well.

[marck_18 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Let this be a lesson to a father of two: Never take on novels that are described on the back cover as "one of the most ambitious novels of our time!" unless one can be fully committed to the experience. Powers' achievement here is mind-boggling, but I was not in the best circumstances to fully engross myself in the experience. One of the key climaxes came and went, and I'm STILL not sure what happened ... only because I was not cognizant enough to follow. Still, I slogged on, promising myself at least 10 pages a day, and keeping a list of the glorious new words that Powers introduced to me in his prose. And I have to say, the climactic "hack" at the end of the book was worth the whole trip for this quasi-geek -- it was simultaneously geeky and heart-warming. Highly recommended to anyone who can put themselves up to the task!

[nbmars · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"What could be simpler?" scientist Stuart Ressler asks. The four bases making up DNA, the four bases making up Bach's Goldberg Variations: the phenotypes revealed by these bases in the spiraling helices of life and music comprise the double-stranded metaphor that drives the four characters in this Joycean epic. The stories of Jan O'Deigh and Franklin Todd, and Stuart Ressler and Jeannette Koss parallel one another as all four struggle to bridge the gap between signified and signifier. How does life start from only four notes to end up as butterflies, flowers, birds, humans, emotions? The exploration of this mystery by the characters affords Powers the opportunity to go off on many riffs about molecular biology, evolution, physics, and emergence. In working out the relationship between noise and sound, the characters discover the serendipitous correspondence of The Goldberg Variations, with its dazzling virtuousity moving from four notes to sixty-four and back, to the elements of life itself. "Ultimately," Powers writes, "the Goldbergs are about the paradox of variation, preserved divergence, the transition effect inherent in terraced unfolding, the change in nature attendant upon a change in degree. ... how variation might ultimately free itself from the instruction that underwrites it, sets it in motion, but nowhere anticipates what might come from experience's trial run." This book is an intellectual challenge that can impart joy from its uses of language as well as its uses of science . A snowstorm produces "spectral trees glazed with lapidary." A pianist shows "less than gershwinning ways." Evolutionary selection can be summarized as "weed it and reap." Thanksgiving offers "a plenitude of pies, pride of drop-in guests, brace of hams, corsage of table settings, parliament of mashed potatoes, supplication of network sports, clatch of conversation, covey of vacation days, school of parades, volume of preserves, brood of read-alouds, keepsake of snapshots: everything running at glut, at glorious surplus." Like the helix itself: poetic, recursive, emergent, capable of inspiring wonder. Highly recommended!(JAF)