Bewilderment (2021)
Richard Powers (1957)
278 pages
Some seventy years ago, during lunch with several fellow physicists, Enrico Fermi suddenly posed a question that has become known as the Fermi Paradox: if intelligent life is at all common in the universe, then “where is everybody?” One hypothesis, among many that have been put forward, is that perhaps intelligent life inevitably self-destructs – that technological progress overwhelms the ability of its creators to cope with its implications.
The story opens as a father, Theo, and his nine-year-old son, Robin, enjoy a camping trip in the Smoky Mountains. Theo has pulled his son out of school for a few days after yet another incident between Robin and his classmates – Robin struggles to fit in, and some among his fellow students cruelly exploit his difficulties, badgering him until he reacts. Theo describes the often-conflicting diagnoses that doctors have offered for his son’s behavior, and the variety of medications they have prescribed to address it. By this point, Theo notes: “Watching medicine fail my child, I developed a crackpot theory: Life is something we need to stop correcting. My boy has a pocket universe I could never hope to fathom. Every one of us is an experiment, and we don’t even know what the experiment is testing.” (5) And, he notes, the death of his son’s mother the year before in an accident only magnifies the boy’s struggles.
Theo, in his work as an astrobiologist at a university, models and simulates potential exoplanets – how life could develop in wildly different ways in dramatically different environments. He shares these worlds with Robin through what seems to be a kind of advanced virtual reality interface, allowing the two of them to pretend to spend time on the simulated worlds. These experiences lead both father and son beyond the parochial limitations and assumptions of human life; clearly, too, they come to inform Theo’s concept of his son as a “pocket universe,” and that “every one of us is an experiment.”
For his part, while Robin struggles to concentrate on tasks that don’t interest him, when a subject or activity catches his attention he becomes deeply focused on it, to the exclusion of all else. This plays out in the story through his interest in nature, which he has picked up from the work of his mother, who had been an environmental activist, lobbying and testifying to government officials in pursuit of a more caring and protective stewardship of the natural world. From watching his mother, including now on old social media clips of her in action, Robin too has developed a strong sense of the importance of caring about nature, and a deep frustration at how he sees it being mistreated – a passion that can, for him, quickly turn into compulsion and anger.
Further incidents involving Robin at school put increasing pressure on Theo to medicate his son, a step he desperately seeks to avoid. In his search for alternatives, he turns to a colleague in the neuroscience department who has been developing a radically new treatment. Robin begins this treatment, and it dramatically transforms his behavior for the better, making him calmer and less reactive. But when events beyond their control interfere, father and son find themselves navigating challenging and uncertain territory.
Although Powers builds the story around developments in astrobiology and neuroscience that lay at least some years in our future, they seem convincingly plausible. And, at any rate, these technologies are not the point of his story; rather, they serve as plot devices through which he explores and highlights humankind’s increasing separation from the natural world. This disconnection, he makes clear, lies at the heart of our willingness to allow it to be plundered and degraded, with what he feels are existential implications.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given how loss of trust in science has accelerated during the political upheavals of the past half-decade, Powers incorporates present-day political realities into his story, as challenges both father and son must face. Looming over their lives, an unnamed president disparages science and creates a climate in which voicing one’s opinions – scientific or otherwise – has become increasingly fraught; and, disruptions in battleground states during a presidential election lead to increasing political turmoil and uncertainty. Though the book was published in 2021, the story makes no mention of COVID, although it does describe the rise of a deadly pandemic that threatens to spread in a deeply partisan climate that makes addressing it a challenge. Not a hard scenario to imagine in the year 2020, given what was happening…
If this book had been written even a decade ago, such plot elements would have likely been considered hyperbolic fearmongering; today, to not believe the potential for the consequences Powers imagines seems naïve.
While The Overstory was monumental in its scope, its sobering message was also softened somehow by that breadth, as well as by the more amorphous and non-specific social ignorance of nature it portrayed. Bewilderment, in contrast, takes a much more intimate and direct tone, with a father and son struggling in private and personal ways easy for most any parent to identify with, and the growing climate and political concerns that aggravate their situation seeming all to believable. Together these elements make this story hit harder, and leave readers little hope for a better way forward.
Other notes and information:
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
