Orfeo (Richard Powers)

ORFEO by Richard Powers,  a story about a man dubbed “Biohacker Bach", the Unabomber of cell biology, is like taking a trip through your record collection.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, there’s a scene where a chimpanzee touches a monolith. The monolith—about which we learn little, except that it seems of extraterrestrial origin—triggers an accelerated development of intelligence in the ape's brain, a mutation that, until then, had been a question of whether it would prove temporary or permanent.

“Music is like awareness flowing in through the ear.”

When we listen to music, we may briefly touch the monolith. The above wisdom—one of the many this book is filled with—continues: “And nothing is more terrifying than being aware.” As will become clear.

Peter Els is a musician-scientist obsessed with the composition of things. Since everything in music has already been done (destroyed and re-created), he turns to cell biology in his old age. He sets up a home laboratory and begins composing, as he puts it, with DNA. It offers infinitely more possibilities than composing with musical notes.

The Twin Towers are brought down, and anthrax-laced letters are sent. In an Alabama hospital, an unusually high number of patients die from a contaminated IV. In post-9/11 America, the latter is not dismissed as a mere coincidence. Peter Els becomes a suspect of bioterrorism and cannot shake off the accusation—partly because he himself quickly concludes that, based on the things he googles and the books he’s borrowed from the library in recent years, he too would suspect himself if he were a detective. He begins to act in ways that align with these suspicions. His reclusive lifestyle over the years doesn’t help. Dubbed “Biohacker Bach,” he is the Unabomber of cell biology.

In his search for the ideal composition—which ultimately becomes a search for himself—Els takes the reader on a tour through his musical catalog: from Mozart and Messiaen to The Velvet Underground and the thrash metal of Anthrax (as if you tossed Chopin's Prelude in A Major into a cement mixer). His final work is a symphony written into the genetic material of a bacterium. We leave him as he finds himself surrounded by a SWAT team. We are left to speculate about his fate, but the backdrop of the story—a society in a state of paranoia—allows little room for illusions about the protagonist's end.

Here, music is not a distraction but a life’s purpose. The protagonist abandons his wife and daughter in its pursuit. The underlying motivation: to arrive at something grand - sublime in architecture and rich in composition - in which no distinction seems to be made between reason and emotion (I am inevitably reminded of Pierre Boulez) resonates with the mind of the reader who finds solace in order and finds in music a useful vehicle for that. It results in a book of immense intellectual weight - intimidating almost, it almost prevents me from forming an opinion about it. Afraid that one's own findings are mostly evidence of one's own ineptitude. If listening to music is like touching the monolith then Richard Powers makes an impressive attempt to grant the reader the same, awareness-expanding, experience with reading Orfeo.

Yet bringing music to life through words remains akin to dry swimming. The author (would he have preferred to be a composer?) inevitably runs into the limits of language. Metaphors (violins sounding like a sultry summer breeze) and musical caricatures (leaping octaves and thrilling triplets) lose their illustrative power when overused. Detailed explanations of both real and fictional musical works (I don’t immediately feel I missed out by not attending the premiere of John Cage’s Musicircus) and the elaborate reflections and exuberant imagery often obscure the plot.
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That narrative may unfold in painful ways, drama and beauty feeding off each other, but it does not deprive us of some insights with which we can arm ourselves.

“Be grateful for everything that still hurts. Dissonance is a form of beauty not yet destroyed by familiarity.” I find in it, along with the observation that there is “joy in the key of minor, profound pleasure in hearing somber melodies and realizing that you are up to it,” an affirmation of my own musical taste and acquired self-knowledge. 

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- Wouter de Moor