Understanding Richard Powers presents an introduction to one of the most important and admired writers to emerge in the post-Pynchon era of American literature. Joseph Dewey contends that while Powers's novels investigate the most pressing issues of the new millennium, the novelist is most deeply interested in the same thematic argument that consumed Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson-the problem of the self, the deep and unshakable loneliness that has always been at the heart of the American literary imagination. Through an overview of Powers's career and close readings of his novels,...