![]() ![]() Powers knows, and a psychologist in the book says, that humans need “good stories” to be persuaded by scientists’ alarms, so Powers creates a band of varied and lively characters with back stories and understories to make his novel a “bottom-up,” as well as a top-down, fiction, one that equals his best work. Trees were exhibiting qualities of animal life long before the human story began and will be here long after the human story is over, the latter hastened by our suicidal deforesting of the planet. In The Overstory, Powers twits those critics by presenting - with his usual scientific brio - trees that live, breathe, and signal to each other, exist in a “social” relation with other trees and the biosphere that depends on them. These critics carp that his often highly intelligent characters are not human, don’t live and breathe and feel for each other. Powers has sometimes been criticized for being a “top-down” novelist, one who presents characters from the high or long perspective of history, science, or music. ![]() ![]() The “overstory” of Richard Powers’s title is a term for the canopy of a forest, the foliage at the top of the trees. ![]()
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