Richard Power's ORFEO-Over Reaching & Pretentious

Richard Powers is a gifted novelist that combines storytelling with contemporary social issues.  His novel, "The Echo Maker" won the Nat'l Book Award '06 & was a Pulitzer finalist.  His most recent novel "Orfeo," a musical term favored in opera and early Baroque music, Powers offers a masters class in musical history & composition.  Powers over reaches too broad a discourse on all means of creativity in arts & science; including bio-technical developments & terrorism.  "Fear no art," a good place to start, but this erudite novel is grandiose, pretentious and never-ending.  Powers himself admitted, "…this is in one sense a very self-indulgent book."  Peter Els, the main character finds himself at 70, alone and at odds with where his life has led.  Peter questions the road not taken.  He teetered between a career in chemistry but chose a life devoted to creating transcendental music.  While in college, Peter fell in love & married Maddy & met his friend Richard (hmm.)  Richard is a manic narcissist & maestro of manipulation; able to pull Peter's strings into an avant-garde venture of musical composition without having to contribute a note.  Peter succumbs to Richards' influence & his own overwhelming desire to compose divine music leaving behind his wife & young daughter.  The novel starts with Peter at 70, a fugitive fleeing after his home grown bacterial lab is nabbed by the FBI.  While on the lam, Powers proselytizes on man's compelling drive to originate and leave a lasting legacy.  Despite the novel's esoteric proclivities, the sentimental epiphany is love of family & friends is omnipotent.  I suggest reading "The Echo Maker."  With "Orfeo" I kept waiting (& wanting) the fat lady to sing.