Richard Powers’ novel confusion is – despite its portrayal of a mother and son capable of an ecstatic connection with nature – one of the most depressing books I have read in a long time. Although it was written before the pandemic and the 2020 election and is set in the near future and/or a slightly alternate universe, confusion is unfortunately prescient. Granted, in the America of the novel there are COG talks instead of TED talks, the nameless Trump-like president is actually able to enforce his totalitarian policies, climate change is more immediate and catastrophic, and you wouldn’t get the vaccine in a confusion Pandemic, but it all feels far too realistic to be comforting.
Powers, who in previous novels explored themes of artificial intelligence (Galatea 2.2) to genetics (The Gold Bug Variations And Generosity: An enrichment) to soap (Win), continues the investigation into environmental destruction that he began in his 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning The upper storywith astrobiology and neurobiology also being the focus. However, while passages in earlier novels occasionally felt like excerpts from non-fiction books, confusionThe terse narrative of focuses primarily on the father-son relationship between Theo and Robin Byrne. Theo is an astrobiologist at the University of Wisconsin and frequently distracts his son, who may be autistic, with stories about the many possible worlds in a universe of two trillion galaxies. These short chapters have a science fiction element, but father and son always “explore” the planets together, and each story relates to problems in their difficult lives.
At the beginning of the novel, Robin’s mother, Alyssa, has been dead for two years. She was apparently willing to sacrifice herself in a car accident rather than run over a possum. Robin, soon to be nine, has inherited his mother’s love of other “creatures” – one of her favorite words – but does not possess her indefatigability in the face of obstacles. In fact, he is anxious and fearful, and prone to screaming tantrums when things don’t go his way. Theo, however, does everything he can to avoid administering medication to his son, which leads to Robin participating in a decoded neurofeedback experiment in which he learns to imitate and then empathize with his mother’s brainwaves recorded when she was in a state of ecstasy.
“Training” in the DecNef allows Robin to channel Alyssa’s optimism in the face of almost certain defeat, and soon he’s a different boy, one who can observe the flora and fauna of his hometown with astonishing clarity, and who can say, “You know how people worry sometimes: Is that person mad at me? Well, in case anyone’s wondering: I’m happy with the whole world.” Unfortunately, the inventor of the DecNef must monetize his invention to keep it going, and while that initially leads to Robin’s internet fame, in the novel’s anti-science milieu, anything that can’t be explained by conservative truisms or Christianity is suspect. Let’s just say that the fact that Theo and Robin are listening to an audiobook of Flowers for Algernon early in confusion is not a good sign.
As I read the novel, the news from my America seemed to echo or perhaps premonition of Powers’ rapidly sinking country, but it was only after I finished the book that I realized that what I found so disheartening was the complete sympathy for Robin’s point of view, almost as if I had been in the DecNef of confusion. The boy wants so much to have hope, and is also at the peak of his mental powers, but Robin is always aware of the harsh truth that there is nothing he can do to avert the impending disaster that anyone who looks can see.
At the beginning of the novel, Theo tells us that astronomy and childhood have a number of things in common: “Both are journeys over vast distances… Both are humbled every few weeks. Both act out of ignorance. Both are confused by time.” And both, he concludes, “are always new beginnings.” But the strength of confusion is what makes it so dark. Far from being “back to square one forever,” the novel’s characters seem to be moving toward their inevitable, painful end.
This review originally appeared in California Book Review.
Editor’s note: UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Richard Powers on Sunday, February 23, 2025, at UCSB Campbell Hall. Tickets are available here.
