Chris’s Pick
March, 2025
Playground
Richard Powers
W.W Norton & Company
September 24, 2024
Similar in structure to Power’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Overstory, Playground follows three different storylines in three different timelines, centering on four characters. It is, at first, disorienting to try to figure out how these storylines will come together; fortunately, the book is so beautifully written it offsets bewilderment.
We are introduced to the primary narrator, Todd Keane, at middle age, dealing with a mortal disease. He has become a beyond-wealthy digital tycoon by creating the online game “Playground”, a virtual economy platform with billions of daily users.
In his youth, Todd meets Rafi Young, both students at an exclusive Chicago high school. Though from very different socioeconomic backgrounds, similarly dysfunctional families, and a classic left versus right-brain mentality, the two bond over their love of games—chess, at first, then the ancient Chinese game of Go. The thirty-year cross-racial friendship is sustained by fierce and constant competition.
A third character joins the two men during their college days. Ina Aroita is from
Tahiti, a sculptor and artist that both men fall in love with.
The final important character is Evelyne Beaulieu whom we meet in Montreal, 1947. Evie’s father, in association with Jacques Cousteau, has invented the Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus and Evie becomes one of the first, at age twelve, to breathe and experience life underwater. She grows to become a world-famous SCUBA diver (her character patterned after the renowned Sylvia Earle), writing, teaching, and exploring the ocean’s depths for the entirety of her life. Power’s illustrations of ocean life are enthralling, even spiritual, particularly in describing the giant oceanic manta rays: thirty feet across from wingtip to wingtip, they have enormous brains, are deeply curious, will interact with humans when they deem it necessary, and, quite clearly, play.
{To be sure, this is a cautionary tale about the current and future health of the ocean. Given the depth plus the breadth of the ocean, ninety-nine percent of the inhabitable space on our planet is underwater. With humans unable to live there, our knowledge of the ocean and ocean life is significantly limited, with 80% remaining unexplored and largely unknown.}
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when it is clearly Ocean
—Arthur C Clarke
Powers also follows the residents of Makatea, an atoll in French Polynesia. Decimated by phosphate mining in the early 1900’s, Makatea is now being approached by tech billionaires who want to use the island as a launching pad for “seasteading” (this is not the fiction I assumed…it is a real Silicon Valley venture). The islanders must vote to allow this, choosing for or against the future and all its promised bounty. It is in Makatea that all the characters finally come together.
The connecting theme in the book is play, particularly finite versus infinite play, (A finite game played for the purpose of winning; an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.) We discover Powers is also playing a narrative game with us, his readers, and it takes attention to figure out what is going on.
I first “read” the book by audiobook; the ending so confused me, I bought a print copy and started over from the beginning (a testament to the pleasure of reading this book). I offer only one hint: Half of the book is in italics, and that is a key towards deciphering the twist at the end of the story.
I enjoy researching a book I am reviewing by finding and listening to author interviews, and it was especially true with Richard Powers. Playground is an extraordinary novel by an author who, in the past, has been criticized as writing “think pieces”, not novels. There is no question that Powers is awed by, and passionate about, his subjects, in this case the technological revolution that humans may be losing control over, and the majesty of the ocean.
Countering the conventional notion of human exceptionalism comes through strongly in this book, as it does in many of Powers’ books. We humans are a very small component of the “immense journey”, ancillary to the larger story of life on earth. Although reading about both the destruction of our oceans and fourth industrial revolution sounds dystopic at best, Powers suggests we move on not with a feeling of despair, but with astonishment of where we are going from here.
Playground may be confounding, but that is the beauty of it. I found myself thoroughly immersed in each of the disparate stories, well before I understood the “game”. Powers is a wizard of a writer, and I highly recommend Playground.