View source for Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

{{Short description|Richard Powers' first novel, published in 1985.}}
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[[File:ThreeFarmersOnTheirWayToADance.jpg|thumb|First edition (publ. [[William Morrow and Company|William Morrow]])]]
'''''Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance''''' is [[Richard Powers]]' first novel, published in 1985. The novel follows the journeys of three young European boys [[Young Farmers (photograph)|represented in a c. 1913 or 1914 photograph]] by [[August Sander]].

==Plot==
Two parallel narratives – one in the voice suspected to be the author, whose surname, we learn, starts with P – offer contemporary perspectives and illustrate the interconnectedness of events. These voices provide contemporary perspectives on technology, the major theme of the novel. A series of rather academic essays on the nature of photography, including quotes from [[Walter Benjamin]] and [[Hannah Arendt]] – in the authorial narrative voice of Mr P – are interspersed with the story.

The story begins with the authorial narrative voice of Mr P. first sighting the photograph taken in the months before the outbreak of [[World War I]] of three young boys in Germany, a photograph which is titled ''Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance'' and is being exhibited at the [[Detroit Institute of Arts]].  The novel follows the fictional fates of these three young men in war time, as well as the stories of Peter Mays, a technical editor for a 1980s electronics magazine, and Mr P. – the first-person narrator of sections of the novel – who is obsessed with the photograph and with concepts of photography and technology.

Powers's later novel ''[[Galatea 2.2]]'', published in 1995, uses the first person perspective of semifictional narrator Richard Powers to describe to a large extent the conditions under which Powers wrote ''Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance''.

''Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance'' attempts to balance the technological advancements that caused the large scale deaths in [[World War I]] with those that created art for the masses in the form of photography.

==External links==
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*[https://web.archive.org/web/20081226143239/http://www.richardpowers.net/novels_three_farmers.htm Bibliography of editions of ''Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance''.]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20081228230759/http://www.richardpowers.net/reviews_three_farmers.htm Listing of reviews and writings about ''Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance''.]

{{Richard Powers}}
{{August Sander}}

[[Category:1985 American novels]]
[[Category:1985 debut novels]]
[[Category:Cultural depictions of Henry Ford]]
[[Category:Novels by Richard Powers]]
[[Category:Novels set during World War I]]
[[Category:William Morrow and Company books]]


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