Orfeo (novel)

Orfeo

Cover to first edition hardback
Author	Richard Powers
Cover artist	Raymond Martinez/Millennium Images, UK
Country	United States
Language	English
Published	2014 (W. W. Norton & Company)
Media type	Print (hardback)
Pages	369
ISBN

Orfeo is a novel by American author Richard Powers.

Orfeo tells the story of 70-year-old avant-garde composer Peter Els, whose home experiments in biohacking musical patterns into a bacterial human pathogen, Serratia marcescens, have attracted the worried hazmat-suit-level attention of Homeland Security. Els flees in panic, and becomes known as the "Bioterrorist Bach". The novel interleaves Els' attempt at a final redemption with a retrospective telling of his life.

There are two main narrative threads in the novel, both centered on Peter Els. The novel begins and ends in the winter of 2011, from the accidental discovery by the authorities that Els was doing home genetic experiments to his flight across the country. Interspersed is the story of Els' life, from his birth in 1941 to his decision in 2009 to record his music in DNA.

Els is born in 1941. He turns out to be naturally talented in math, science, and classical music, and is especially enraptured by a recording of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony.

A cellist in his high school, Clara Reston, becomes his first love. He follows her to college in Indiana, intending to major in chemistry. Clara convinces him to major in music and to become a composer. She ends up in England, and dumps him long distance.

Els develops under the avant-garde influence of the day, including that of John Cage. A soprano Madolyn "Maddy" Corr who sings his strange songs becomes his next lover and eventually his wife. A particularly energetic, chaotic and anarchistic dramatist, Richard Bonner, choreographs Els' work.

Els and Maddy marry and have a daughter Sara. They move to Boston where she starts a career at a prestigious private school, while Els settles for being a watchman at an art museum and stay-at-home father.

After a few years, Bonner's fringe career in Manhattan artsy circles gets a surprise wealthy sponsor, and Bonner invites Els to compose for his works. Because it involves frequent trips to Manhattan, Maddy sours on Els, and at some point gives Els an ultimatum, and he chooses composing, and they divorce. She remarries almost immediately and moves to Saint Louis, taking Sara with her.

Working with Bonner eventually becomes impossible, and Els breaks off with him. He tries to lose himself, first in menial labor and then in New Hampshire.