SOURCE: "Man, Past and Present," in The Wall Street Journal, Vol. CCXXII, No. 8, July 13, 1993, p. A14.

In the following excerpt, Lescaze offers a negative assessment of Operation Wandering Soul but praises Powers's writing style.

Richard Powers's Operation Wandering Soul is a corrosive report from a Los Angeles of the near-future made close to unlivable by violence, pollution, traffic and man's inhumanity. It centers on Kraft, a brilliant surgeon brought close to mental collapse and emotional paralysis by the horrors of the modern world, particularly evils inflicted on children….

In Operation Wandering Soul, Mr. Powers aims not for shivers, but for revulsion. The novel is hard to read in the way that horror movies are hard to watch. His surgeon is often cutting maimed children in the operating room.

Mr. Powers is a dazzling stylist whose first three novels, most recently The Gold Bug Variations, were widely praised. His...