The Gold Bug Variations is Powers's most intellectually demanding book to date. For most readers, an adequate understanding of it and of its subtleties require more than one reading. As multiple readings are progressing, discussion groups can be extremely helpful. Understanding a book of this complexity, like understanding Joyce's Finnegan's Wake (1939), is best approached as a collective undertaking.

Realizing the difficulty of his novel, Powers overcame his reclusiveness sufficiently in 1991, around the time of the novel's publication, to grant some interviews. Among the items listed in his biographical essay, the most useful are the articles by John Baker in Publishers Weekly and Helen Dudar in the Wall Street Journal, although both are sketchy.

1. The tide of this book, as it appears on the title page, is: The Gold Bug VARIATIONS Does this communicate a different impression than The Gold Bug Variations or The Gold Bug: Variations...