In Gains, Richard Powers plays with the opposition between a euphoric commercial epic and a tale of dysphoric illness. In doing this, he calls on two canonical models of economic fable. By setting up an ambivalent representation of these two typical-ideal forms, the author avoids moralising and directs, above all, a meditation on the economic model, and the way in which literature lives at once with and against a model which engages the critical responsibility of the reader.
