Galatea 2.2, a new novel by Richard Powers, is "a cerebral thriller that's both intellectually engaging and emotionally compelling," according to The New York Times. The protagonist of the novel--who, like his creator, is named Richard Powers--returns to the U.S. as Humanist-in-Residence at the Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he becomes involved in a cognitive neurologist's attempt to feed Great Books to a neural network until the machine can beat a student on an English lit exam.

This brief excerpt, taken with the kind permission of Farrar Straus Giroux, describes the narrator's first experiences on the World Wide Web.