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March 21, 2008
25th Anniversary of Winter's Tale
I just realized that this year marks the 25th anniversary of the release of one of my favorite novels: Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. Unlike most of Helprin's sometimes over-moralizing and politically-fueled writing, this was wide-eyed Americana infused by the magical realism spirit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his One Hundred Year of Solitude period, a hymn to the city of New York in the form of a book full of humanity, playfulness, intelligence, and prodigious invention.
Here is an excerpt. It is an early passage about Blacky Womble, a gangland chief, contemplating stealing from the mythical "gold carriers" that sometimes came to New York:
Blacky Womble was taken aback. The Short Tails were the best of the gangs, the most powerful, the most daring. But they had never even robbed a major bank, except once, and that was one of those temporary branches that could be broken into with a can opener. The gold carriers were out of the question. First, no one really knew when they made port, because they set their courses on random generators (wire cages inside of which tumbled surplus Mah-Jongg blocks engraved with longitudes and latitudes). These ships zigged and zagged over the seas in incredible patterns. For example, to go from Peru to New York, one of the fast carriers might call at Yokohama six times -- though a nondelivery port call for a gold carrier consisted of of saluting from fifty miles at sea with a blue flare, and then vanishing into the night and distance. There was no way to know where one would be and when; they abhorred the sea-lanes; their arrivals were swift and unexpected. In fact, most people in New York did not know of them. Bakers baked their endless rows of cookies; mechanics worked at oily engines that smelled of flint and steel; and bank clerks worked their lines, piecing out and taking in tiny sums through the organizational baleen of their graceful human hands, never knowing that the wealth of great kingdoms was all around them, filtering through the streets of lower Manhattan like a tide in the reeds.
There is so much good stuff in the book, so much invention. Admittedly, it's not for everyone, but give it a shot, if you haven't.
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It is a superb novel. I like Soldier of the Great War even more. Thanks for the reminder. Doesn't seem like half that long.
One of my favorite books. Loved Helprin's work until he started penning ultra-con drivel for the WSJ OpEd page.
I was surprised to see this post. I read this back then and have been somewhat curious why it appears that no one else ever read it. It's still on my bookshelf despite many moves and usurpers vying for space.
Though I don't remember the details of the book much, I do remember being enraptured by it at the time. Thanks for the reminder -- time to pick it up again.
Man, has it really been 25 years? I still remember it as if it had been read last week. Thanks for dropping that little tidbit and reminding me how wonderfully the mind dialates time when it gets around to savoring well-loved things past.