Mark Helprin, a great American novelist
Friday, May 30, was a banner day I’ll long remember.
A soft Carolina-blue sky topped the Virginia hills and fields as I drove to novelist Mark Helprin’s farm, Windrow, in the countryside north of Charlottesville.
Helprin and his wife Lisa greeted me at the front door, and for the rest of my four-hour visit they were the best of hosts, conversing with me in their living room for an hour and then serving up a delicious lunch. Afterwards, Helprin and I sat in the enormous, nearly two-story high room which serves as his library, office, and workplace, where I had the privilege of interviewing him about his life and work.
One wall of that room deserves special mention. Here were bookshelves about 12-feet high, with a rolling ladder in place allowing access to his entire collection of 7,000 volumes. Among these many books are a large number of Helprin’s own works, his novels, short story collections, and children’s books, including those translated into more than 20 languages.
During our conversations, Helprin spun out a tapestry of recollections from his past: his undergraduate days at Harvard, the odd jobs and wanderlust of his 20s, the demands of basic training in the Israeli army, his studies of foreign and military affairs, involvement in D.C. politics, and more. He had advice for young writers, stressed the importance of family and children — he and Lisa have two daughters, both now grown — spoke lyrically of his deep love for America, and shared half-a-dozen other brief commentaries on culture.
In discussing the nuts-and-bolts side of his writing, Helprin revealed that he writes the first drafts of his fiction by hand, then edits them, again by hand, seven and eight times more before they ever make it to a keyboard and screen. These books, several of them bestsellers, have won awards and in the eyes of some admirers, including me, rank Helprin as a major literary figure of our time.
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Here are short takes on three of his novels which are my personal favorites.
“Freddy and Fredericka” recasts the story of Diana and Prince Charles. In Helprin’s comedy, this quarreling, spoiled couple are parachuted into New Jersey, sent by the Merlin of Arthurian fame on a mission to bring America back into the British Commonwealth. Through a series of humorous misadventures, the royals learn the value of hard work, have their character shaped and polished by suffering, and fall deeply in love with each other. Especially moving for me, in large part because of the contrast to the earlier madcap comedic scenes, are Freddy’s ruminations on the spirit of America near the end of the novel and the passages relating the death of his mother, the queen.
“The Oceans and the Stars,” Helprin’s most recent novel, tells the story of Navy captain Stephen Rensselaer, who after angering the president of the United States in a disagreement over American shipbuilding, is assigned to the Athena, a patrol coastal boat several grades below what he deserves. Subtitled “A Sea Story, a War Story, a Love Story,” this fine book delivers on all three fronts. Helprin brings his knowledge of the military to bear on such details as the Athena’s armaments while at the same time depicting the beauty of the ocean, takes us to war both on the sea and on the land, and gives us a sweet and moving story of the love affair between Rensselaer and Katy Farrar, an attorney who, like him, has faced disappointment in love.
And finally, there is “A Soldier of the Great War,” which is not only my favorite Helprin novel, but one of my all-time most beloved works of fiction. Here we follow Alessandro Giuliani from the days of his privileged boyhood and early youth into the horrors of the First World War, its aftermath, and then into old age. Enhanced by the best of the author’s lyrical prose, this novel has it all: war, love, family, politics, philosophy, aesthetics, art. A thread running throughout the book is Alessandro’s discussions of life with a young worker, Nicolo Sambuca, who prompts Alessandro to tell him of his life and who acts as a foil for some humor.
First recommended to me by a priest, “A Soldier of the Great War” is a a story particularly suited to young men. Over the years, I’ve given away eight to 10 copies to my sons, my son-in-law, two friends, and two or three students. Only one, a friend, disliked the book, though he was older and impatient with Helprin’s rich prose. For me, this book was the gift that keeps on giving, a treasure trove to which I return several times a year, reading here and there, and always taking away something valuable.
At one point in our conversation, I asked Helprin if any books had inspired him to became a writer. It wasn’t any particular book, he said, but the beauty of English language found in writers like Shakespeare that first fired up his ambitions. “It was the language itself, and in making sentences and paragraphs that from a very early age, I wanted to tell stories that were edifying and touched upon the religious, you know, that had a deeper meaning than just a story. I wanted to make beautiful sentences and paragraphs. That's craft. If it's good enough craft, it becomes art. And so, you enjoy practicing the craft, and you do so with as much intensity as you can marshal, and if you're lucky, the craft becomes art.”
Mark Helprin brought craft and intensity to his writing, and forged his works of art.
(Jeff Minick reviews books and has written four of his own: two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
