by Mark Helprin
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2012

Method of Selection: A gypsy gave me a shittybook divining rod. I don’t know how it works but it just works.
First Sentence: If a New York doorman is not contemplative by nature, he becomes so as he stands all day dressed like an Albanian general and doing mostly nothing.
What the Fuck Is an: Albanian general
You Mean Like: one of those really white white guys
No, That’s: an albino general
Oh: I see
Maybe He Means: Albanian generals and doormen both wear funny hats, they are both often mustachioed, they both develop syphilitic chancres from constant whoring
Who Told Me That: it was on 60 Minutes I think

Other Reviews: The Literary Outpost, Songs of Sirens, The Gilmore Guide to Books

I’m conflicted. It is clear Mark Helprin is a talented and thoughtful writer. He can put together a colorful sentence for sure. But I think this book may be shitty. It reminds me of masturbating. It feels good, and maybe for a few moments you can suspend reality and enjoy it, bearing down and stroking it hard and free and throbbing into the naked inscrutable air, until you reach the boiling knife-edge of that shattering glass avalanche, but it’s just not the real thing and never will be. Then there you are, standing alone with your pants around your ankles in the produce section next to the grapes, which are in season and very VERY ripe, and everyone is giving you that look. Except for that one confused little boy who’s never seen a man do this before, and even if he has, then not to grapes, and he has this huge grin on his face like he wants you to do that to HIM.

What I’m saying is I feel like the grapes in this scenario: violated and clumpy, but inanimate, and possibly kind of purple but also red maybe. Mark Helprin has a tendency to write in a high or aristocratic language, adding words that don’t need to be there and using long words when a short word would suffice.

• one Harry Copeland (instead of, “Harry Copeland”)
• as a result of this stress (instead of, “so”)
• began to increase his velocity (instead of, “sped”)
• which he had not the ability to (instead of, “which he couldn’t”)
• his exactitude in summoning texture (instead of, “but, you know, whatever. Stuff.”)

Maybe some people like this pandering language. Maybe they also like the onions in the produce section (perverts), but despite what seems the beginnings of an interesting story, about a guy in New York who seems to believe he can fly, and finds ways to fake it, the writing is just too much work to get through, and then not much is happening. And there’s 701 pages of this. Plus a prologue AND an epilogue. I’m BUSY.

So it’s shitty. But I feel bad saying it because on some level this book seems to be a real accomplishment. For other people to read, not me. It’s as if Mark Helprin was a master bricklayer and went to build you a house but instead you got three perfect walls and no roof and there’s a grape rapist (a grapist) outside.

I also feel bad because Mark Helprin looks like such a NICE GUY. He even works on his own farm in Virginia. But he’s also a senior fellow at the super-hawkish glorified book club that is the conservative think-tank The Claremont Institute, so maybe I’ll try to fight him at the signing.

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