I Don't Mind Losing

The following is one of my favorite excerpts from Mark Helprin. It is from the short story, "Monday" which can be found in his outstanding collection of short stories, The Pacific. The entire story resonated with me and as soon as I read the following exchange I knew that I would carry it with me for a long time. (There is a lot of Helprin that I'm carrying around with me.)

Backstory: Fitch is a contractor in New York City and he is taking on a renovation for a recently widowed woman. They have met at a restaurant for lunch to discuss the final terms of the contract which Fitch has tilted extremely generously towards the woman's favor. As we pick up the story at the midpoint, Lilly (the woman) is speaking-

"It sound so disadvantageous to you. It makes me nervous. Do you understand?"

"Of course I do. Look, I don't know what happened to the country, but everybody tries to screw everybody else. More so than in my father's day, more so than when I was a child, more so than when I was a young man, more so than ten years ago...more so than last year. Everybody lies, cheats, manipulates, and steals. It's as if the world is a game, and all you're supposed to do is try for maximum advantage. Even if you don't want to do it that way, when you find yourself attacked from all sides in such fashion, you begin to do it anyway. Because, if you don't, you lose. And no one these days can tolerate losing."

"Can you?" Lilly asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Tell me."

He hesitated, listening to the clink of glasses and the oceanlike roar of conversation magnified and remagnified under the vaulted ceilings of the dining rooms off to the side, "I can tolerate losing," he said, "if that's the price I pay, if it's what's required, for honor."

"Honor," she repeated.

"Honor. I often go into things-I almost always go into things-with no calculation but for honor, which I find far more attractive and alluring, and satisfying in every way, than winning. I find it deeply, incomparably satisfying."

Mark Helprin is the greatest writer in the world and I have excerpted him on these pages often. He wrote A Soldier of the Great War, Memoir from Antproof Case, Refiner's Fire, and Freddy and Fredericka, among others. His latest book, Digital Barbarism: A Writer's Manifesto, was just released.