An Excerpt From Refiner's Fire

I brought a Mark Helprin book with me on the trip and wanted to share a bit of it. This passage takes place as the captain of a boat full of refugees is standing on the bow of his ship staring down into the Mediterranean:

As he looked down into the bow waves he saw the faithful and miraculous shape of dolphins, speaking to one another in chirps and whistles. They had great strength and endurance, and yet they were beautiful and not hard. By observing this he settled a conflict within himself, determining to be as strong as necessary and yet not to be hard. One of them veered outward and in so doing made it possible to catch Paul Levy's eye, and both seemed to smile without smiling. From that day forward he knew how to knit together strength and love. (pg. 30)

Simple Pleasures: Reading

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations--such is a pleasure beyond compare.--Kenko Yoshida

The Artists' Gathering by Viggo Johansen

Two Great Sentences, One First-Tier Painting

"Though most settlements of the pale were arranged along the road like the branches of a tree, not Koidanyev, because of its relation to the river. From the main highway a spur led directly to its heart. You entered upon this road and left on it. The road was bisected by the river, against which the citizens of Koidanyev had retaliated by bisecting the river with a bridge."

- From Jacob Bayer and the Telephone, a short story by Mark Helprin


I am rereading The Pacific this week and I had to stop when I came across this sentence so that I could run around the house and read it to everyone. I know it is basically a fancy way of saying there is a bridge across the river, but it cracks me up. The word "retaliated", the assigning of a motive, is what seals the deal. It is simple, absurd, and it works. Reading Helprin is like eating an incredible piece of chocolate, you just savor it and slowly run it back and forth in your mind over and over. Wonderful!

"The most difficult of the dinner parties I ruin are usually around Christmas, and always those of the younger members of the firm, who, no matter how well they have done, have yet to find their place because they have yet to fall from grace and restore themselves. They know I have built and rebuilt, that, quite apart from my military history, I have, in corporate terms come back from the dead. That very thing, though I did not ask for it, is what they fear the most to get and fear the most in me.
It is why, while I sit still and merely smile, they hold forth in a volume of words that would blow up a tire. You would think that because they talk as enthusiastically as talking dogs, they would win. While they say everything, I say nothing. I am shown the second-tier paintings, and harried children who can play Mendelssohn, and from the corner of my eye I can see the ineluctable Range Rovers, the Viking stoves, and the flower boxes perfectly tended by silent Peruvians with broken hearts."

-From Reconstruction, a short story by Mark Helprin

I remember my dad telling me a story about a preacher who quoted C.S. Lewis in every sermon and eventually, the elders of the church told him to quit quoting Lewis in every sermon or he would be fired. The next Sunday he couldn't help himself, heavily quoted Mr. Lewis, and that was the last sermon he ever gave at that particular church. I feel kind of like that preacher tonight. I just can't help myself, but at least I am not alone; the silent Peruvians bear mute witness to Helprin's genius.

Note: this is my one hundredth post. It took me a little longer to get here than I had hoped, but here's to one hundred more. Thanks for reading.

The Beach at Palavas, Gustave Courbet, 1854

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.

A Poem by John Frederick Nims

Love Poem

My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing

Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.

Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before apopleptic streetcars—
Misfit in any space. And never on time.

A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease;
In traffic of wit expertly maneuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.

-John Frederick Nims (1913-1999)

A Great Line

"It was a lovely night, one of those nights, dear reader, which can only happen when you are young. The sky was so bright and starry that when you looked at it the first question that came into your mind was whether it was really possible that all sorts of bad-tempered and unstable people could live under such a glorious sky."

-Opening line to White Nights,

a short story by Dostoevsky

Helprin Quote

" How he loved it when an electric lamp shone in a room just on the edge of darkness, for then the light was mobile, its condition like a sunrise or sunset, the relative strengths of room light and lamplight changing in infinite gradation, at first the lamplight unneeded and then the only thing left, having become a sun. It was four o'clock, just at the point of balance after which the war of lights would intensify."

- From Freddy and Frederika

A Poem, Author Unknown

The next time you are in your local bookstore browsing your way through a rainy day I would like to recommend a book to you: How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill. It is a wonderfully rich glimpse at among other things; the Fall of the Roman Empire, Saint Patrick, and the Irish monks who painstakingly copied ancient manuscripts that were elsewhere being destroyed by barbarians. I love the book because it is written, at times, just slightly over your head but never so far as to be out of reach and you are constantly rewarded for slogging through some of the tougher sections with these incredibly alive and downright edible portions of text that will keep you mentally munching for days afterwards. It is one of those books that not only makes you feel smarter than you are but one that actually sticks with you and well..., makes you smarter. Two sections I'll recommend for quick browsing in the store before you inevitably buy it, St. Patrick's prayer on pages 116-119 (hardcover) and pages 152 - 164 (hardcover) or just 159 - 164 if you are in a hurry. The latter section deals with the monkish scribes who actually sat down and copied word for word ancient manuscripts. It has quite a few excerpts from the notes that they would make in the margins as they either interacted with the text or fought off boredom. Hands down one of the most giddy and thrilling pieces of writing (besides Yancey and Manning) I have ever laid my eyes on. Cahill sets the scene so well, you can feel the cold, damp air through which green and rocky hills appear and recede in the fog as young bookish men attempt to keep warm while hunched over musty smelling texts. These men come to life through their various postscripts and suddenly you realize, we are not all that different, us and them. I'll leave you with an excerpt from page 162 that goes nicely with The Moussacre of 07 on my cousins' blog.

"Perhaps the clearest picture we possess of what it was like to be a scribal scholar is contained in a four stanza Irish poem slipped into a ninth-century manuscript, which otherwise contains such learned material as a Latin commentary on Virgil and a list of Greek paradigms:

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye,
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his."

Not exactly groundbreaking poetry I realize, but when you consider the context, it becomes a classic. Imagine for a minute that there are no printing presses and you make a living by hand copying word for word such classics as The Catcher in the Rye or Crime and Punishment. Tedious, tedious work, the only thing keeping you from going insane with boredom is your love for the written word. As you copy you entertain yourself by making up little poems in your head that help you pass the time. And then in one heady and mischevious moment you decide to write your poem in the margin or at the bottom of the page, a bold act that declares "I am here! I matter!" This poem is not just about the words, because of its context, it is one of the most essentially human poems I've read, containing the essence of what it is to live down here. "You are not forgotten anonymous Irish scribe, 1200 years later your poem still rings true. For chutzpah alone you are a legend in my mind, may we meet in heaven one day where you can introduce me to Virgil and I will introduce you to Helprin."

How the Irish Saved Civilization was the first of what is now five and will eventually be seven books in the Hinges of History series by Thomas Cahill. I have also read The Gift of the Jews and would recommend it as well. His latest is called Mysteries of the Middle Ages, a book so beautiful it caused drool to run down my chin as I browsed through it mouth agape at the bookstore last month.

Verdant Pages of Life and Light

My favorite author by a longshot is Mark Helprin. He has ruined me, in the way that exceedingly great things do, to the point that I can't imagine reading any fiction but his. I suppose that one day I will be open to reading other people's fiction and will take any suggestions here, vehement proposals only.

How to describe him? Hmmm... regal, dense, layered, whimsical. If his writing were a song it would be part Enya (lush, atmospheric), part Springsteen (brawny, masculine), part U2 (packed, weighty). Oh, and funny too. Really funny. And for a guy who can load a sentence full of beauty and meaning, his stories read pretty fast. He somehow manages to intersperse these incredible ink arias with straightforward humorous narrative so that you end up being pulled through his books with an almost giddy glee.

From The New York Times Book Review, "I find myself nervous to a degree I don't recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying it's brilliance." Ditto. Here's my shot at it; reading Helprin is the equivalent of being on an Italian farm at twighlight when the light is low, yellow and full of dust. You and your loved one are sitting in the middle of the field at a table spread with white tablecloth watching the sun sink as you slowly savor cheesecake and espressos. In the background, standing knee deep in the fertile crops, is a 62 piece orchestra performing Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

I have read Memoir from Antproof Case, A Soldier of the Great War, The Pacific and Other Stories, and his latest Freddy and Frederika. I wholeheartedly endorse all but the last. Helprin's characters tend to be aesthetics who live over the top, principled lives, consumed by one thing or another. His characters are so appealing because they live out of their hearts, without fear or compromise. Helprin drops little nuggets of truth into the dialogue or narrative that will have you inwardly screaming, "yes....yes! I've never put words to it before, but that is how I feel!" I will post brief excerpts of his writing from time to time and I'll leave you with one now.

Backstory: A British paratrooper has just injured himself severely on a solo jump behind enemy lines. He is in agonizing pain but knows he can help save lives if he can only complete his mission. He keeps fading in and out of conciousness while attempting to work through the pain.

"For the second time on the roof he awoke in heat and glare, and when he heard the shelling pick up he stirred, eager to get about his work now that he could. He was sick, and he wanted to stay still. The slightest movement was painful and nauseating. Though his fever had partially abated, even in the absence of morphine he was not quite himself. He knew that it was best not to move, that he had to let things settle, and the prospect of reopening his wounds by strain contradicted every natural impulse.
But upon going into battle-at the instant he volunteered, in the moment he accepted his orders, when the plane left the ground, and when he had stepped from it into explosions and flak-he had already written himself off in the quiet way that allows soldiers to do their duty even unto extinction. The more he presumed he would not last, the better he was able to take satisfaction from doing what was required. The delight of honor unknown to anyone but himself would have to substitute for a life that no longer lay ahead."