The authors

At a lovely bookstore a few weeks ago I picked up a book of short stories, “The Pacific” by Mark Helprin. He became one of my favorite authors after I read “Winter’s Tale” a decade or so ago.

A great author like Helprin stuns with insight; not just the ability to weave together words into an exquisite and balanced tapestry, but in the way that tapestry displays deeper truth.

Keep your authors of the Northeast, their tales of profundity and their affairs, contrived significance. Annie Dillard can peer into souls and each time bring home a new message; Kesey gave us life and death and courage right at home in fir-paneled honkey tonks; Robbins’ metaphors leap out their chairs and dance on the tables; and this great author Helprin offers us meaning.

“... Women who are told that they are beautiful and come to believe it not only lose delicacy of soul and sharpness of wit, they forfeit the appealing privacy and loneliness without which real beauty cannot exist. They hardly reflect, as everything reflects upon them, and this makes them dull.”— Mark Helprin, Prelude, “The Pacific.”

Turn off that damn TV.