Presently slogging through the center of "Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin for the second time. I say slogging because the center of this book is pretty dense and hard to get through. Helprin introduces, discards, and then introduces again a huge array of secondary characters whose place in the grand scheme of things will only become apparent near the end. Characters like Jesse Honey, a west coast mountaineer that Hardesty Marratta runs into while hopping freight who belongs in a Looney Toons sketch. By the way, Hardesty Marratta is another one of those secondary characters.
I burned through the first third of the novel, with Peter Lake, the Penns, the Short Tails, Athansor and the Baymen. Beautiful, tight and touching reading. I have since gotten deeply bogged down by a center that feels more like filler than a necessary means toward driving the plot. I don't blame Helprin. This book came out at a time when all publishers and editors were driving their authors to print books as fat as could be. I can almost hear his agent whispering in his ear; "Did you see how thick King made "The Stand". Keep going Mark, keep going".
Back to Hardesty who falls in love with the second great beauty in "Winter's Tale". That's right, nearly every single female character introduced in this book is an ethereal beauty, mesmerizing or bewitching, incredibly bright and also enchantingly charming or she will grow into one soon afterwards. This causes all their male counterparts to fall for them completely, obsessively, with almost 'unable to control their body functions' abandon. Just as everyone eventually falls completely in love with the greatest, most beautiful, terrible, enchanting, mesmerizing city in the world; New York City. Yeah, I got it. All roads lead to Rome.
This is why I am proud to present on page 382 Juliet Paradise. God bless you and keep you Juliet. Juliet represents the first female character in Winter's Tale given more than a line or two who will not cause uncontrollable raptures in those who look upon her or speak with her. She is not achingly beautiful like Beverly Penn, Christiana Friebourg, or Virginia Gamely. She does not have great wisdom and the knowledge of an encyclopedia like the elder Mrs. Gamely. Nor does she have a rooster named Jack.
Instead this is how we are introduced to Juliet. "He had been pursued for a full month by a monstrous unkempt woman from Tribeca, an intellectual who did not know if it were day of night, had never seen the ocean, and thought that a goat was a male sheep. Jaundiced and liver-colored, living only through books, tobacco, and alcohol, she had the face of a bullfrog, the brain of a gnat, and the body of a raccoon."
Which reminds me of a native New Yorker that I had the pleasure to meet. Years ago I was part of singles event group run by a good friend of mine. Somewhere along the way this group attracted the attention of a man of indeterminate age from New York who I will call Carl for no particular reason. Now Carl wasn't having very good luck finding someone in the Twin Cities.
Carl walked hunch shouldered, he was a pale little gnome with a thick accent from one of the boroughs or maybe Jersey, his speech patterns sounded like car horns bouncing off of trash can lids. When he attended events with the singles group he always complained about where we were going, badgered the wait staff, and said rude things about the other people attending the event. Also if we were meeting somewhere for dinner he always got there at least a half hour before everyone else so he could eat his dinner first and complain about being bored while the rest of the people ate and chatted.
It got so bad eventually that when people RSVP'd for an event if they saw Carl was also coming they'd drop out of the event. I never checked the RSVPs and would just call up my friend and ask him what was going on for that night and who was going to be there. Not wanting to be saddled alone with Mr. New York he just wouldn't tell me about Carl. So there were a couple times when it was just me, my friend, and Carl.
One time in particular we went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for their holiday tour. The whole time that the tour guide was guiding us through the period rooms and describing the art, architecture, and holiday traditions of the times, Carl would interrupt her to ask "Who's in that painting?" "Who's in that painting?" All the paintings on the walls had plaques discussing the artist and the subject if that person was known. Carl, however, was not interested in reading the displayed information. He was more interested in interrupting the tour guide every time he walked in a new room and spied another painting.
Finally the tour guide showed us one of the most prized pieces in the MIA collection presented specifically during the holiday tour season. She told us of how a particular European village's people were protected by an American unit and particularly one soldier during World War II. As a thank you, the village presented him with a grand nativity village that was one of the prized possession of the people of the town. Not only was there a nativity creche, there was an entire village of Bethlehem with townspeople, buildings, a well in the center of the town square. The three wise men were attended by a complete camel caravan loaded with supplies and led by bearers and personal servants decked out in the livery of those three kings.
At an estate sale for this veteran one of the buyers with the MIA saw the display and immediately bought it up knowing how rare and valuable it was. In centuries past these were not uncommon nativity displays cared for by all the members of the community. The one that is now in the MIA collection is one of only a handful of these intact villages still in existence. The tour guide gave us a few minutes to look it over in detail.
Then Carl pointed to the figures in the middle of the nativity creche and said "What's with the baby in the nutshell?"
It is in "Winter's Tale" that I may have found the perfect compliment for Carl. It is a shame she lives in the alternate New York of Helprin's imagination.
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