★★★★★ I don't understand it, but I love it.

Winter's Tale

Mark Helprin

I was reminded of Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale by N.K. Jemisin's The City We Became. Both novels are ostensibly about New York City. The city in Jemisin's book bears a striking resemblance to the actual city near the south end of the Hudson River. Or at least, it is plausible that it does -- I can't say from my own experience -- although I have visited New York, I have no mental image of it as a whole to which I can compare Jemisin's city. Mark Helprin's New York, however, I feel confident in saying, is very little like the actual New York city, or indeed, like any city on Earth. They don't make 'em like that.

I have a problem that makes it difficult for me to appreciate these novels. I have never been able to see a city as a thing. I lived in Dallas, Texas, for 21 years. I remember the schools I studied at, Brookhaven Community College and Southern Methodist University. I remember the school I taught at, UT Southwestern Medical Center. I remember the hospital area of Dallas, Harry Hines Boulevard and the businesses and institutions along it. I remember the functionally nonexistent public transport. I remember the highways -- I-635 circling the city, east-west roads I-30 and 114 and north-south roads 75 and the Tollway crossing to form the crosshair whose bullseye was Downtown Dallas, and I-35 striking out diagonally toward Denton and Houston. I remember the velocitous terror of driving through the Mixmaster at 60 mph, hoping not to be flung off in some random direction. I remember timing my trip home in the evening so as to see the reflection of the sunset from the prismatic skyscrapers of Downtown. I remember the Arts District and the Symphony screaming, "See? We are TOO sophisticated and artistic!" I remember the gay bars of the Oak Lawn district (never been inside one, but even from the outside they were something!), and the complaints from folks who spent an evening partying in Deep Ellum.

What makes no sense to me, however, is to throw all these things into a bag together and call it "Dallas". Partly, of course, that is because I sense how much is missing -- how much of Dallas I (or any one person) did not appreciate because of who I am and what I do. But it's more that those are separate things -- they don't combine into an identity. If you asked me to compare New York to Dallas, I would scarcely know how to start. It's like being asked to compare the Atlantic Ocean to Shakespeare's Hamlet -- it just doesn't make any sense to me.

My Aunt Althea was a nurse in Europe in World War II. She came home to the USA, where she worked at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on Manhattan for many years. Besides saving lives, she read and read and read. It was she gave us Winter's Tale. Since she, unlike me, actually knew New York, I have to guess that it is in some sense an accurate portrayal of the city.

For me it is pure fantasy. The central characters are a thief named Peter Lake, and a magic horse, who are or become, in some more-than purely figurative sense, Strength and Beauty. Nothing in the long and complicated story really makes sense, yet I know I loved it, and that my emotion on finishing it was Joy. And I think I'll just leave it at that.

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