Winter’s Tale Has Changed My Life Many Times
Don’t call it “magic realism”
“For what can be imagined more beautiful than the sight of a perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone.”
Mark Helprin’s book, Winter’s Tale, is long, unwieldy, spans a century, has more than 100 characters, can be hard to follow or even characterize, and draws strong love/hate reactions from readers and critics.
I’ve read it start to finish six times. I guess you could say I’m one of those who love it.
I often pick it up and open to a random page and read for several minutes, just for the sheer joy the prose brings to me; that is when it is not bringing me near to tears with the certainty that I’ll never craft a paragraph as beautiful or perfect as one I’ve just read. Reading the book has helped me gain deeper understandings of love, relationships, the nature of time, and the working of justice — and to fall in love with New York City.
While Alan Lightman’s book, Einstein’s Dreams is the book I’ve most often given as a gift to people, Winter’s Tale is the book I’ve most wanted friends to read and discuss with me. It is a desire almost completely unrequited.
So by now you’re probably thinking, “OK, so what is it about?”
Well, if I said it’s about life, the universe, and everything you’d think I was describing another book, but that’s pretty much what it’s about — all 800+ pages of it.
Most reviewers describe the book as magical realism, though Helprin disputes that. He sees it as being much closer to reality, even if it’s a reality that most don’t take time to see. He also describes it as doing what novels used to do: transport readers into another world.
In this case the main character, Peter Lake, is transported as an infant, Moses-like, into New York harbor around the turn of the 20th century inside a floating model of a passenger ship. He is found and raised by the now-extinct baymen of the Bayonne Marsh, but eventually makes his way to Manhattan where he befriends a huge white horse with mystical powers named Athansor who pairs with him on a quest so mysterious that even he doesn’t know what it is. It can be summarized, ultimately, as stopping time and bringing back the dead. Oh, and justice, too.
In early 1900’s NYC Peter and Athansor work with and battle the notorious Short Tails gang. Peter falls deeply in love with a mystical but doomed beauty named Beverly Penn who returns his passion. Ultimately his quest returns him to modern New York as the 20th Century is ending, where all becomes clear. Maybe. Along the way you encounter all those memorable characters in both eras with stories of their own which at times seem to have little to do with the overall plot. Is that realistic enough for you?
To me, the work is like an ornate tapestry. If you draw close, you can see and marvel at the the rich threads exquisitely woven together, but you can only see the whole thing by standing back a ways.
In terms of main characters, however, it may be better to say that both New York and Helprin’s words are the stars. Helprin loves the city in all its details and neighborhoods and describes them in a way that will have you believing it is all very, very real indeed. As I mentioned earlier, his prose is so beautiful that I often have to stop and marvel — and weep for my inadequacy.
Given the novel’s length and this stopping effect, this is not a novel for knocking off over a few lunch breaks, but one that bids you to take your time and look around. A stretchy mind is also helpful. I think this is very much what Helprin means when he says it is what novels used to be like.
If you’re a fan of the Irish group, The Waterboys, then you may or may not know that their songs, “Beverly Penn” and “The Whole of the Moon” are based on or inspired by characters in the book.
By the way, ignore the movie. Any movie made from a novel obviously suffers from having to cut so much out, and Winter’s Tale the movie is not only gutted but decapitated. Nice love story, but not if you’re a lover of the book.
My love of Winter’s Tale comes from the effect it has on me. I am moved and stimulated, even elevated, and each time I read it I feel as if I come away from the book different than I was when I started. Perhaps the best way to describe this is with one of those paragraphs:
“The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one’s soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.”