Helprin

I think i finally have Mark helprin out of my system. Jeeze. I've debated a lot with Sarah why i keep reading him when i always just complain about it. I think the reason is that i'm looking for dirt. As i wrote earlier, there's something fishy about all this cheese. So. I gave up quickly on rereading Winter's Tale. I condend that it's a perfidious ode to plutocracy disguised as a lovely fairy tale for gutter punks. Note that i was in New York recently and Rob and i went to Grand Central Station to verify that there are constellations and light-up stars on the roof, and indeed: . It's a gorgeous building an Peter Lake's hiding place is plausible. Janina and Sarah recommended i try A Soldier of the Great War instead, which i did, and i have to admit that it seemed pithier than W's Tale. In fact it seemed fine. It made nice reading by the banks of the Russian River. However, around an eighth of the way in i realized that if i died tomorrow, i would have spent my last days reading Mark Helprin while there were still books by Fitzgerald which i hadn't read yet, and dropped it like a hot potato. A month or so later i picked up Ellis Island & Other Stories, shorts by Helprin, which thanks to their brevity were pretty consumable, altho i still tended to skip the last 15% or so. I think Helprin fans and foes alike can take Ellis Island or leave it. The best moment in the book is a Salingeresque scene between a young boy and an adult, when the boy describes a fantastical circus he saw before he was born and asks the adult if she's ever seen a circus like that and for once she takes him on an equal footing and confesses "'Yes,' said Mrs. Friebourg, 'I have seen a circus like that,' and, for a moment, the room was silent." - I'm a sucker for that stuff.

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Words in Ellis Island:
abseiling, p.26
plutocrat, p.139
springe, p.145
davening, p.160
motility, p.196