The Pacific: And Other Stories

Rating:
Summary: Expert Craftsmanship Leaves Less Room for the Heart
Review: A novelist and political columnist, Mark Helprin writes with the steady hand of a meticulous craftsman in the telling of these sixteen stories of mortality and redemption. There is a pervasive sense of melancholy in each story, and although he displays his talent to evoke historical settings authentically to the last detail, Helprin faces a more significant challenge in providing depth and complexity to the characters he draws. He is masterful when it comes to precise and lucid explanations of events outside the human experience, whether it's the currents in the ocean or a play-by-play of a perfect baseball game. As a literary miniaturist, he can get into the minutiae of life, but there is an odd imbalance that results. While the characters of his stories speak with eloquent exactitude, they are less specific when it comes to their own emotions.

The stories are quite varied in setting. Several concern soldiers facing death during wartime, yet the climax of a story can happen without warning and then it uneventfully ends. For instance, in "Charlotte of the Utrechtseweg," a World War II Army major has a vivid flashback after being shot by a German soldier, regretting his abandonment of his daughter, and then dies without moving from the spot where he fell at the beginning. Other stories focus more on philosophical dilemmas, for example, men who have amassed the spoils of wealth attempt to atone for past excesses by willfully reversing their fortunes. Toward that end, Helprin can get so carried away with his descriptions of the burgeoning materialism that infiltrates some of his stories, that it plays like a Home and Garden TV special on how the wealthy live. In a tale called "Monday," a successful contractor pushes his business to the edge of bankruptcy in an attempt to console a woman who lost her husband during the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The contractor persuades his entire crew to work non-stop for free, and for his suppliers to donate only the best materials, so he can surprise the widow by renovating her co-op and leaving a bill on the mantle marked "Paid in Full." It plays almost like an episode of "Extreme Makeover" and skims the surface of the story just as much. Helprin gets into specifics about carpentry and construction at the expense of diving headlong into the torrents of emotion that you would think the characters are feeling, and then leads us to a pat ending. The story could have resonated as a parable about the possibility of redemption through sacrifice, but the fact that it leaves one wanting to point out the taste of the decorator suggests that Helprin falls short of the transcendence he attempts.

I still admire Helprin's craftsmanship, but with this collection, he is perceptibly not as involving when it comes to matters of the heart and soul. His stories read more like fables without an equal amount of attention paid to the human condition. Characters come off as stereotypes rather than people: males are brave and uncompromising, and most of his females are breathtakingly beautiful. Nonetheless, Helprin's writing can be exquisite, and sometimes he creates worlds so dark that the ameliorative power of wallowing in them is to allow readers to appreciate what they have. I only wish the author could have delved a little deeper into the human heart to make these stories really soar.

Rating:
Summary: The sweetest tears
Review: For many years now, when I forget how precious life is, I re-read Helprin's short stories, and, inevitably, I cry, regardless of the outcome of the story. His storytelling moves me profoundly, in ways that I'm just too inarticulate to express. And so it is with "The Pacific". I'll remember every word of "Monday" for the rest of my life. I'm humbled by his ability to capture what makes life worth living, even in the darkest moments of his characters' lives. I'm glad to have him back on my bookshelf (where he doesn't spend much time, considering I've read "Soldier" at least 12 times; 3 years ago I bought a cheap paperback version because hauling the hard back copy to the beach was impinging on my carry-on limit and the sand content accumulated between the pages was making it too heavy to lift).

Buy and treasure this book.



Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous
Review: I have missed Helprin terribly, and though these stories don't make up for ten years without any new stuff from him, they are beautiful and moving, each one a gem to be pondered and savored before moving on to the next. Let's hope a full length novel follows soon.

Rating:
Summary: High Art
Review: If you've never read Mark Helprin, I can't think of a better place to start. He has written transcendent novels and stories, but this collection resides in the pantheon of fiction, American or otherwise.

I'm not even fully through this collection and yet I cannot recommend this enough. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, Helprin's stories are to American fiction--in soul and craft--what Whitman's work is to American poetry.

These stories are diverse. Some are comedic, some are profound and some are "merely" touching. Each stands on its own, defiantly, humbly and sometimes in between. In reading them you experience the art of a writer at the absolute pinnacle of his talent...and that pinnacle is lofty indeed, and the view is spectacular.



Rating:
Summary: The most gifted lyrical writer alive today
Review: Mark Helprin has a lyrical gift for appreciating the world as few writers do today. Pasternak and Chekhov did, but this fine talent is no longer common. Among living writers I think Helprin is unsurpassed in his ability to finely tune a sentence, to make you feel the colors of an Italian afternoon or the bittersweet nuance of a memory. Mark is a bit conservative politically as his Wall Street Journal writings show, but I agree that he is, if not the finest, among the best two or three that are writing today.

Rating:
Summary: "His writing remains the gold standard of American fiction"
Review: Perhaps it is good that we are blessed with the riveting wonderment of a Mark Helprin short story collection every
other decade or so. His stories are so infused with light that their sheer brightness frightens away those who would prefer their fiction to reflect things the way they would want them to be rather than the way they are in the light of eternity. "The Pacific And Other Stories" is fiction bathed in glory, yet with its feet still on the ground. Even through absurdity and laughter, the power behind the prose never wavers, remaining irrevocable and true as a swallow on it's way home. Mark Helprin's anointed prose ever lingers on the threshold of immortality, paradoxically beyond words. It lures and beguiles you like a tender breeze on a warm summer's evening, only to sometimes return and break the deepest part of your heart in the end. But when the end comes, you will find that you have made a wondrous journey which you would not have missed for all the world.



Rating:
Summary: A book filled with gifts
Review: Reading Mark Helprin's stories, short and long, call forth every emotion. They are all about love and honor and the gifts parents, children and lovers give to one another. Some of the gifts are sent but never received. Some of the gifts multiply and change the lives of the donors who join in the giving.

The stories Monday and Perfection are so powerful that I found I had to tell whoever I was talking to about them.

Discovering that Helprin had written a new book was a gift to me. Treat yourself and read it.

Rating:
Summary: Dear Mr. Helprin:
Review: Thank you, thank you, thank you...for your latest book: "The Pacific and Other Stories".

Yet another amazing achievement by you, ("A Soldier of The Great War" is my all-time favorite novel) in story telling and use of the English language. Simply the highest level of writing I have experienced. Like Roger Reeves' bat in "Perfection", I believe an angel has taken control of your pen and allowed you to perfectly write words on a page to create your novels and short stories. The only problem: It takes me longer to read your books than any others. Why? Because so much of your prose is so beautifully written, I'm compelled to re-read sentences, paragraphs, pages, again and again, to savor the words and thoughts, before I continue on with the rest of the book. I recommend this book to anyone who doesnt mind learning some valuable life lessons from reading fiction.

PS: When is your next full-length novel? Please let me know. I await your reply.

Rating:
Summary: Stepping Up
Review: These stories are brilliantly written, all of them engaging. These are stories of people who step-up and become a little bit better than they were. The characters in these stories, no matter what has happened in thier lives, get the opportunity to be better than they were whether it be to love more deeply, commit when commitment isn't possible, or be brave even if you are the only one who knows of your bravery. It is nice to read redemptive stories. This book reminds me of how unfulfilled I have been for such stories. I've read Helprin for years and count A Soldier of the Great War as one on my all time top ten list.

Rating:
Summary: Not To Be Missed
Review: This book replaces a tattered notebook of Mr. Helprin's stories containing copies I have culled from various and sundry sources and to which I often return. The writing is beyond my ability to praise. Reading his work can be compared to listening to a gifted musician; his prose is musical and ideas profound.

These are moral tales. I believe that much of Mr. Helprin's fiction evidences a deep frustration with the fact that we live amidst such richness of knowledge and opportunity in an incredibly beautiful world yet we fall prey to lesser enticements; we ignore or forget the truths upon which anything good and true must rest. They are stories about discoveries of surpassing worth and importance. We owe it to ourselves to turn off the TV, put down the newspaper, and give Mr. Helprin a chance to point us to our better natures.