Intro. (Recording date: June 9, 2024.)
Russ Roberts: Today is June 9th, 2024. My guest is novelist and writer, Mark Helprin. I think I have read every book that he has written, every word that he has put between two covers of any book. Mark was here on June of 2009 talking about his book, Digital Barbarism.
Our topic for today, among other things, is his latest book, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story. Mark, welcome back to EconTalk.
Mark Helprin: Thank you, Russ.
Russ Roberts: We’ll get to your book, but I want to start by talking about reading and writing. When you were growing up as a boy and a young man, did you have favorite authors, people you read intensely that affected you?
Mark Helprin: Yes. Do you see what’s behind me?
Russ Roberts: Yeah, it’s beautiful.
Mark Helprin: The radio audience can’t see that, but there’s 7,000 books there. And it’s a very barbaric thing for you to ask me to choose my favorites from those.
The answer is: I read everything.
For example, when I was a boy of 13, my father–who had been and really was on and off in American intelligence and military–was sent to Jamaica because there was a–the Rastafarians made a rebellion against the British. Jamaica was still a British colony at the time. And, the Rastafarians killed six British troops.
These days, you kill six troops, big deal; no one cares about anything. But, there was a big scandal then. And, Britain thought that it was unable to handle it, particularly because it was the Cubans–this is a year after the Cuban Revolution–who had stirred all this up. And, we sent–America sent–I guess a bunch of people down there.
My father was one of them.
And he took me, and my mother. And we lived there for a while.
And, while we lived there–I mean, it was actually very dramatic. At one point, we had to go from Oracabessa, the town where we lived, to Ocho Rios, when there was kind of an uprising. I remember the car being attacked. And we drove out to the Reynold’s Metals Bauxite Pier in Ocho Rios, and an American submarine came up to take us off.
But anyway, that’s a different story.
Well, in the time that we were there, I read the entire Ocho Rios, or maybe it was St. Mary’s–I forgot exactly which town it was–library, the whole thing. I would read for 12, 14 hours a day.
And in fact, I mean, because I have so many things that I read and that are deeply internalized.
But at that point, it was the–I was doing Irish literature. And, I read all of Sean O’Casey. And I read all of Yeats, and Synge; and Sean O’Faolain–which is ironic because Sean O’Faolain’s daughter, who was sort of a kind of leftist, really slammed my first book in some British publication. And I loved her father’s writing. She’s a short story writer.
So, I did all the Irish literature.
And then, in my high school–in my school; it was actually kindergarten, nursery school through 12th grade–there was a little girl who was much younger than me named Susanna Barolini. And her father was a famous Italian writer who had, like so many Italian writers, come to the United States because of Mussolini.
And he was a friend of John Cheever, who was also a friend of my family. And I went to school with her and with Cheever’s children. And Cheever used to swim in our swimming pool all the time. I knew him since I was a little kid.
And so, I was interested in Italian literature at the time, and I went to see Signor Barolini, who gave me a recommendation for college, to Harvard. Actually, it wasn’t so much a recommendation, but he introduced me to Dante Della Terza, who was the Professor of Italian at Harvard, who taught Dante.
So, as a freshman with this introduction, I went right into Della Terza’s course, and I began reading Italian literature. As far as favorites go, my lodestars were Shakespeare and Dante.
Oh, and then I did Russian, too. I even met Nabokov. And, there was a professor at Harvard called Vsevolod Setchkarev. And, he had a wooden leg. One of his legs was wooden. And, he would go boom, boom, boom, up through the lecture hall, up to the podium, and then take out of his pocket a little postage-stamp size piece of paper, which he would unfold. And, it was maybe this big. And those were his lecture notes. And, he would always go like this, ‘Well–‘ And then, start his lecture. And, that was–Slavic 150: Russian Literature.
And, I’d read a lot of that in high school too, due to this really good teacher that I had throughout high school who was really good in terms of literature. But, he also had affairs with girls in my class, which was not good.
Russ Roberts: So, who do you read now for fun?
Mark Helprin: Since I spent most of my youth and young manhood reading fiction, I don’t read fiction anymore.
Russ Roberts: Wow.
Mark Helprin: I just don’t.
For one, I have a parallel career in defense and foreign relations, and I have to keep up on that. And I read very slowly and very methodically and thoroughly. I read everything.
You mentioned to me before we went on air that you read every word of a book that you are interviewing about. I do the same. I don’t review fiction–and that’s a whole long story of why I don’t review fiction or serve on prize juries or do quotes or blurbs–or ask for them either. That’s a very long story–an interesting one, actually.
But, if I do agree to read a non-fiction book–which I will do rarely–I read every word, every footnote, constantly checking it, checking the veracity of it, thinking about: ‘Does this make sense in view of that,’ what was just said? Is it consistent? Is there continuity?
So, it takes me a long time to read stuff, and I’m pretty much committed to all the military and professional journals and books of that nature.
Russ Roberts: Just a slight footnote correction. I said I try to read every word. Many of the books, I do. For those I don’t manage to read every word because I realize I’m not as interested as I had hoped, I try to read every page–which is not quite the same thing.
Mark Helprin: I see. Well, I’m compulsive. I’m compulsive, and totally, my wife says, I have OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). If I start a book or a journal, I have to read every word–
Russ Roberts: No kidding–
Mark Helprin: When I was a little kid, when I was seven or eight, I would read the entire New York Times. And, by the way, it didn’t ruin me–but every single word. Including all the stock quotes. You see. So, that was really–
Russ Roberts: So, I don’t have to ask you if you finish the books you start.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, I could tell. I used to. We talked about on the program before, as I get older, I’ve gotten a little bit better–or worse depending on your perspective: I don’t finish every book I start.
Russ Roberts: Talk about your writing career for a minute. You started off–if I’m correct, your first published novel was Refiner’s Fire, which was published in 1977.
Russ Roberts: What were you doing–and, you wrote some short stories before that. You wrote Dove of the East, the collection, and Ellis Island–I think were both published before Refiner’s Fire, is that right?
Mark Helprin: Yeah, they were published in 1975. And, the stories–the first story that I published–was in 1969 in The New Yorker.
Russ Roberts: Did you have a day job before you published Refiner’s Fire? And did Refiner’s Fire allow you to be a full-time novelist, or did that take till Winter’s Tale, which I think was the next one?
Mark Helprin: Oh, well, I started writing really, and started trying to make my living as a writer in 1963 when I was just in high school. And I went to Harper & Row and gave my short stories to an editor named Joan Conn; and got a very good reaction from it, but they didn’t publish it.
And, let’s see: when I published my first stories with The New Yorker, I was in college, and then in graduate school I published other stories. And then, I was in the Army in Sahel. Did you know that?
Russ Roberts: The Israeli army?
Mark Helprin: Yeah. And so, that was my day job.
Russ Roberts: How did that happen? What prompted you to do that, and how hard was that, and what was that like? I know you wrote about it in passing in Refiner’s Fire and elsewhere, but–
Mark Helprin: I was in graduate school at Harvard in Middle Eastern Studies, and I spent two-and-a-half years doing that. And, when I finished, I went to Israel and made Aliyah and went into the Army.
But then, after I came home, I kept on writing stories. I was a graduate student at Princeton for a while, and then I published–I sold in 1974–the first collection of short stories, which had been running in The New Yorker and elsewhere.
And then, as far as day jobs go, I–until Winter’s Tale, really, I worked in every conceivable thing you can imagine. You know, washing dishes and loading trucks and being a surveyor, an agricultural worker–many, many, many things.
And by the way, I’ve kept up that habit, because we have a farm here and I do just about everything on the farm. Very heavy work, even though I’m insanely too old to do it. And, I’ve slowed down, but I do it. The things that most people don’t do at my age, or even when they’re younger, if they’re in the so-called knowledge professions. Always done that.
Russ Roberts: Do you have a writing routine that’s been constant throughout your career as a writer, or has it evolved or changed over time?
Mark Helprin: Oh, I don’t know. I can only write about three hours at a time, and that passes like that. It’s as if, when I finish, I think, ‘This was three hours?’ It seems like one minute. I’m not aware of time when that happens.
But, on the other hand, I can’t write any more than that, so I do other things. And that counts–these days, anyway.
Editing, too. I used to write–I used to do all kinds of things in the day: lots of exercise and other type of work. Reading. Tremendous amount of reading: newspapers, journals, books, magazines, whatever. And then, when I was younger, I’d have dinner and have a mug of tea and about three boxes of cookies, and then work until about one o’clock in the morning.
But, I can’t do that anymore. These days, I try to work in the morning when I’m fresh.
Russ Roberts: Do you work seven days a week? Do you try to write every day?
Mark Helprin: No, because I can’t. There’s too many interruptions for that. But, when I’m going, yeah, I do, actually. If I can get to a point where it’s sort of like a potter’s wheel–you keep on pushing; it has an even–it keeps on going around and around at the same velocity. When I get at that point, then yeah, I do. I never stop.
I mean, for instance, this is Sunday and I’ll be working today. It’s just like any other day. Of course, this is Yom Rishon in Israel where it is a work day. But yeah, I confess: I even work on Shabbat.
Russ Roberts: You mentioned you don’t reread your books. Do you have a favorite?
Russ Roberts: Or is it the last one?
Mark Helprin: No. My favorite is a collection of short stories called The Pacific. Because, if I can be critical of myself, which I learned to do from my father, who was extremely tough on me and very, very critical, and was tough on himself–tougher on himself–than anyone else was on him–I write short stories somewhat better than I do novels. I think as a novelist, I would stand–if I had to present my work to St. Peter–granted, that’s the wrong place–but if that’s what I found out, if I had to say, ‘Okay, here’s my entrance ticket,’ I would give him my short stories, not novels. And of those, the most mature and I think the best are in a book called The Pacific, which was published by Penguin Press in about 2005. And, that’s my favorite book of my own.
Russ Roberts: How about your favorite novel–of yours?
Mark Helprin: You know, that’s very hard. I guess–they’re all different. I would be far wealthier if I were to write the same novel each time I wrote a novel. But I don’t. And, the themes and the attention to language, etc., yes, that runs through everything. But, they are highly different.
I mean, this book that we’re ostensibly talking about today, which we haven’t even mentioned, is a book, which is–it could be mistaken if you were really dumb for a Tom Clancy book. But, on the other hand, then you have Winter’s Tale, which was mistaken for a fantasy novel–which it was not: I detest fantasy. It was just a novel written in the tradition of literature where not everything is realism. It’s not fantasy. It’s–not at all.
And then, there was A Soldier of the Great War, which was a very realistic, sort, Tolstoyan type of novel. Freddie and Fredericka, which is a comic novel–
Russ Roberts: (?) a farce–
Mark Helprin: And, the present–they’re all different. They’re all different. So, I guess if the one I’d have to present to St. Peter or St. (?) would be A Soldier of the Great War. That’s the one.
Russ Roberts: So, for those who are listening who have not read Mark’s work, he’s, I think, the greatest living novelist–and that’s obviously a very subjective opinion. But, when I have an author who I love, I like to read the author in chronological order.
So, you might start with the short stories of Ellis Island and Dove of the East and then move on to his first novel, Refiner’s Fire.
And, alternatively, if you’re only going to take a dip into the work, I would–perfection in “The Pacific.” That particular short story, I think, is an incredible masterpiece. And, almost every story in there is wonderful. I agree with you. Just stupid to even say so, but it is a lovely, lovely book.
And, for novels, I think Solider of the Great War is your masterpiece, although I like them all.
Many of your books will make the reader cry if they’re in the right frame of mind and hope and experience joy and all kinds of fantastic emotions. And, there’s a lot of humor in your work. Freddie and Fredericka, in particular, as you say, is a comic, but all of your books have a comic element, some more than others.
The last thing I’d add before we move on is that I read your trilogy of children’s stories. You have a trilogy–I’m going to forget the name of the trilogy, when it was published as a trilogy, but the first volume is Swan Lake. You probably remember the names.
Mark Helprin: Yeah. There were three books, Swan Lake, A City in Winter, and The Veil of Snows. And, they were published in one volume as a–
Russ Roberts: City Far and Clear? Far and–
Mark Helprin: No. A Kingdom Far and Clear.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, correct.
Anyway, I read those in total out loud to my daughter when she was quite young, and she also became a fan. And that’s a delightful book for an adult. Just FYI (for your information) for listeners.
Mark Helprin: I have to thank you, by the way, for what you said. And it’s extremely generous. And you have made up for my mother. When I do a book–when I used to do, because I don’t do it anymore–book events, and someone would introduce me, and I’d always say, ‘My mother wrote that,’ as a joke.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. Sure.
Mark Helprin: But, what they didn’t know, and why I thank you now for making up for my mother was: my mother never read anything that I ever wrote.
Russ Roberts: That’s very sad.
Mark Helprin: Yeah. Well, she had her own special needs. And, my father was really tough on everything. So, from my family, my mother and father, I got a lot of–they were wonderful, actually, but they were so tough. And, my mother actually never read anything that I ever wrote. So, thank you for what you said and making up for my mother. It’s good.
Russ Roberts: Yeah, she goes strut(?) that, I’m sure.
Russ Roberts: So, let’s turn to the book that you published most recently, The Oceans and the Stars. On your webpage, you talk about the origins of the book. You say you began to imagine it many decades ago. Explain that. And, for listeners, it’s a book set mostly at sea. Not entirely, but much of it is at sea. And, what did you mean by saying you began to imagine it many decades ago, and how did you come to write a book with that level of detail about naval military capability?
Mark Helprin: Okay. Well, it’s two questions. The first: In 1967, I went to Israel in June for the Six-Day War. And, when I came back in August–I didn’t have to, but I worked my passage in the British Merchant Navy. And so, I essentially joined the British Merchant Navy, which is an auxiliary arm of the Royal Navy.
And, I was on a collier called the MV–Motor Vessel–Stone Pool. And, we would go across the Atlantic. We’d carry coal from West Virginia to Europe, or wheat from the United States to Europe. And, empty coming back.
It was really strange because the United States was providing coal and wheat, and Europe wasn’t sending anything to us that was bulk.
But, anyway, I stood long watches at the helm of this ship. You have to keep it on a compass heading. And, it’s quite monotonous. Also, if you’re a lookout and you’re in the crow’s nest and you go up there for eight hours or so, that’s fairly monotonous if there’s nothing to see on the sea.
So, you think a lot. (More to come, 22:53)
