SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The unnamed narrator of Mark Helprin's new novel, "Elegy In Blue," says his allegiance is to ghosts - loved ones he has lost in an epical life in which we meet him at the age of 82, living in a subsidized studio apartment with an expansive view that runs from Brooklyn's rooftops to the sky and to the sea. And the narrative is interspersed with insights that stand above the story in their depiction of New York.
Mark Helprin, the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of "The Oceans And The Stars" and "Winter's Tale," joins us in our studios. Thanks so much for being with us.
MARK HELPRIN: You're welcome.
SIMON: How did this man of wealth and standing, surrounded by love, wind up alone in a kind of crow's nest apartment in Brooklyn?
HELPRIN: Well, when I was a senior in college, my thesis was on "Hamlet." The title was "Love In A Time of Violence." And this narrator, who was born in 1940, lost his father in the war. And then he was a grunt in Vietnam, had a six-hour surgery without anesthesia. And then his son was killed in the Second Gulf War, and his wife was killed in a terrorist incident. So that alone is enough to shake your foundations. But for killing the terrorist who killed his wife, you know, on the spot, he was villainized and ostracized and sued. His house was burned down. He lost everything. And he ended up on the docks in Brooklyn without shoes, with his feet cut, delirious with fever, infected, in - in his clothing in shreds like a homeless person, which is what he was.
That's how he got there. But I have to say that the trajectory of the book is kind of like a whale. The whale dives down into the darkness, into the cold, and then something turns it around. And it powers up like a rocket and then breaches the surface, into the blue sky with foam and everything like that. And that's the trajectory of the book.
SIMON: Well, tell us about the love of his life, Clare.
HELPRIN: Her name was Clare Kennedy, and she's modeled on my wife. In many ways, the book is autobiographical. And in fact, the dedication of the book says, she knows very well for whom this was written.
SIMON: I wondered if that was your...
HELPRIN: Yeah. Yeah. But she's a lawyer, as my wife was a lawyer with a law firm in Rockefeller Center. And when they meet, it's because he's just founded his investment banking firm. They need a lawyer, and he goes to her office. That's the lawyer that they're assigned to. It's her first case.
SIMON: A terrible event of violence that takes his wife from him and, I guess we can fairly say, ruins his life. Why doesn't he just go to some small town in Maine and watch the ships go by? Why does he stay in New York?
HELPRIN: Well, I can sort of answer that in a personal way, which is - then will reverberate and slap me in the face, which is that, like me, that's where his mother and father and grandparents lived and were born and died. That's where his - where he met his wife and married her. That's where his son was born. He can see in it answers to things because there's so much in it. I've always thought that of New York 'cause it is the city that is my home, or was my home before I left. And, no, he would never leave and go to Maine. He'd - he would - in fact, when my wife and I, a long time ago, 30 years ago, left New York, we went to Seattle. We wanted to live in Seattle. And we just couldn't hack it because it wasn't home, so we returned. And he wouldn't leave.
SIMON: Story takes on another dimension when the unnamed narrator catches Javier (ph), one of the supers in his building, weeping by the garbage cans.
HELPRIN: Yeah. Javier is the - is a porter. The cartel wants his 15-year-old daughter. His 8-year-old son has been recruited because of the gift of an iPhone to be a messenger in the drug trade. And he says if he fights them, they'll kill him. If he flees, they'll find him because he says they're everywhere, and they are everywhere. And if they didn't find me, they would kill my people in Mexico, my family in Mexico. So he's completely stuck, and he doesn't know what to do.
SIMON: And why does he choose to get that? And when you say get him unstuck, we're not talking about just writing a letter of recommendation.
HELPRIN: No.
SIMON: I won't describe what he goes through, but I was left with an idea that, whatever the hazards, it gave him a new sense of purpose.
HELPRIN: He sees this as a way to do good, to help this guy and his family, and also as a way to help himself. But on the other hand, there's also something else, which is, how can he not do it? How can he not protect this family, which is going to be completely destroyed in the most horrible way? And he knows it, and he has the means to stop it.
SIMON: For all your love of and eloquence about New York, you're a farmer.
HELPRIN: Yeah. Well, you know, when I was a kid, they actually had a dairy farm in New York within the city limits.
SIMON: I've heard about this. Yes.
HELPRIN: Yeah. But yeah. I'm a - I have a farm in Virginia. New York was, I guess, too much for me in my old age, and I am now bucolic. It's very, very hard stuff. You know, people don't know how hard it is to farm.
SIMON: Does the farming nourish or get in the way of your writing?
HELPRIN: No, it certainly doesn't get in the way, and it doesn't nourish. It's neither. Well, it does take time, and it is tiring. But I would be the happiest person in the world, and I almost am, if all I had to do every day was work on the farm and write.
SIMON: Mark Helprin. His latest novel is "Elegy In Blue." Thank you so much for being with us.
HELPRIN: You're very welcome. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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