My favorite author is Mark Helprin ("A Solider of the Great War" etc.). He tells soaring stories with pristine, precise prose that works its way into every pore of your soul. What got me hooked years ago was the fact that Helprin's prose -- his fiction -- is relentlessly optimistic, and not cheesily so. His writing made me realize I could slink through life as a cynic, or I could pilot along optimistically. Indeed, even in the darkest moments, there is life if you choose to see it.
He's a conservative columnist, and he writes (too infrequently) for The Wall Street Journal. Today he penned a winner: "McCain and the Talk-Show Hosts," a piece that finally took to task the jabbering jackasses of the jaw-jockey circuit.
His last words were priceless as he described: the "relentlessly crocodilian Ann Coulter." Most of us would labor for a day or more coming up with that description. For Helprin, no doubt, it flowed effortlessly. Man, if I could write like that..........
Onward:
"5 a.m. in the morning." That's what a.m. is: the morning. It's bad enough to be awake at that hour, let alone emphasize the point redundantly. A.M.=Ante Meridiem, or before noon in Latin. (Without the periods, of course, it means amplitude modulation, a form of radio wave, which, coincidentally, carries many of the jabbering jackasses of the jaw-jockey circuit.)
2 comments:
I too, admire Helprin's novels (I am more taken with "A Winter's Tale" though).
Helprin was the guy who wrote beautiful words for Bob Dole as the man was running for president -- making Dole sound, for a moment, like a compassionate conservative. And then Helprin quit in a snit when Dole's handlers began hacking his pristine prose.
While 90 percent of that article was well-reasoned and well-written, I think he's being either disingenuous or -- more likely -- blind by saying tests for "right-thinking" are more common among liberals than conservatives.
absolutely agree on all points, and thanks for recalling that Dole speech. I remember vividly thinking if anyone could make Dole shine it was Helprin and then, well, that was the end of that. Good thing too. Although i would have loved a Dole presidency solely for his wit.
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