169 of 177 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Helprin's richest work. Immerse yourself in its beauties., February 23, 2004
Mark Helprin once offered this advice to an aspiring writer on how best to construct a work, to grab the attention of the reader (and here I can only paraphrase, as I have misplaced the source document): "Treat your story as if a stone thrown into a still pool, coming to rest at the bottom. Then dive in after it." The paraphrase is accurate enough for my purposes, and the message is clear: Know well the end of your journey before you begin it.
Little did I know then, when I had meandered across Helprin's advice, that it would be central to my ability to write my thoughts on "A Soldier of the Great War." For about the same length of time as that advice had been imprinted somewhere in my brain, I had also been faced with the daunting prospect of commenting on a thrice-read book, now bulging with scores of page markers as reminders to me of phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and even full pages, all worthy of comment. And, it seemed, the longer I put this task off, the more daunting it became.
Fortunately, this block was broken in the recent past, when I needed to give careful thought to a birthday gift for a friend. The gift couldn't appear to be too lavish, except in the riches of its contents. It needed to be something that would be new to this friend (and here I was at some risk), and at the same time something that would not soon - if ever - be forgotten. In the end, I decided to chance it with "A Soldier of the Great War," enclosing a brief note regarding what was in store. And the working through of that note was the curative that I needed for providing my comments on this Helprin work. So I threw my own stone into the pool and dove in after it.
"A Soldier of the Great War" flows over with great themes, the long arc of which is the relating of its protagonist's - Alessandro Giuliani's - life story, told in retrospect from Alessandro's memories of that life to a youth who accompanies him on a seemingly short journey from Rome to a near-distant village. And, following his own advice regarding the stone thrown in the pool, Helprin's lyrical, singing prose begins with the story's first paragraph, drawing the reader, too, to dive in, and doesn't let up until the very last page (where it then lingers for a very long while).
The overarching themes are classic: love and war; of love discovered, then lost, then found once again; of the blunt impersonality and the lunacy of war. They - and others - are all juxtaposed with typical Helprinian brilliance. There are maniacally funny set-pieces, interwoven so seamlessly into the narrative that one is not aware at first of Helprin's skill with the set-piece device as one is drawn in. (These include an excursion to the plains of Eastern Hungary that is one of the most remarkable of such pieces ever written.) There are passages of heartrending grief quite beyond one's ability to deal with them. And the story teems with characters both bigger than life and smaller and meaner than dirt.
But, at its core, "A Soldier of the Great War" is a story about love and beauty and the permutations one can make of those two words. And it is for this reason that I chose it. If you're like me, it will take you forever and a day to read it, as you find yourself re-reading - often several times, and on occasion out-loud just to hear what Helprin's words sound like - passage after passage after soaring passage.
This book is, also, everything that has already been written about it. Like Helprin's other major works, it has autobiographical content of both experience and opinion interspersed throughout. (One need not be aware of this before the fact; it is inessential to the story.) The story is indeed a classic Bildungsroman - a "novel of formation" that traces Alessandro Giuliani's growth in spirit over his life - and one of the very best of its genre. There is a certain convenience that, at least alphabetically, Helprin fits comfortably between Heller and Hemingway. But use this convenience wisely, as when browsing under "Helprin" in a bookstore: This story is every bit the equal of "Catch 22" in its often manic depiction of the lunacy of war, but is far more lyrical; a love song where Heller's work clearly is not. And, if "A Farewell to Arms" captured the Great War from Hemingway's uniquely American perspective, Helprin, by opting for an Italian protagonist, finds a universality that eludes Hemingway, and with prose that a century hence will continue to sing, unlike Hemingway's, which already seems stilted by comparison.
Finally, I am unsure as to whether I envy those who, like my friend, are experiencing this work for the first time (but I think that I do). Newcomers likely will be torn between lingering on each page and turning to the next, as the story races to its astonishing, yet in hindsight, perfectly-crafted and satisfying end: Helprin's stone indeed has landed in the deepest part of his pool. For re-readers like me, it matters not that one knows in advance how the story ends; there is a distinct pleasure to be derived from a lingering journey that is its own reward.
So, at long last, and not without solemnity, I can carefully remove those scores of page markers, needing them no longer. And thus I begin my fourth traversal of this work, this time with a sixth sense that a guiding force will keep my friend and me on the same page. While there are factors which make it an uncertain thing that we will read these pages aloud, perhaps in my meanderings I will find evidence elsewhere that this gift, like Helprin's stone, has come to rest at the right place.
Bob Zeidler
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73 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Greatest American Novel of the Late 20th Century, October 19, 2004
One of the truly great works of American fiction. I will go so far to say as it is the finest work of fiction I've read written in the last half of the 20th century.
In "A Soldier of the Great War" Mark Helprin creates a story encompassing the whole of humanity weaving reality with a world of fantastic wonder. The unbelievable becomes real and what seems simple is only deceptively so and bends into the fascinatingly complex.
Helprin's style is enigmatic; his tale told in equal parts masculine bravado and contemplative delicacy. It is nothing short of astonishing.
Beginning with the preparation for a visit to his daughter, we follow the elderly Alessandro Giuliani on a seemingly routine bus journey. Things turn and a short journey turns into adventure when the old man comes to the aid of a teenager and he begins sharing his story and the lessons learned over a life rich and eventful. A life of youthful privilege gives way to the horrors of WWI and discoveries of love, loss and destiny.
Helprin elevates American fiction to that pantheon we reserve for storytellers the likes of Dickens, Cervantes, Dumas and Hesse. With this book (and to a certain degree "Winter's Tale")- he tightens the gap between great writers of "then" and "now" bringing contemporary fiction a true and rare respectability.
All adulation would, of course, mean nothing if this were receiving accolades solely on style and structure and ignoring the "readability" factor. On that front, I can only say this is a book I cannot imagine anyone not falling in love with and that, my friends, is the rarest book of all.
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45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best - if not THE best - books I've ever read!, April 24, 1998
After scrolling through endless "10"s, eloquently written, it's hard to know what to add to the accolades heaped upon this novel by your readers, but I'll try!
Mark Helprin has written the 'perfect' book! This novel has everything - philosophy, adventure, great drama, pathos and tragedy, surrealism (of the John Irving type), comedy, romance, art history, riveting characterization, imaginative plotting and structure, and evocative writing.
As an English and history teacher, with a grim fascination for the horror that was WWI, I was astounded by the brilliance of having the main character, a student of aesthetics, confronting the ugliness of the war. This novel just worked for me. The sweep of the character's wanderings, from the Italian Alps, to the dusty hills of Sicily; from the catacombs of Rome to the back streets of Venice, are especially appealing to those who have visited Italy. There are scenes that are seared into my mind - like the one in the Carrera marble quarry, where the marble that once supplied the great Renaissance masters now supplies gravestones for a million dead Italian soldiers.
This novel inspired me to go to Venice to view "La Tempesta" myself. It's that kind of book. Read it. You WON"T be disappointed.
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