FOR THE SECOND TIME IN HIS LAST two novels, literary magician Mark Helprin, 47, offers the reminiscences of an eccentric, brilliantly cross-grained geezer. In his 1991 novel, A Soldier of the Great War, he portrayed an indomitable hero who was a soldier and lover when young and, despite adversities, a philosopher and contemplator of art when old. It was perhaps the work of a young man assuring himself that life can be a reasonable, dignified progression toward old age.
There is some of this romantic, celebratory quality in Memoir from Antproof Case (Harcourt Brace; 514 pages; $24), but reasonableness does not...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
