Paris in the Present Tense

by Mark Helprin

Overview

Vpervye na russkom — novejshee proizvedenie avtora "Zimnej skazki": romana, stavshego sovremennoj klassikoj i nedavno ekranizirovannogo (v glavnyh rolyah Kolin Farrell, Dzhessika Braun-Findli, Rassell Krou, Uil'yam Hyort, Uill Smit; v rossijskom prokate fil'm poluchil nazvanie "Lyubov' skvoz' vremya"). "Parizh v nastoyashchem vremeni" — eto glubokij vzglyad na zhizn' i ee slozhnosti cherez ochishchayushchuyu prizmu iskusstva i pamyati. Itak, poznakom'tes' s ZHyulem Lakurom — violonchelistom, kompozitorom, prepodavatelem Sorbonny, veteranom vojny v Alzhire; roditeli ego pogibli pered samym osvobozhdeniem Francii ot fashistskoj okkupacii, i etu travmu on prones cherez vsyu zhizn'. On vsegda "vlyublyalsya sil'no i molnienosno, v zhenshchin, po pravu dostojnyh lyubvi i eyu ne obdelennyh" i dazhe posle smerti zheny, s kotoroj prozhil vsyu zhizn', ne utratil etoj privychki. Odnazhdy ego staryj drug, vsemirno izvestnyj filosof Fransua Erenshtamm, predlozhil ZHyulyu napisat' reklamnyj dzhingl dlya krupnejshej v mire strahovoj kompanii "Ejkorn", sulivshej basnoslovnyj gonorar, i ZHyul' prinyal etot vyzov — drugih sposobov najti den'gi na lechenie vnuka, stradayushchego ot lejkemii, vse ravno ne bylo… ""Parizh v nastoyashchem vremeni" — eto v pervuyu ochered' liricheskoe vyskazyvanie o lyubvi i utrate, vosparyayushchee do poistine dzhojsovskih krasot" (The New York Times).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9785389175877
Publisher:	Azbooka
Publication date:	12/02/2019
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	751,860
File size:	681 KB

About the Author

Mark Helprin is the acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Winter’s Tale, In Sunlight and in Shadow, A Soldier of the Great War, Freddy and Fredericka, The Pacific, Ellis Island, Memoir from Antproof Case, and numerous other works. His novels are translated into more than twenty languages and read around the world. He lives in Virginia.

Hometown:

Upstate New York

Date of Birth:

June 28, 1947

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

A.B., Harvard University, 1969; A.M., 1972. Postgraduate study at Oxford University, 1976-77.

Editorial Reviews

A rhetorician might slice [Helprin's] prose style into scraps of Greek—asyndeton here, hypotaxis there—but that would fail to account for the intensely lyrical voice that both heightens and deepens every sentence, at times attaining a kind of Joycean beauty…Part of this force comes from the images that fly off Helprin's sentences like glitter from a sparkler…Part of it comes from the sensuality of Jules's response to the physical world around him…[Helprin's] Paris does exist in the present tense, irresistibly, undeniably real and alive, as though summoned by its creator rather than imagined. In this, the novel performs perfectly the function of literature, which is not to escape the world but to enter more completely into it.

The New York Times Book Review - Max Byrd

Above all else, this well-plotted and engaging novel—filled with thoughtful ruminations on life accompanied by sumptuous writing—is a love letter to Paris. . . This novel is grand in scale with one interesting, fully-developed character after another . . .Paris in the Present Tensedeserves to be read and devoured. It is nearly a perfect contemporary novel.”

Paul LaRosa - New York Journal of Books

In Mark Helprin’s newest novel,Paris in the Present Tense, yesterday is never far from today . . . In his singing prose, unique characters and a story that is both heartbreaking and inspiring, Helprin has given readers a thoughtful gift.”

The Emporia Gazette

Mark Helprin is a fabulous writer of the sort that makes you want to capitalize the word, a justly acclaimed master . . . Helprin holds the reader’s attention, directing it to things we see but ignore and to the inner life of the mind . . . entrancing.

Neal Gendler - The American Jewish World

The fluidity of Helprin’sprose . . . makes this novel of ideas so utterly captivating.

starred review Booklist

On one level,Paris in the Present Tenseis a caper, likeThe Sting, in which Jules comes up with an intricate and clever way to make his death pay off, quite literally. It’s also a bit of a romance, as he falls instantly and hopelessly in love (despite his devotion to Jacqueline) with a student named Élodi who is half-a-century his junior. Helprin’s style, however, elevates the story with sumptuous descriptions and complex characters whose conversations sometimes become analyses of such issues as anti-Semitism or meditations on the nature of music, time and love.”

Colette Bancroft - Tampa Bay Times

This is a very ambitious novel, to be read at many levels and thought about for a long time. Mark Helprin is his own master, telling a story that is in part a thriller and in part a reflection on the way of the world, its rights and its wrongs. In intention, he is closer to Victor Hugo or Alexandre Dumas than to any contemporary novelist I know of . . . The words most appropriate for this novel happen to come from French: It is a tour de force.

David Pryce-Jones - National Review

Haunting . . . extraordinary.

PEOPLE magazine

Parisin the Present Tenseisa twilight novel, and its love affair, essential to any Helprin work, is a complex one, haunted by time . . . Helprin, author of the indelibleWinter’s TaleandA Soldier of the Great War, has always been most comfortable in the epic mode, retaining a classicist’s eye for beauty while preserving enough of the contemporary world to speak to the present. His prose has an aching beauty.”

Saul Austerlitz - The Boston Globe

In mostofthenovels written intheUnited States since World War II, we find characters who have little or nothing to believe in . . .Mark Helprin is one oftherare writers for whom this is notthecase .. . His books are romances inthechivalric mold, in which beauty, love and bravery possess a greater reality thanthecharacters dedicated to honoring them. This is true again in his enchanting new novel,Paris inthePresent Tense. . . This passionate and uplifting book produces a kind of music that few living writers know how to create.”

Sam Sacks - The Wall Street Journal

[Helprin has]an intensely lyrical voice that both heightens and deepens every sentence, at times attaining a kind of Joycean beauty . . . Part of this force comes from the images that fly off Helprin's sentences like glitter from a sparkler . . . His Paris does exist in the present tense, irresistibly, undeniably real and alive, as though summoned by its creator rather than imagined. In this, the novel performs perfectly the function of literature, which is not to escape the world but to enter more completely into it.

The New York Times Book Review

Haunting . . . extraordinary.

PEOPLE (A "PEOPLE picks" book)

Paris in the Present Tenseis a novel about love, and therefore about loss. . . . an intensely lyrical voice that both heightens and deepens every sentence, at times attaining a kind of Joycean beauty . . . Part of this force comes from the images that fly off Helprin's sentences like glitter from a sparkler . . . His Paris does exist in the present tense, irresistibly, undeniably real and alive, as though summoned by its creator rather than imagined. In this, the novel performs perfectly the function of literature, which is not to escape the world but to enter more completely into it.”

The New York Times

05/01/2017
In his seventies, widower Jules Lacour sits at the top of an accomplished life—he's a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, having survived both the Holocaust and fighting in Algeria, and he enjoys the golden glow of music, family, and rowing on the Seine. But now the pleasures of the present are vying with obligations to past and principle as Jules risks fraud to save a dangerously ill grandson, becomes unaccountably involved in an act of violence, and falls for a cellist a third his age. From the New York Times best-selling author of Winter's Tale.

Library Journal

★ 2017-08-06
A modern-day story of love, music, and death, with echoes of the Nazi retreat in World War II France.Septuagenarian Jules Lacour is a widower and a cellist in agony after losing his wife, Jacqueline. His grandson, Luc, has leukemia and will die without treatments that neither Jules nor his daughter, Cathérine, can possibly afford. Stage fright has always prevented him from achieving fame and fortune, and he considers himself a failure. Though in terrific physical shape—he runs, he rows on the Seine—he wants to die and be with Jacqueline again, because "he himself did not need to live. It was Luc who needed to live." Then, mirabile dictu, a "giant international conglomerate" asks him to write "telephone hold music," promising obscenely high pay that would easily cover Luc's treatment. Jules delivers beautifully, but alas, complications ensue. An intelligent and deeply sympathetic man, Jules remembers the day in 1944 when a Nazi soldier retreating through Reims heard his father playing Bach on his cello instead of La Marseillaise, realized the cellist was a hidden Jew and executed the family, leaving only 4-year-old Jules. That shock shaped the man Jules became, but it's just one thread the author weaves. He is in no hurry to finish telling this beautiful tale as he lavishes attention on characters such as Armand Marteau, perhaps the worst insurance salesman in France; a team of homicide detectives, a Muslim and a Jew, eating a ham lunch with a judge; and women of ineffable beauty with whom Jules falls into instant love. One, Élodi, is a cellist 50 years his junior. Even the conglomerate has a personality: "the great, indefatigable, trillion-dollar machine of Acorn, a dispositif with neither soul nor conscience." As Élodi declares to Jules that she will be his student, he sees "directly into her eyes, and never had he beheld a more elegant and refined woman, not even Jacqueline." The conversations often read like mini-essays, as when Jules tells Élodi about the "jealous" God of the Jews—arguing with Him is "like a goddamn wrestling match." A masterpiece filled with compassion and humanity. Perfect for the pure pleasure of reading.

Kirkus Reviews

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