Word: antproof
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Helprin's novels are not clearly political and at their most florid are, though much admired, in fact not clear in any direction. Winter's Tale, for instance, is an obscure and very long fantasy about an annoying magical horse. His most recent, Memoir from Antproof Case, is marvelous, brilliantly written bosh about an elderly maniac who fulminates obsessively against coffee. Coffee? Sure...
There is some of this romantic, celebratory quality in Memoir from Antproof Case (Harcourt Brace; 514 pages; $24), but reasonableness does not rule. As we meet the novel's main character, he is 80 or so, hiding out in Brazil from real or imagined assassins, writing down his adventures and stashing them in an ant-proof case for his beloved 10-year-old stepson to read when he is older...
Which they certainly will be in Antproof, a wonderfully strange and funny novel. Here's the hero, learning by the succession of paintings in his office that his position in a Manhattan bank is shaky. First his Rembrandt is replaced by a Durer: "Within a week, however, it too was gone, replaced by a Monet ... If someone were trying to send a message to me, they were being incredibly subtle. In fact they were. The next day, the Monet was gone and a Vuillard was in its place ... It was clear that all was not well." Wit at this level...
...demonstrates principally through his lifelong war against the evils of coffee.TIME critic John Skowsays "If there is a trouble with Helprin's writing, it is that readers may have come by now to expect little more than to be dazzled every few pages....They certainly will be in Antproof, a wonderfully strange and funny novel...
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