Ponder: Paris in the Present Tense

The front flap of this novel describes the seventy-four-year-old main character Jules Lacour as "a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust". The final paragraph of the first chapter of Paris in the Present Tense foreshadows the storyline,

Of the seven hours and twenty minutes of flight, almost six hours remained – six hours in which to think of how to plan a revenge, save a life, and give his own. 

The character and story both sound intriguing. The intricacies of the plot of this book are clever and somewhat plausible, though admittedly unlikely.

I derived pleasure from reading the dialogues. Conversations were clever and witty and I wish there had been more of them (and fewer descriptions). A dialogue between Jules and Jack in the chapter "This Jack Person" presents a scenario where a slick Los Angeles business man, Jack Cheatham (an ominous name, if there ever was one) is relating the story of a young actor in a commercial and refers to the actor as "that kid".  Jules' native language is French; his English was entirely formal and he thought Jack was referring to a baby goat. The ensuing conversation reads like the confused repartee between comedians Abbot and Costello in their Who's on First routine. Exchanges between two police investigative detectives, partners who are a Jew and an Arab, are also amusing. Discourse between Jules and a twenty-five year old female cellist literally drip with sexual overtones.

Paris in the Present Tense was worth the read in terms of the plot and character interactions but I never did come to terms with the author’s extremely descriptive writing style. Per a New York Times Book Review "Mark Helprin writes with ease and sureness... with a compassionate understanding and a clean lucid prose... that is all too rare in our fiction." The chapter titled "As Light and Warmth Put France at Ease" begins with the sentence

As light and warmth put France at ease, winter elided gracefully into spring. 

Elided? What is elided? I had to look it up and it still does not make sense and is certainly not a striking example of "clean lucid prose". By the following definition, wouldn't spring have elided winter? 

Besides, a transitive verb is supposed to have an object per any grammar site I checked, and winter did not elide anything.

A transitive verb has two characteristics. First, it is an action verb, expressing a doable activity like kick, want, paint, write, eat, clean, etc. Second, it must have a direct object, something or someone who receives the action of the verb.

In my opinion, if an author is to be praised for his eloquent prose, than that prose needs to be correct and not just wordy.

In a plodding sort of way, the book still seemed to have a tension to it, despite the verbose writing style. Perhaps there is a double entendre in the title Paris in the Present TENSE. The language in use certainly fit the bill of being of a higher caliber, but I am not sure it was worth the effort to plow through it. Do I regret reading this book? No, I was interested and curious enough to complete it despite the language struggle, but still I will give it no more than three stars. In the terminology of my rating scale this equates to

★★★☆☆      Better than average; not a waste of time

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This post is my first book review of 2019. A change I am instituting from my previous format for book reviews is that the post title will be prefaced with Ponder and no longer Ponder Post. By omitting the redundant term post, I leave more room for long book titles that otherwise might get truncated or require a line wrap. In 2019 I also resolve to read more works that are thought provoking literature, books a bit deeper than romance novels.

I was both surprised and bemused when reviewing the topic distribution from my 2018 reads. Nearly half of the twenty-six books were romance novels, each of which could be read in one sitting. Ten were from Brenda Novak's Whiskey Creek Series. (As I began to become acquainted with a group of weekly coffee group friends, I wanted to know how the love life of each turned out - one book for each. All ten are compared in my post for 5/5/18.) My daughter used to work at Barnes and Nobel Booksellers and she informed me that a huge percentage of the publishing industry is romance novels. I did some quick confirmatory research on the popularity of romance novels. Per statistics on thebalancecareers.com

Romance novels are big business. According to the Romance Writers of America®, the romance fiction industry is worth $1.08 billion dollars a year, which makes it about a third larger than the inspirational book industry, and about the size of the mystery novel genre and science fiction/fantasy genre markets combined. Romance novels regularly top the major bestseller lists (New York Times, Publishers Weekly and USA Today), and have a large, dedicated audience of readers.

Even Jules in Paris in the Present Tense had his love interests – three of them. I do not plan to give up the guilty pleasure of romance novels, merely supplement it. I need some healthy literary food in addition to the cookies and ice cream laden pages I enjoy. I will not give up desserts entirely! Maybe my mind was not sufficiently literature-fit to read Paris in the Present Tense after my recent bout of reading fluff. I may need more intellectual exercise by seeking out more mentally stimulating – yet still enjoyable – books to read. For me, Paris in the Present Tense fell a little short in the enjoyment arena.