As their walk progresses, Alessandro, who is certainly one of the more delightful creations in modern fiction, educates the young Nicolo by telling him his life story. Like Corti, Helprin uses his fiction to explore the politics, wars, and philosophies of our bloody century. You have to be fixed on the point. You need what politicians have, which is the absence of a sense of mortality. It comes, like a drug, from adoration and deference.
Revolutionaries get it from dreams.
I was interested in birds. And I thought the finest thing in my life was being with my son when he was a baby. People used to look at us when we went around in the daytime and wondered what a man was doing taking care of a child, but every word that came from him, every expression, every smile, even his tears, were worth a million times an honorable profession. One trouble with reviewing Helprin's book is that one wants to keep quoting the author. The dialogues between Alessandro and Nicolo demand to be shared with others.