Northeaster - Winslow Homer
There’s a bookstore I often find myself in, not because I’ve traveled to it, but because I’m nearby and have time and so enter, telling myself I probably won’t get anything because I don’t particularly like this bookstore and I have too many books already. It’s in situations like this where I find myself being “forced” to buy a book - I really did enter with good intentions, but must, due to circumstance and the forces of the universe, leave with a book, usually an expensive hardcover.
Just such an occurrence lead to my recent acquisition of Mark Helprin’s The Oceans and the Stars. Since I’m a big believer in judging books by their covers, I allowed this one to speak to me. The description further battered me, and in due course my resolve to thrift and economy yielded after seeing who the author was. I had not read anything by him but The Acceleration of Tranquility, but that essay was memorable enough.
Oceans is a narrative of a navy Captain who has to take control of a diminutive but technologically advanced ship, which is far below his station (Navy Captains are the equivalent of Colonels in the Army). He gets stuck with his ship, Athena, because he pissed off the President of the United States, who is artfully drawn. Once he’s fallen in love, he and his shipmates embark on a journey which includes seven battles, pirates, ISIS, bottles of champagne and dead bodies in kitchen incinerators. A mini legal-drama ensues upon his return. It’s cinematic and gripping, while managing to be poetic and serious. Helprin rather consciously ties the story to Odyssey, connecting this epic to among the first versions of its literary form.
One of the great assets of fiction is its ability to speak the unspeakable. To put to words those ideas which are too obscure, too dainty or ridiculous, too cringe to say directly. Literature is good for the kind of things that have to be whispered, and then only in company you can trust not to judge or to ironically cackle at your naivete and earnestness. Fiction is great for this, for saying in 1000 words what can’t be said in 10, or for tearing down the walls built in theory that never seem to withstand the assault of reality. Good stories can dance around the sharp objects that we’d rather avoid stepping on directly.
The Oceans and the Stars does not dance. Helprin dares, or dares the reader, to treat so many values and notions - the sacred, the romantic, the old fashioned - as not only real, but as objective. This isn’t *only* an explicitly political move, but it is definitely coded in a particular direction. I didn’t care, because I like the audacity of treating so many obvious things as real enough to be taken seriously on the page, things which we have a tendency to disdain, ignore, or rationalize as the vestiges of a more primitive people. That’s probably harsh, but all the same, it is refreshing to see a conception of love, duty, country, God, and death that speaks to the ardent and enduring concerns of the human heart. It isn’t careful or delicate or deliberate: Helprin just puts it there, to be accepted or forgotten.
Evil, in particular, as treated so plainly as to almost be ridiculous. Oceans carefully yet obviously presents horrors grotesque and immediate. True to epic form, there is no discernment required, and we can identify the bad guys versus the good guys. These scenes somehow aren’t unbearable to read, rather simply plainly stated. This ends up being important, I think, because it helps motivate so many of the martial virtues espoused elsewhere in the book. Duty, honor, glory, commitment, and sacrifice can be cheapened when they’re applied to the every day, or when they’re barked through screens by influencers selling extremity. They make much more sense in the context of evil, and that’s helpful.
That said, Helprin doesn’t situate or interrogate any of these ideas. He certainly doesn’t deconstruct. He never clears his throat or justifies or confuses. It’s almost surreal to read such unapologetic assertion. This is because while Oceans is a serious look at objective values, it is not a novel of ideas. It is a novel of action. It is at times painfully stuffed with technical and bureaucratic detail. The pace, especially towards the end, is torrential. And I probably shouldn’t be so quick to describe this as contravention, or unique, or somehow above or in opposition to other contemporary fiction. I simply have no idea if that’s true. All the same, this book speaks to the ardent concerns of being alive, in a way that feels honest in its simplicity and brutality of message. It’s so direct as to startle, to seem out of place, out of time. Which is one method of accessing the eternal through narrative and poetry. That is what good epics can do.
I also want to say something about war and America.
When you read about ancient wars, or watch Gladiator, war is removed from the context of everyday life. It appears as a simple fact without any normative implications. “A war story” does not raise philosophical or political questions as a matter of course in the same way that actual conflict, experienced today, does. Because of this we don’t get to experience war, or even violence more broadly, as something excusable, necessary, or even redemptive.
Stories, of course, do.
And since I’m somewhat numbed to the constant state of global conflict, I don’t cross that bridge very often. It’s stimulating, even challenging, to take the broad lessons of war stories and actually see them expressed in a believable, contemporary context. Oceans is not condescending or didactic. But sometimes it is helpful to have your hand held in making connections like this. That the primal appeal of vicariously experiencing conflict, combat, and death has application to the real wars, happening right now, might not be comforting. But at least Helprin succeeds in recasting what is often distant or political as persistent and human.
And because this book is about the U.S. Navy, one could easily read it as a defense of America and its foreign policy. As I mention, the story is about good and evil, and you can guess who the good guys are. This is not my perspective. Helprin is actually quite harsh on America, in her decadence and political absurdity. So while it would be easy to read this as a “culture war” book, that would be boring and wrong. Its virtues and depth exceed such a framing.